The Mexican petroleum industry in the twentieth century

Mexico's Petroleum Industry has come to symbolize the very sovereignty of the nation itself. Politicians criticize Pemex, the national oil company, at their peril, and President Salinas de Gortari has made clear that the free trade negotiations between Mexico and the United States will not affect Pemex's basic status as a public enterprise. How and why did the petroleum industry gain such prominence - and, some might say, immunity - within Mexico's political economy? The. Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jonathan C. Brown and Alan Knight, seeks to explain the impact of the oil sector on Mexico's economic, political, and social development. The book outlines how the foreign oil companies, beginning in the 1880s, converted Mexico from an importer of petroleum products to one of the world's foremost oil exporters - despite the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution. The state and the oil companies, however, Increasingly clashed over taxation and ownership, and Mexican oil workers, drawing on their vigorous cultural traditions, organized to defend their collective interests in this new industrial setting. The outcome of this complex set of relationships - Pres