Lay J Gibson - The U.S. And Mexico: Borderland Development and the National Economies

The U.S. and Mexico: Borderland Development and the National Economies

Lay James Gibson and Alfonso Corona Rentera

Addressing the economic aspects of ties between the United States and Mexico, this book looks at the structural characteristics of the border region and the flow of goods, services, capital, and people between the two countries. The contributors describe the cultural, economic, and demographic dimensions of the borderlands and focus on specific issues critical to the region, among them environmental pollution, migration, territorial issues, and the implications of borderzone industrial growth. Finally, the authors consider how these issues affect the national economies and relations between the two countries.

Lay James Gibson is professor and head of the Department of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Alfonso Corona Rentera is a professor of economics at the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico.

edited by Lay James Gibson and Alfonso Corona Rentera

First published 1985 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The U.S. and Mexico.
(A Westview replica edition)
1. Mexican-American Border RegionEconomic conditions Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. MexicoEconomic conditions1971- Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. United StatesEconomic conditions1971-1981Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. United StatesEconomic conditions1981- Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Gibson, Lay James. II. Corona Rentera, Alfonso. III. Title: US and Mexico.
HC135.U16 1985 337.72'1'073 84-7510

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29675-9 (hbk)

For decades, scholars in the U.S. have studied Mexico and Mexican scholars have studied the United States. Only a relatively small part of these efforts has been focused on the economic aspects of ties between the two countries and even less attention has been given to the analysis of the structural characteristics of the U.S.-Mexico border region or to the flows of goods, services, capital, and people between these two neighbors. This book focuses squarely on these critical topics.

The sixteen chapters in the book are organized around two general themes: "Borderland Development" ( take a macro-scale or nation-to-nation approach when discussing economic flows and linkages, migration streams, and territoriality issues involving the two nations.

The events of recent years have dramatically altered both the perceptions and realities of U.S.-Mexico relations. When organizing papers for a book such as this one, there is a strong temptation to be "trendy"to grab hold of a "hot topic" and stretch it to the limit, But there is a risk in this approachhot topics come and go. Inflation in both the U.S. and Mexico, the peso devaluations in Mexico, the energy crisis in the U.S., and the petroleum boom in Mexico are all topics that might be viewed in one light in 1980 or 1981 and in a very different light just a year or two later.

The chapters in this volume frequently deal with topics of perhaps exaggerated current interest, but the editors have made a genuine effort to be sure that they do more than describe issues that are in vogue. Papers selected for inclusion all share at least some of the following traits: they deal with major issues of lasting value, they have important policy implications, they offer a fresh perspective on an important topic, or they utilize methodologies that yield new insights into established issues. In more general terms, all chapters contribute to the special analytical perspectives gained by approaches that stress the importance of understanding the spatial structure of regions and the ways that regions are defined and bounded by flows of goods, services, capital, people, and ideas.

A total of ten chapters deal with the broadly defined theme of borderland development. All of these chapters are concerned with the U.S.-Mexico interface, but they are clearly not all cut from the same cloth. The chapters by Jorge A. Bustamante, Niles Hansen, and Kevin F. McCarthy deal with structural characteristics of the borderlands region. Hansen provides an overview of economic and demographic characteristics of both the U.S. and Mexican portions of the region; he stresses the asymmetric nature of U.S.-Mexico borderland relationships. Like Hansen, McCarthy presents an overview of regional structure, but his emphasis is more on social, cultural, and political factors than on the economic and demographic. McCarthy deals with that often confusing mix of factors which seem both to unite the Mexican and U.S. jurisdictions and at the same time make them separate entities. Bustamante's chapter develops more fully one of the themes discussed by McCarthynational identity. He presents research findings for a number of Mexican cities that suggest that "cultural denationalization" is less likely to occur in border cities than in other parts of Mexico.

A second group or chapters in focuses on the development of one side of the international border and on the actual and potential linkage effects between border regions and the respective national economies. Luis Suarez-Villa develops a model to describe the process of interregional movement of firms. He then goes on to discuss actual manufacturing shifts in the U.S. away from the northeast and to the borderlands; he investigates the particular role played by Mexico's Border Industrialization Program in promoting these shifts. James T. Peach, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on the U.S. side of the international border in his analysis of regional changes in income distribution. Jess Tamayo and Alfonso Corona Rentera, like Suarez-Villa, are concerned with the ties between the relatively isolated border region and the national mainstream. Tamayo examines events that have, in recent years, had a substantial impact on the Mexican economy and then discusses their repercussions in the Mexican border region. Corona too is concerned with recent developments in the Mexican border zone's economic life. He concludes that national policy should focus on the development of new linkage structures that emphasize the strengthening of ties between the Mexican borderlands and Mexico's interior.