British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Business, Politics, and Empire in the Career of Weetman Pearson in Mexico, 1899-1919

摘要

In mid-2013, just a few months after his election as president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto announced a series of economic reforms to end existing monopolies. His targets included the national state-owned oil company PEMEX, established after the 1938 expropriation of foreign oil companies operating in Mexico. Considering changing PEMEX's privileged position in the Mexican economy goes beyond changes in the oil market. Since PEMEX's creation, the Mexican government has portrayed this firm as the symbol of the final battle of the Mexican people's long struggle against foreign domination of their national economic resources. This image is consistent with the official narrative of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), a bloody war that started with a rebellion against the regime of Porfirio Diaz, a man who ruled Mexico between 1877 and 1911. Postrevolutionary governments portrayed Diaz as a dictator who imposed a free-trade liberal economic system in which the main beneficiaries were foreign corporations, particularly the oil multinationals that Diaz welcomed. Not only did this narrative provide historical legitimacy to the overthrow of Diaz but also to subsequent actions, such as the writing of the 1917 Constitution that provided legal grounds for the expropriation of private property in the oil sector, the eventual nationalization of oil in 1938, and the creation of PEMEX. Because of this context, British Lions and Mexican Eagles, written by Paul Garner (Leeds University), touches particular nationalistic sensibilities that are still relevant in Mexico's current political debates.