From Protection to Neoliberalism: Mexico’s Brewing Industry in the 20th Century

This paper analyzes Mexico’s brewing industry from the 1970s through the early 2000s in order to demonstrate how mid-century protected development influenced Mexico’s late-century economic opening. It argues that the rapid growth in Mexico’s beer exports at the end of the twentieth century was due as much to the impact on the industry of the “protected” 1950s and 1960s as to the trade conditions ushered in by the neoliberal opening of the 1980s and 1990s. As part of this, it examines how public-private initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s expanded technical knowledge in the brewing industry and thereby positioned it to take advantage of the 1980s and 1990s apertura. The paper concludes by considering how by protecting industry and transforming former primary product producers into manufacturers, developing states influenced global trade and their relationship with developed economies.