Bankruptcy to NAFTA: Mexico's foreign policy opens to the world, 1982 to 1994

For most of the twentieth century, Mexico's post-revolutionary governments pursued a closed, nationalist, state-led economic model. Because it was a model that sought to protect its national industry from global competition, it developed a nationalist foreign policy that sought to protect Mexico from the outside world. The 1970s witnessed an acceleration of this state-led model of growth, with Mexico going on a spending spree and dramatically increasing the size of the state, especially after massive new oil deposits were found in 1976. In order to protect its nationalist economic model, Mexico's foreign policy assumed its most nationalist and activist character during this time, with Mexico seeking to take a lead role in challenging the industrialized world and trying to reshape the international order to favor the developing world.;When the world price of oil collapsed in 1982, Mexico went bankrupt. As a result, Mexico was forced to shrink the size of the state by privatizing hundreds of state owned firms, to abandon its nationalist, state-led model of development and to put into place an internationally oriented, export-led model of growth. This shift in economic strategy has been accompanied by a broader reshaping of Mexico's entire political stage. By dramatically transforming Mexico's links to the outside world, these economic and political changes have transformed Mexico's behavior on the international stage, bringing about a profound revision of its foreign policy.;Recognizing that internationalism has transformed Mexico's entire national agenda, this work analyzes Mexico's changing posture vis-a-vis the rest of the world during the entire shift from the heyday of its nationalist economic project in the 1970s to 1994, the last year of President Salinas de Gortari's administration (1988-1994) which more than any other year marked the consolidation of Mexico's internationalist economic project. In January of 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the cornerstone of Mexico's economic and foreign policy, went into effect. Then in April of that year the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) admitted Mexico as a full member, giving Mexico's economic reforms its stamp of approval.