290 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
The most important concessions to the United States, however, were made by lib-
eral dictators in Mexico and Central America after the 1870s. Porfirio Díaz not only
made it legal for U.S. citizens to own property in Mexico but also personally saw to
it that U.S. companies were given contracts to build the major rail lines throughout
the country. With Díaz’s open-door economic policies, U.S. investors soon domi-
nated mining, oil production, and export agriculture in Mexico. Even the textbooks
used in Mexican schools were written by U.S. authors and published by the Apple-
ton Publishing Company (Cockcroft 1983:88).
Díaz was himself part Indian, but like other so-called liberal dictators of the re-
gion, he did not give favorable treatment to the native Mesoamericans. As described
in Box 7.6, Díaz believed in the need to assimilate the Indians into national society
through the same process that had created his own social persona; that is, through
mestizaje(racial and cultural mixing).
In Central America, the United States intervened almost at will in the region’s
governmental affairs. For example, in 1906, the United States forced a Guatemalan
dictator to end his war with the other Central American countries; in 1909, it co-
erced a Nicaraguan dictator to resign from office when he dared challenge U.S.
power; in 1912, it appointed an acting president of Honduras in order to protect
U.S. banana interests; and in 1917, it ousted a Costa Rican president who refused to
make special concessions to U.S. banana and oil companies. As a direct result of
these interventions, the Central American countries became known as “Banana Re-
publics” (La Feber 1983).
The liberals opened the door to foreign investment during the nineteenth cen-
tury, and in the early part of the twentieth century their successors allowed the United
States and other foreigners to take virtual control of the political and economic af-
fairs of the states in the region. U.S. investments in Central America were primarily
concentrated in mining, oil, and agriculture. As might be expected, the investments
were oriented toward production for exports, especially to the United States. But
the investments were also accompanied by the heavy infusion of advanced tech-
nologies—especially machine-driven tools and infrastructural improvements—mainly
in railroads, shipping, irrigation systems, and building construction. In northern
Mexico, mining was stepped up, largely under the auspices of U.S. companies such
as Anaconda, and by 1911, the country had become the second leading producer of
silver in the world
The exploitation of Mexican oil was dominated by U.S. and British companies
(Figure 7.10). As of 1921, production of crude oil in Mexico accounted for about one-
fourth of the world’s supply, and 70 percent of it was in American hands. Most of the
eighty largest industries of Mexico in 1911 were U.S.-owned, many of them special-
ized in commercial agriculture. U.S. companies, for example, owned and operated
the majority of the sugar plantations of Morelos, the most productive sugar cane
area in the world, and the lucrative henequen (fiber) plantations of Yucatán. Largely
because of foreign mining and agricultural operations, foreigners succeeded in gain-
ing rights to almost 20 percent of Mexico’s total land surface. Also, early in the cen-
tury Mexico became linked to the U.S. market through a vast network of railroad
lines, built and controlled by U.S. investors.