ABSTRACT
As part of Latin America, Mexico’s economic history shares some of the features described by Bértola and Rodríguez Weber (B&RW) in the previous chapter. The early interest in nation and state-building, the influence of European traditions such as Marxism and the Annales School, the engagement in the investigation of the origins of economic backwardness and the possible solutions to it are common features. However, it differs from B&RW’s perception of what Latin American economic history has been in several respects. First, probably due to a long tradition of historical studies related to the colonial period, in Mexico a strong line of research on colonial economic history flourished, aiming at describing and understanding the main traits of the economy and society in New Spain. To a lesser extent, also the prehispanic society and later on the independent period became subjects of inquiry for their own sake. Those kinds of studies precede and probably outnumber the more recent interest in linking the past to current problems, as portrayed by B&RW. Second, in part for this reason, one cannot recognize as a preponderant feature of Mexico’s economic historiography the somewhat reductionist attempts at instrumentalizing the past with the purpose of providing answers for the future, as seems to be the case for other parts of Latin America. Present issues have an impact, of course, in the questions posed to the past and in the ways to approach it, but the motivation in looking into history is not mainly informed by the urgency of finding solutions to current situations. This may also be a consequence of the fact that economic history in Mexico has been practiced by historians more than by economists. In this sense, one cannot say that in Mexico the discipline has been more interested in the future than in the past.
