250 CHAPTER 11 THE TRIUMPH OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE, 1870–1900
As a result, the importation of maize and other food-
stuffs from the United States steadily increased in
the last years of the Díaz regime. Despite the growth
of pastoral industry, per capita consumption barely
kept pace, for a considerable proportion of the live-
stock was destined for the export market.
The only food products for which the increase
exceeded the growth of population were alcoholic
beverages. Some idea of the increase in their con-
sumption is given by the fact that the number of
bars in Mexico City rose from 51 in 1864 to 1,400
in 1900. At the end of the century, the Mexican
death rate from alcoholism—a common response
to intolerable conditions of life and labor—was
estimated to be six times that of France. Mean-
while, infl ation, rampant during the last part of the
Díaz regime, greatly raised the cost of the staples
on which the mass of the population depended.
Without a corresponding increase in wages, the
situation of agricultural and industrial laborers de-
teriorated sharply.
THE ECONOMIC ADVANCE
Whereas food production for the domestic market
declined, production of food and industrial raw ma-
terials for the foreign market experienced a vigorous
growth. By 1910, Mexico had become the largest
producer of henequen, a source of fi ber in great de-
mand in the world market. Mexican export produc-
tion became increasingly geared to the needs of the
United States, which was the principal market for
sugar, bananas, rubber, and tobacco produced on
foreign-owned plantations. U.S. companies domi-
nated the mining industry, whose output of copper,
gold, lead, and zinc rose sharply after 1890. The oil
industry, controlled by U.S. and British interests,
developed spectacularly, and by 1911, Mexico was
third among the world’s oil producers. French and
Spanish capitalists virtually monopolized the textile
and other consumer-goods industries, which had a
relatively rapid growth after 1890.
Foreign control of key sectors of the economy
and the fawning attitude of the Díaz regime toward
foreigners gave rise to a popular saying: “Mexico,
mother of foreigners and stepmother of Mexicans.”
The ruling clique of Científi cos justifi ed this favor-
itism by citing the need for a rapid development
of Mexico’s natural resources and the creation of
a strong country capable of defending its political
independence and territorial integrity. Thanks to
an infl ux of foreign capital, the volume of foreign
trade greatly increased, a modern banking system
arose, and the country acquired a relatively dense
network of railways linking the interior to over-
seas markets. But these successes were achieved at
a very heavy price: a brutal dictatorship, the pau-
perization of the mass of the population, the stag-
nation of food agriculture, the strengthening of
the ineffi cient latifundio, and the survival of many
feudal or semifeudal vestiges in Mexican economic
and social life.LABOR, AGRARIAN,AND MIDDLE-CLASS UNREST
The survival of feudal vestiges was especially glar-
ing in the area of labor relations. Labor conditions
varied from region to region. In 1910 forced la-
bor and outright slavery, as well as older forms of
debt peonage, were characteristic of the southern
states of Yucatán, Tabasco, Chiapas, and parts of
Oaxaca and Veracruz. The rubber, coffee, tobacco,
henequen, and sugar plantations of this region de-
pended heavily on the forced labor of political de-
portees, captured indigenous rebels, and contract
workers kidnapped or lured to work in the tropics
by a variety of devices.
In central Mexico, where a massive expropria-
tion of village lands had created a large, landless
native proletariat, tenantry, sharecropping, and
the use of migratory labor had increased and liv-
ing standards had declined. The large labor surplus
of this area diminished the need for hacendados to
tie their workers to their estates with debt peonage.
In the north, the proximity of the United States,
with its higher wage scales, and the competition
of hacendados with mine owners for labor made
wages and sharecropping arrangements some-
what more favorable and weakened debt peonage.
In all parts of the country, however, the life of ag-
ricultural workers was fi lled with hardships and
abuses of every kind.
Labor conditions in mines and factories were
little better than in the countryside. Workers in