"Carrying Progress to All Parts of the Republic? Road Building and Access to Motor Transportation in Postrevolutionary Mexico"

• In Event: “Driving Modernities: Automobile Politics in the Americas”

Abstract

In 1949, when the Mexican subsidiary of REO Motor Car Company opened a new assembly plant in Monterrey, Nuevo León, its director general declared: “In the coming years… these routes and motor vehicles will carry Progress to all parts of the Republic like blood circulating vigorously through the arteries of a young nation.” He alluded to the Mexican government’s plan to build 100,000 kilometers of new motor roads over the coming decade. Manufacturing 150 motor buses per month at the Monterrey factory, he saw REO positioned to benefit greatly from this policy.
Public demand for better access to the country’s roads had grown steadily in the years after the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution. Since 1921, succeeding national governments intensified efforts to finance and build new federal highways and state roads. Throughout this period, while individual automobile ownership remained low, most average people experienced modern road travel via one of the new motor buses that rumbled across the countryside.
This paper examines the social and cultural impact of new roads and motor buses. It considers how these technologies were incorporated into larger discussions of modernity and progress, and also how local communities debated and critiqued these narratives. Ultimately, it finds that the political context tied to questions of access to motor travel provides a clearer understanding of how individuals and groups articulated the effects of economic development in postrevolutionary Mexico.

Author

• Michael K Bess, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas