Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico

This history of technological modernization, centered on several case studies of domestic and industrial technologies, examines Mexico's dependence on imported hardware and expertise from the North Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While Edward Beatty is careful to avoid a deterministic argument, he investigates reasons for the persistence of Mexico's technological dependence and the implications of this for the country's economic development over the past century. Even compared to other Latin American nations, Mexico invested little in technological research and development, due to the proximity of US markets and manufactured goods. Mexico's National Engineering School graduated few civil, mechanical, electrical, or metallurgical engineers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the short term, importation of both technological equipment and expertise was the most obvious and least expensive option for Mexican state agencies and private firms. This increased pressure to keep import tariffs low, disadvantaging Mexican...