Santa Anna Never had an iPhone: Some Thoughts on the Price of Peace and the Financial Misfortunes of the Treaty of 1848 (original) (raw)

Mexico’s Foreign Debt and the War with the United States

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2015

In Mexico, the second half of the 19th century in the western world witnessed internal and international conflicts which were associated with decolonization, quests for national identity, state or local versus national power, inter-elite competition for political and economic power, and class conflict. These decades of conflict between Liberals and Conservatives, among the states and between the states/departments and the central government provided the context in which the most devastating civil conflict of the century erupted in 1899. The War of a Thousand Days itself was, in contrast to the deeper divisions over political values in the two main parties, primarily a struggle for power among competing elites in the context of extreme economic crisis and a repressive central government which for more than a decade had systematically excluded members of the opposition party from meaningful participation in the nation's political institutions. The objective of this paper is to exp...

Loans of the revolution: how Mexico borrowed as the state collapsed in 1912–13

The Economic History Review, 2018

This article assesses why the French and US banks Paribas and Speyers underwrote a series of loans to revolutionary Mexico in 1912 and 1913, when the state was in the process of collapsing. This is a case of a war debt that failed to prevent the borrowing government from suspending payments and subsequently falling. Based on unpublished primary documents, the article shows that the 1913 loan involved a conflict of interest. The credit delayed a default and sustained the price of Mexican securities while Paribas, its main underwriter, was liquidating its Mexican portfolio. Evidence also suggests the existence of asymmetry of information. Paribas accessed pessimistic but accurate first-hand information on Mexico, while the public read over-optimistic press reports. Paribas forced the government to sell the bonds on the primary market at a price that was low, controlling for publicly available data. It subsequently sold the bonds at a margin on the secondary market. An additional reason for the lending is the Nacional railway, a state-owned company that used a share of the funds to pay its debt. More exposed to Mexico than Paribas, the small and internationalized Speyers held the bad bonds it had underwritten.

Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War

Hispanic American Historical Review, 2003

Reviewed by John E. Kicza In 1987, John Mason Hart published Revolutionary Mexico, an influential overview of the Mexican Revolution. Disagreeing with the (still) dominant interpretation that the Revolution focused on internal Mexican disequilibria and inequalities, particularly in the agrarian sector, Hart argued that it was instead a struggle for national liberation against the economic imperialism that the United States had inflicted on the country, especially during the lengthy dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Hart's new book, Empire and Revolution, consists of some 507 pages of detailed case studies of American investment undertakings and business involvement in Mexico from 1865 to the present day. As such, it can be understood as an effort to substantiate his argument in the earlier work. This is apparent also in the very unequal numbers of pages the author devotes to the different time periods. Hart commits some 63 pages just to the 12 years between the end of the American Civil War and the advent of the Diaz regime in Mexico, nearly 200 pages to the Diaz era from 1876 to 1910, some 130 pages to the "years of revolution" from 1910 to 1940," and just under 100 pages to the period from 1940 to 2000. The post-1940 era thus receives rather little attention, although most scholars of Mexico recognize that this is when American economic and cultural impact expanded enormously, eclipsing its impact on Mexico during all previous epochs. Further, until Hart reaches the post-1940 era, he concentrates almost exclusively on formal economic penetration of Mexico. However, in that final section, he abruptly shifts to a discussion of how American popular culture, drugs and criminality, and pollution affected Mexican life. Hart compiled this massive undertaking only after many years of research in business and government archives scattered throughout Mexico and the United States. His dedication and doggedness must be lauded. He shows himself to be very knowledgeable about modern Mexican history, adeptly weaving American financial involvement into Mexico's larger national narrative. The book's lively-and sometimes almost flippant-prose style carries the reader smoothly through what might otherwise have been dense and repetitive case studies. Despite his consistently negative view toward American economic involvement in Mexico over the last century and a half, Hart rarely engages in a systematic evaluation of its impact in any of these eras. He seems to think

Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the US-Mexico Borderlands

HAHR, 2023

the introduction, "Between 1836 and 1861 the Mexican Republic was caught, without allies or outside support, between European powers and an expansionist United States" (p. 1). And we see as the book develops how political decision-making responded as much to this neocolonialism as it did to internal concerns. The weapon of first resort was invariably money: the insistence on reparations for foreign nationals who got caught up in the popular protests and revolts that characterized Mexican public life after 1810, and then the regular attempts by bondholders to recover stakes on loans obtained in London during the 1820s. Squeezed on all sides, Mexico's government was always short of cash and thus perennially weak. Pressure could be brought to bear via the seizure of ports (as did the French in 1838 and the tripartite powers in 1861), direct invasion (as did the United States in 1846 and France in 1863), or the offer of cash for land purchase or access (as the United States did on multiple occasions). While Mexican politicians tried to play the powers against each other-the Conservatives looking for allies in Europe and the Liberals in the United States-they always paid a price for these alliances. In short, Hamnett's book provides a deep, multifaceted perspective on the causes and consequences of political instability in Mexico between 1836 and 1861. It connects the dots between local politics, the construction of personal power bases (his portrayals of Mejía, Manuel Verástegui, and Santiago Vidaurri are particularly adept), and the national political scene. Given the current polarizing climate of Mexican politics and the disintegration of its party system, it should be required reading for our politicians. catherine andrews, Centro de Investigació n y Docencia Econó micas