From Worries to Wants: Inter-American Defense’s Impact on Travel Between Mexico and the United States

As U.S. planners’ assessments of the global security situation shifted throughout World War II, their country’s Inter-American defense efforts produced varying cultural impacts in Mexico and the United States. Even after the threat of an Axis invasion was no longer feasible, unprecedented cooperation between the two country’s governments continued to reshape many locales in western North America. American engineering and financial support for bi-national lines of communications enabled Americans to visit newly emerging tourist destinations in Mexico and “essential” wartime products and workers to flow rapidly to the north. This paper analyzes the evolving cultural trajectory of military, diplomatic, and economic exchanges as the region moved beyond the prevention of an existential threat and towards the pursuit of their postwar plans.