Mexico's Lesson in Capitalism

• Author: José Ángel Gurría
• Pages: 59-59

March 2018 | FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT 59

BOOK REVIEWS

Mexico’s Lesson

in Capitalism

IN THIS FORMIDABLE work of scholarship, Georgetown

University historian John Tutino recounts Mexico’s

long journey to modernity from the standpoint of

small communities surrounding Mexico City. is

ambitious exercise spans ve centuries to analyze

how these communities “built, sustained, subsidized,

resisted and changed capitalism” in its various phases

from silver-based imperial capitalism under Spanish

rule to the shift from national capitalism to liberal

globalism in the late 20th century.

Tutino gives a rich description of the clash

between traditional community life and the

expansion of capitalism through the centuries

and tells the stories of people in communities such

as Chalco, Tenango del Valle, and Tepoztlán, places

exhibiting the enduring traits of the Mexican

heartland: poverty, productive communitarianism,

local autonomy, and patriarchalism.

A key theme of the book is the resilience that

allowed communities to retain, with varying suc-

cess, a degree of the ecological, political, and cultural

autonomies secured during the era of the global silver

economy under Spanish rule. In the late 19th century

liberal capitalism brought with it a concentration

of land ownership that, combined with popula-

tion growth and mechanization, undermined the

patriarchal family system. Tutino describes how this

led to rising violence, both within families and by

armed rebellion. e ultimate result was land reform

yielding a temporary renewal of autonomy. But

strong population growth in the 20th century and

the rapid expansion of Mexico City sapped the rural

heartland and left most of its people struggling to

build satisfactory lives in the sprawling conurbation.

For Tutino, this phase, and the subsequent collapse

of national capitalism with the “triumph of globaliza-

tion” since the 1980s, marked the denitive end of

local autonomies. Yet the author may have marked

the ending too early. e clash between traditional

communities and liberal capitalism was still evident

in 2006 when riots led by the community of San

Salvador Atenco forced the new Mexico City airport

project to be postponed for 10 years.

e author also seems to suggest that capital-

ism’s incompatibility with traditional autonomous

communitarianism implies a choice between social

erosion and inclusion. Yet some of the most open

and market-oriented economies are also among

those with the best track records on inclusiveness

and the environment.

While Tutino may be right to say that it remains

to be seen “how people will make communities

and press their needs in our new world,” there is as

much reason to be optimistic about this as pessimis-

tic. Openness of the economy and social inclusion

do not, of course, come about automatically. e

right policies are needed for the sort of inclusive

and sustainable growth that can combat poverty

while safeguarding the environment and fostering

human rights and democracy. At a 2017 meeting of

the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development, which I lead, the Network of Open

Economies and Inclusive Societies was established to

champion this combination. e OECD has been

working closely with the Mexican authorities to

design and implement reforms that simultaneously

boost productivity and improve the inclusiveness of

growth. I hope and believe that, for the Mexican

heartland, t he best is yet to come.

JOSÉ ÁNGEL GURRÍA, secretary-general, Organisation for

Economic Co-operation and Development

John Tutino

The Mexican Heartland—

How Communities Shaped

Capitalism, a Nation, and

World History, 1500–2000

Princeton University Press,

Princeton, NJ, 2017, 512 pp., $39.50

Openness of the economy and

social inclusion do not, of course,

come about automatically.