Mexico and the Pacific

IN THE Pacific area, Mexico will eventually command a most important strategic and economic position. Mexico has two widely different coastlines: that on the Atlantic Gulf is sheltered behind concentric arcs of islands, belonging to most of the great colonial powers of the old and new worlds; that on the Pacific is in comparison open and vulnerable. Both coasts offer notable deep-water harbors, but those on the Pacific are better and more numerous. Mexico's great natural resources are widely dispersed. Its territory narrows down steadily from the frontier with the United States in the north to the rich deposits of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which continues into Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica in the south, and finally becomes the Isthmus of Panama. Thus, Mexico's position is crucial; from its territory not only the existent Panama Canal approaches, but also those of the mooted Nicaraguan Canal, as well as the landward and seaward communications between both the Americas and between the eastern and western hemispheres, can be threatened. But even these factors are not the most intriguing in the present picture of Pacific relations-at least, not as far as Mexico itself is concerned. Political, economic and racial influences have slowly but remorselessly been maneuvering Mexico into a dilemma not of its own choosing. These influences are many and varied; they arise as much from Mexico's domestic affairs as from its diplomatic, economic and geographical relations with neighboring states facing the Pacific. Of these latter, of course, relations with the United States are paramount. If Mexico's position and importance in the whole Pacific complex have not hitherto received enough public scrutiny, it is not because they are insignificant nor because they are incapable of becoming more decisive in future. Quite the contrary. The reason is to be sought rather in the extraordinarily involved nature of the factors which determine Mexico's position and importance in that complex

Geography · Political science · Economic Zones and Regional Development · History · International Relations in Latin America

• Confluencia geopolítica entre Cárdenas y Roosevelt

  Andreu Espasa•Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos•2019

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