Transnational mechanics: Automobility in Mexico, 1895--1950
Item
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Title
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Transnational mechanics: Automobility in Mexico, 1895--1950
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:0c0115780e5f:11542
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identifier
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12039
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Creator
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Freeman, John Brian,
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Contributor
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Alfonso W. Quiroz
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Latin American history | Latin American studies | Transportation | Automobile | Mexico | Mobility | Technology | Travel
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the rise of a particular way of moving through space in the form of motorized travel, and its political, cultural, and economic implications in Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century. It begins by tracing the origins of automobile use during the later years of the Porfirian era (1876-1911), followed by its curious expansion in the midst of armed revolution, world war, and a period of rapid innovation in the US automotive industry during the 1910s. When the country slowly broke free from the grip of national upheaval at the onset of the 1920s, post-revolutionary state builders, foreign and domestic business interests, and consumers joined forces in order to solve a challenging crisis in communications that had been brought about by the destruction and growing inefficiency of the nation's expansive but unevenly distributed railway system and network of urban tramways. Over the quarter century between the end of the Mexican Revolution and conclusion of the Second World War, as roads expanded from cities through the combined and at times competing actions of public and private interests, and automobiles flowed over the border from the United States, Mexican citizens became increasingly dependent on cars, buses, trucks, and gasoline for everything from getting around and between urban areas and maintaining the food supply of cities to leisure tourism. By mid-century, and through the forces of consumer preference, technological innovation, the pursuit of profit by automotive industry interests, and the promotion of motoring by a government intent on hastening the modernization of Mexican citizens and the domestic economy, the character of space and mobility had been fundamentally altered. More than half of the country's passengers and as much cargo as that hauled on the railway were being shuttled around the nation in motorized machines, while foreign and domestic automobile tourism had become a major industry. During the following decades, the Mexican state would seek to consolidate this transformation by aiding in the establishment of an expansive national automobile industry, continuing the costly construction of roads, and subsidizing gasoline for the Mexican consumer.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
