| For a developing country, such as Mexico, switching from a centralized economy to a market economy implied a political and cultural transformation that may only be compared to the encounter of two cultures occurred more than five centuries ago, when the Spanish colonizers arrived to "New Spain".;From a legal point of view, Mexico's signature of the North American Free Trade Agreement represents the deepest encounter of that country with representatives of the Common Law. Within this context, the differences between the two legal backgrounds can be specially perceived in the procedural features of the NAFTA. At a first glance, some of these differences in legal culture may be exacerbated to the point where an authentic middle ground might be impossible to find. However, a more detailed analysis of Mexico's institutions reveals that even those most complex features of Mexican law are compatible with the free trade movement if the interpreter decides to be compatible with the reality he lives in.;This thesis contains a detailed explanation of the path Mexico followed when modifying its industrial and commercial policy, as well as a description of the procedure contained in the NAFTA for solving disputes on antidumping and countervailing duties. The thesis ends with an assessment of Mexico's compliance with that part of the Agreement, both from a theoretical and a practical perspectives. |
