This volume contains four essays varying in length from forty-eight to ninety-one pages, plus an introduction covering sixteen pages by the editor, who discusses relations between public policy and private enterprise in Mexico. The longest of the four essays, dealing with Mexico’s electric utilities, is written by Miguel Wionczek, head of information at the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies in Mexico City. The shortest, summarizing the story of protectionism in Mexico since the 1940s, is authored by Rafael Izquierdo, a noted Mexican economist. The other two are the products of two economists of the United States: David H. Shelton, University of Delaware, who traces the evolution of Mexico’s twentieth-century banking system with emphasis on the relationship of money and monetary policy to economic growth, and Calvin P. Blair, University of Texas, who summarizes the history of Nacional Financiera with special reference to its efforts to promote a mixed and diversified economy in Mexico.
Contrary to the view held in some conservative circles in the United States in respect to Harvard University, the volume does not reveal any extreme leftist sentiments. Among other things, its authors merely remark that Mexico seems to be following the general trend of this century toward what appears to be the inevitable goal of a mixed economy, with the public sector expanding in recent years more rapidly than the private sector in ownership, or ownership and control. Mexico’s politicians, bureaucrats, and technicians, at least during the 1950’s and early 1960’s, seem to have been more cautious and moderate than the average among those in the underdeveloped countries of the “Free World”—perhaps because of eagerness to avoid internal disorder and violence and attract external capital, which, in fact, has financed the public as well as the private sector of the Mexican economy.
Elaboration of the contents of this book, even if desirable in this review, would be impossible within customary limits. All of the four essays seem to merit commendation and deserve scrutiny by specialists in the fields of Latin American history and the development of economically retarded nations in general. And this applies also to Mr. Vernon’s brief introduction, which—along with his Dilemma of Mexico’s Economic Development, published by Harvard University Press in 1963—is based to a very considerable extent upon the essays that he now presents to scholars and the interested public. The style of the entire volume is outstanding for its precision and clarity, and the statistical tables are not difficult to comprehend.
The avowed purpose of this and other similar studies prepared or projected under the auspices of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs is to furnish useful information for promotors of economic growth in economically retarded countries. Any such countries which happen to be as successful as Mexico in achieving such progress as she has achieved in recent years will be fortunate. Perhaps most of them will fall far short of her record. Those in charge of Mexico’s economic growth during the past two or three decades have made mistakes; but apparently, for the most part, they have been both honest and efficient as well as moderate and cautious. If prosperous mixed economies are to become the lot of the Western World, Mexico promises to reach that goal before the arrival of most of the presently underdeveloped countries in Latin America or elsewhere.
