Travel and Transport in Mexico

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American

History
Travel and Transport in Mexico  
J. Brian Freeman and Guillermo Guajardo Soto
Subject: History of Mexico Online Publication Date: Jul 2018
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.701

Summary and Keywords

In his 1950 study, Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread, historian Frank
Tannenbaum remarked that “physical geography could not have been better designed to
isolate Mexico from the world and Mexicans from one another.” He recognized, like
others before him, that the difficulty of travel by foot, water, or wheel across the
country’s troublesome landscape was an unavoidable element of its history. Its distinctive
topography of endless mountains but few navigable rivers had functioned, in some sense,
as a historical actor in the larger story of Mexico. In the mid-19th century, Lucas Alamán
had recognized as much when he lamented that nature had denied the country “all means
of interior communication,” while three centuries before that, conquistador Hernán
Cortés reportedly apprised Emperor Charles V of the geography of his new dominion by
presenting him with a crumpled piece of paper. Over the last half-millennium, however,
technological innovation, use, and adaptation radically altered how humans moved in and
through the Mexican landscape. New modes of movement—from railway travel to human
flight—were incorporated into a mosaic of older practices of mobility. Along the way,
these material transformations were entangled with changing economic, political, and
cultural ideas that left their own imprint on the history of travel and transportation.

Keywords: automobile, aviation, highway, infrastructure, mobility, port, railroad, tourism, transportation

Pre-Conquest and Colonial Periods

It comes as a surprise to many modern observers to learn that although the pre-
Columbian societies of Mesoamerica understood the principle of the wheel, and some
incorporated it into toy figurines, none appear to have utilized it for transportation.1 Jared
Diamond has attempted to explain this paradox by arguing that native peoples of the
Americas never adopted wheels because they lacked the large domesticatable animals

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

necessary to pull them. Yet humans themselves—it would seem—could certainly have
done the job. Richard W. Bulliet, a skeptic of Diamond’s hypothesis, suggests that pre-
Columbian people may well have actively chosen not to use wheels. Others, to be sure,
had done so at various points in history, inspired by the fact that wheels present many
disadvantages over legs. The former require good roads, and even when those are
present, they can be rendered useless by broken parts, fallen trees and rocks, loose soil,
or bad weather conditions. In the face of such limitations, pre-conquest Mesoamericans
may have simply determined that human bodies were the preferable all-terrain
transportation technology.2

Whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that prior to the arrival of the Spanish,
Mesoamerican societies relied almost entirely on human muscle as the motive power for
transportation. Human carriers, or tamemes, hauled a vast assortment of goods over
short and long distances. To do so, they utilized containers woven from cane, which they
affixed to their backs and strapped to their foreheads by tumplines. In central Mexico, the
tamemes who supplied the Aztec empire’s island-capital of Tenochtitlán, worked in
conjunction with thousands of professional canoers. Together, they performed the
indispensable task of maintaining a transport link between the island and the lakeshore.
At nearly all hours of the day, canoers could be seen propelling dugouts of various sizes
by paddle and pole. As Ross Hassig observes, the lake system they used, “served as a
large and efficient conduit of goods,” giving the city the ability to draw from an extensive
hinterland.3

In 1521, two years after they arrived, the Spanish razed Tenochtitlán and rebuilt it as
Mexico City. The transition to Spanish colonial rule had a significant impact on transport
practices in the Valley of Mexico. Soon after the conquest, deforestation and overgrazing
accelerated the erosion of the land, the silting of lakes, and the desiccation of the
lacustrine ecosystem. Periodic and uncontrollable flooding began to affect the city, and in
the early 16th century, engineers and draft laborers began construction on the desagüe
de Huehuetoca, a massive drainage system that was not completed until the 20th century.
In the meantime, the city’s old earthen causeways that had once connected the island to
the shore continued to function as important thoroughfares. Shallow waters were
channeled into canals and new roads spread over the dry lakebed. Roads and canals then
supplied the city, although the latter soon became identified as “sources of
infection” (“focos de infección”) by early public health reformers. In 1753, for example,
authorities covered up the Acequia Real, a canal that had once reached as far as the
Zócalo.

As colonial authorities continued what amounted to a war against water, new modes of
animal-powered transportation took hold. The first horses had arrived in New Spain as
military tools, but as their numbers grew, they became simple modes of locomotion as
well as markers of status. Due to early prohibitions against their ownership by indigenous
people, as well as their high cost, horses developed an association with the Spanish, and
thus city life; in rural areas, where indigenous populations predominated, they were
seldom seen during the first half of the 16th century.4 Even as the number of horses and

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

other beasts of burden grew, the early colonial transportation system continued to rely
principally on the muscle-power of indigenous carriers. Indeed, the continued use (and
abuse) of tamemes resulted in frequent interventions by royal authorities, who issued
periodic edicts aimed at limiting, regulating, or banning indigenous people’s employment
by Spanish colonists as human porters.

At the close of the 1540s, epidemic disease and the discovery of silver in Zacatecas
altered the character of mobility in New Spain. Human carriers, no longer able to meet
the demand for transport services, began to be replaced by livestock. In previous
decades, the number of working animals available for hire had increased significantly,
and around Mexico City they could be found pulling carriages, wagons, and carts. Beyond
the capital, where the terrain was often less forgiving, heavy carts built of timbers,
equipped with massive wheels and pulled by mules, were used to navigate rock-strewn
roads, although even they were of little use for most trans-mountain travel.

As Spanish authorities extended their power, they superimposed a new system of royal
roads onto the preexisting indigenous road infrastructure. Over the course of the colonial
period a rudimentary trunk highway network, varying significantly in quality, began to
radiate outward from Mexico City. The network’s four main arteries were the Camino
Real de Tierra Adentro (Mexico City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, via Zacatecas), the Camino
Real de Chiapas (Mexico City to Guatemala), the Camino Real de Veracruz (the “Road to
Europe”), and the Camino Real de Acapulco (the “Road to Asia”). The ports of Veracruz
and Acapulco, in turn, connected New Spain to networks of transatlantic and trans-Pacific
trade. Smaller roads, meanwhile, connected the capital with important population centers
Pachuca, Toluca, Morelia, and Cuautla, among others. By the end of the colonial period,
the system extended 16,979 miles, although more than two thirds of it could not
accommodate wheeled vehicles.5

Despite the investment in infrastructure, transportation costs remained exceedingly high

throughout the colonial period. Only those goods—such as silver, tobacco, sugar, mercury,
Cochineal, and certain manufactures—that were high in value in relation to their weight
or volume could be moved over long distances. Such items were almost invariably
transported by trains of pack mules led by muleteers, or arrieros. As many as sixty
thousand animals plied the northern Camino Real de Tierra Adentro alone.6

Independence to Porfirio Díaz

The late colonial period witnessed efforts by both Bourbon administrators and merchant
guilds to improve the royal roads, but their success was limited. With the onset of the War
of Independence (1810–1821), the deterioration of road infrastructure only accelerated.
In the face of high transportation costs, few people traveled significant distances and
many regions simply produced for themselves what their inhabitants consumed. Until the
advent of railroads a half-century later, those who ventured beyond their home regions

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

did so by stagecoach (diligencia), litter (litera), mounted travel, or on foot. Stagecoaches,

however, were expensive, and useful only along the few passable highways. On the
country’s many poorly maintained roads, the use of the more expensive litter—sustained
by mules or human porters—was an alternative. While mounted travel—on donkeys,
mules, and horses—was a more affordable option than the stagecoach or the litter, even it
was too costly for the vast majority of people, who simply opted to walk. The Secretariat
of Public Works confirmed as much when it found that between 1877 and 1882, along
thirty-seven checkpoints on fourteen federal roads, 6.5 percent of travelers used
stagecoaches, 25.1 percent were mounted, and 68.4 percent were on foot.7

Many roads were operated by private concessioners, authorized by the federal

government to charge a toll, or peaje, in exchange for making periodic, if limited repairs.8
During summer months in particular, travel became exceedingly unpleasant as heavy
rains transformed many overland routes into muddy streams. In the early 1880s,
American traveler Frederick A. Ober remarked that the roads in Mexico were “as a rule,
in a horrible state. [. . .] Take one of our country lanes, cut ditches across it, dig deep pits
in it, demolish a stone wall and cast into the centre of it, run a few streams through it,
and slush the whole over so that one can hardly keep his footing on it, and you have a
Mexican country road in the rainy season.”9 Not only was travel difficult, but it was often
dangerous as well. Until the end of the 19th century, Mexicans and foreigners alike wrote
extensively of the scourge of highway robbery. By the turn of the 20th century, these
outlaws had become memorialized in countless stories, memoirs, and travel accounts.
Indeed, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano’s El Zarco—the tale of a blue-eyed bandit from the
state of Morelos—emerged as one of Mexican literature’s most celebrated novels after it
was published in 1901.

The nature of travel began to change during the final decades of the 19th century due to
the construction of the first railroads and the centralization of power under the
presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1880, 1884–1911). After a half-century of planning, the
nation’s first major railway line was inaugurated in 1873, connecting Mexico City and the
port of Veracruz. By offering generous concessions and subsidies to private firms, the
Porfirian government was able to build some 11, 800 miles of rail by 1910. In the
meantime, the use of trains began to alter economic activities, social relations, and even
governance. In addition to extending the administrative reach of the state, the railways
reshaped the nature of production. As foreign capital flowed into the economy and rail
lines connected them to the outside world, many agricultural and mining operations
became globally competitive. Meanwhile, long-isolated regions were integrated into the
national market (and the global economy) for the first time. The railways were, however,
surprisingly dependent on imports, including construction materials, fuel, and technical
know-how, given that most railway cars, land surveyors, and engineers arrived from
abroad.10

Even as the railroad introduced a radically new and efficient mode of transport, the vast
majority of people, scattered around the country in isolated rural hamlets, had virtually
no direct access to the network. Writing on the eve of the Mexican Revolution, Andrés

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Molina Enríquez concluded that poor transportation options had meant that many rural
people had no other option than to put up with “great hikes on foot” and had
consequently developed “a special muscle” that allowed them to act as “beasts of burden”
during long journeys.11 Even merchants would continue to rely on horses and mules to
gain access to isolated consumers well into the 20th century, while mine operators often
had to move modern machinery upon the backs of working animals.

In those cities and towns touched by the railroad, however, a revolution in mobility took
place. Nowhere was this transformation more profound than in the nation’s capital. The
city’s first railway line, built in 1857, connected Mexico City to Villa de Guadalupe,
bringing with it new sounds, smells, and dangers. With the construction of long-distance
lines, foreign manufactured goods flooded into the city alongside new machines and
production processes. And while the country did not receive a large flow of immigrants
during these years, small but influential foreign colonies quickly settled into the capital,
while tourists and investors began to arrive by rail via the northern border and the
country’s renovated ports.

In the meantime, a network of tramways—initially pulled by working animals—began to

cover the streets of Mexico City and spread outward to nearby towns like Tacuba,
Tacubaya, and Mixcoac. Real-estate investors built the first suburban communities, or
colonias, such as Santa Maria la Ribera (established 1858) and Guerrero (1874). As the
wealthy and emergent middle classes became more spatially mobile, the center of the city
became increasingly segregated by class and function. This process only accelerated with
the electrification of the tramway network in 1900; by 1910, the capital had nearly
quadrupled in geographic size since a century earlier. Author Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera
wrote of this enlarged city, concluding: “Mexico City does not start at the National Palace,
nor does it end at Reforma Avenue. I give you my word that the city is much bigger. It is a
great turtle that extends its dislocated legs toward the four cardinal points.”12

The last two decades of Porfirian rule also witnessed the introduction of a host of other
mobility machines, from hot air balloons and bicycles, to the first automobiles and
airplanes. Importers, mechanics, garages, and clubs popped up in the capital and other
cities. The wealthy, benefiting from the pacification of the countryside, organized rural
excursions and cross-country bicycle and motorcar races. Business interests, engineers,
and reformers promoted the paving of Mexico City’s streets with asphalt, while others
encouraged the reconstruction of the country’s long-ignored colonial-era road network.
Yet in an age so often associated with the ideals of “Order and Progress,” transportation
was never uniformly progressive. Instead, innovations and improvements were added to a
tapestry of practices of mobility. Most residents, for example, continued to walk. Human
porters still hauled cargo around the capital, and the city’s surviving canal system moved
food and other commodities from the outskirts to the central markets. As new and old
ways of moving competed with each other for space, the city became increasingly
complex and often dangerous. Indeed, turn-of-the-century Mexico City witnessed the

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

nation’s first bicycle- and automobile-related deaths, as well as a host of equally deadly
streetcar and train accidents.13

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Revolution to World War II

The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in late 1910 produced a dramatic human
mobilization. Over the next ten years, millions of civilians were displaced from their
homes as they fled to cities, across borders, and into the hills. Others joined an
assortment of revolutionary armies that crisscrossed the country by foot, mule, horse,
and train, often with families in tow. As armed factions vied for control of transport
infrastructure, foreign railway workers fled the country. World War I then cut off access
to imports from Europe, and the railroads fell into further disrepair, even as they
remained economically and militarily indispensable. Meanwhile, many new, sometimes
poorly trained, often militant, employees joined the railway workforce under the
protection of revolutionary leaders.14 Yet as much as railroad- and horseback-riding
revolutionaries would go on to become iconic symbols of insurrection, over the course of
the decade significant technological and commercial changes were already beginning to
remake the nature of mobility.

During the 1910s, the automobile age began to make its presence felt in the country. To
the north, the US automotive industry had begun to achieve impressive gains in
productivity. By 1912, the Ford Motor Company had introduced new production processes
that resulted in a dramatic increase in output and a decline in prices. Three years later,
the company’s quixotic leader suggested he might establish a factory in Mexico and thus
bring an end to the revolution. Before he could do so, US Army General John Pershing
was in Chihuahua pursuing Pancho Villa, aided by hundreds of trucks in what became the
United States’ first experiment with motorized warfare. As automotive industry output
and ownership rates increased in the United States, many new, used, and even stolen
vehicles flowed southward. Revolutionary generals quickly acquired cars and hired
chauffeurs. Pancho Villa got ahold of an Indian motorcycle and an automobile—nicknamed
la Cucaracha—which, lore has it, ran on marijuana. Even a handful of criminals, like the
notorious Gray Automobile Gang, who terrorized residents of Mexico City in a gray car,
began to motorize their operations. Others turned to public transit. In 1916, when
tramway employees brought the city to a standstill during a general strike,
entrepreneurial automobile owners set about rebuilding their cars into makeshift jitneys
and moving people around for a small fee. That same year three brothers—Emilio,
Gastón, and Raúl Azcárraga Vidaurreta—started importing Fords, and by the end of the
decade they had become the company’s biggest dealers in the country.

When revolutionary-era policymakers began to think about postrevolutionary

reconstruction, they did so as cities and industries were being remade through the use of
motorized vehicles. As early as 1917, President Carranza spoke of a motor highway
connecting Mexico City and El Paso. Engineers and policymakers began to study various
approaches to highway construction. They experimented with employing soldiers as
construction workers and issuing concessions to private investors. In 1925, as Ford Motor
Company inaugurated its first Mexican factory, President Plutarco Elías Calles

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

established the National Commission of Roads, financed primarily by a tax on the

consumption of gasoline. The first efforts of the road program centered on rebuilding the
old highways linking the capital to nearby cities of Pachuca, Puebla, Toluca, and
Cuernavaca. Engineers then turned their attention to the coastal cities of Veracruz and
Acapulco, and the northern border town of Nuevo Laredo. This last road—which passed
through Tamazunchale, Ciudad Victoria, and Monterrey—soon became known around the
world as the Pan-American Highway (or Inter-American Highway). Due to the challenging
terrain through which it passed, it was not completed until 1936. Once open, the highway
unleashed a deluge of eager automobile tourists from the United States.

As the postrevolutionary road network expanded, newly formed bus and trucking
companies seized the opportunity to offer cargo and passenger services. Companies like
Autobuses de Oriente (ADO) and Transportes Nacionales del Centro Estrella Blanca
spread out like tentacles, often well beyond the mapped road network. Indeed, as Frank
Tannenbaum remarked in the mid-1920s, “anyone who knows Mexico knows that buses in
Mexico travel almost where no roads exist. No driver from the United States would
venture his bus on roads, at least during the rainy season, that are utilized in Mexico.”15
By the end of the 1920s, bus travel was so ingrained in everyday life that when the song
“Camioncito Flecha Roja” hit the airwaves in 1930, it became an instant hit. Many
Mexicans no doubt identified with the sentiments expressed by the song’s Guerreran
composer Rafúl Krayem Sánchez when they heard radios and musical groups belting out
lines like “Little Flecha Roja bus/ don’t take my darling away” (“Camioncito Flecha Roja/
no te lleves a mi amor”) and “Don’t forget, my dear/ that you’re leaving me in the
station” (“no se te olvide amorcito/ que me dejas en la estación”).

The owner-operators of trucks and buses had already begun to organize in the late 1910s,
and by the end of the 1920s they had become a potent political force. The most influential
of these early organizations was the Alianza de Camioneros (Alliance of Busmen), which,
under the leadership of Antonio Díaz Lombardo, went on to monopolize Mexico City’s bus
system in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1930, transport firms created the multimodal
Confederación Nacional de Transportes de la República Mexicana, followed six years
later by the Cámara Nacional de Transportes y Comunicaciones (CNTC). The CNTC and
others demonstrated their collective political muscle when they opposed federal efforts to
regulate the sector through application of a new Ley de Vías Generales de Comunicación
(Law of General Means of Communications). The CNTC and its members fought the law
by means of “amparos” (writs of protection), until the administration of President Ávila
Camacho repealed the legislation’s provision requiring private firms to organize into
cooperatives.

As privately owned motorized transportation expanded, difficulties on the railways only

grew. The efficiency of the National Railways of Mexico (Ferronales), in particular, had
been declining since the revolution, as political calculation and the demands of labor
tended to supersede economic considerations. These long-standing tensions contributed
to the expropriation of the company in 1937, followed by a tumultuous experiment in
worker control (known as the Administración Obrera) from 1938 to 1940. During these

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

years, cargo transportation collapsed and passenger traffic virtually disappeared. By this
point trucks and buses had captured the vast majority of cargo and passenger traffic over
short distances (up to about 150 miles). Although the impact of World War II channeled
new resources into the railway system, and between 1939 and 1944 cargo transported by
rail expanded at an average annual rate of 2.3 percent per year (measured in net tons-
kilometers of cargo), cargo moved by truck grew at the much faster rate of 12.6 percent.
At the same time, growth in passenger traffic (measured in passenger-kilometers)
revealed similar tendencies, with railway travel growing by 3 percent per year as
compared to 13.7 percent in the bus industry.

To some degree aviation paralleled the expansion in motor vehicles. Early-20th-century

“sportsmen” like Miguel Lebrija and Alberto Braniff had experimented with human flight
at the end of the Porfirian period and early in the revolution the Mexican Army had sent
cousins Alberto Salinas Carranza and Gustavo Salinas Camiña to the Moisant flight
school on Long Island, New York. In 1915, General Venustiano Carranza ordered
establishment of the Department of Aviation as an arm of his Constitutionalist forces and
named Salinas Carranza director.16 As commercial aviation expanded around the world
during the 1920s, the post-revolutionary state experimented with offering concessions to
private firms. On July 12, 1921, Lloyd Winship, Elmer Hammond, and Harry Lawson of
the Compañía Mexicana de Transportación Aérea won the first of these. Financed by US
capital, the service provided passenger, express, and correspondence services between
Mexico City, Veracruz, Tuxpan, Tampico, Saltillo, Monterrey, Matamoros, Laredo, and San
Luis Potosi. In 1924, the company was taken over by the Compañía Mexicana de Aviación,
which based its operations out of Tampico, near the country’s oil fields.

By the end of the 1920s, the Mexican state was actively involved in fostering commercial
aviation. Shortly after a visit by Charles Lindbergh in July of 1928, the federal
government established the Department of Civil Aeronautics (Departamento de
Aeronáutica Civil). A year later it began construction on a million square meter Puerto
Aéreo Central. During 1930 Pan American Airways purchased a majority position in
Mexicana, and by the end of World War II Mexico had developed one of the most
extensive aviation systems in Latin America. In 1944, twenty-six authorized airlines,
covering 33,646 miles, were operating in the country. The largest carriers included the
Compañía Mexicana de Aviación, S.A.; Pan American Airways Inc.; Líneas Aéreas
Mexicanas, S.A.; Braniff Airways; Aerovías Braniff, S.A.; and Aeronáves de México, S.A,
the last of which had been founded by bus industry powerbroker Díaz Lombardo in 1934
to provide service between the capital and the booming resort town of Acapulco.

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Postwar to Privatization
The postwar era produced a host of structural changes in Mexico’s economy as
policymakers looked to achieve modernization through large-scale industrialization. In
1947, as his administration pursued an ambitious inter-urban and rural road building
agenda, President Miguel Alemán imposed new tariffs on imported vehicles, aiming to
encourage greater domestic automobile production. At the same time, the national oil
company, PEMEX, took a more active role in subsidizing the price of gasoline. By mid-
century, Mexico had linked the nation’s capital to all major cities, ports, and border entry
points by highway when it inaugurated the Pan-American Highway from Ciudad Juárez to
the Guatemalan border. With traffic growing, engineers and planners looked for new
ways to increase the capacity of the most heavily traveled routes while pushing new
roads into isolated areas. The development bank, Nacional Financiera, took an early lead
by funding a short-lived public-private partnership in 1949 known as the Compañía
Constructora del Sur. The company—which was eventually replaced by the public agency
Caminos y Puentes Federales de Ingresos y Servicios Conexos (Federal Toll Roads and
Bridges and Related Services, CAPUFE)—specialized in construction and administration
of toll roads along heavily utilized corridors. By 1952 it had inaugurated highways
between Mexico-Cuernavaca and Amacuzac-Iguala.17

During the following decade, the federal government doubled down on the automobile as
a seemingly effective tool to both industrialize and mobilize the nation. By 1960,
seventeen different firms were building forty-one distinct vehicle models.18 In order to
hasten growth in the industry and limit capital outflows, the administration of Adolfo
López Mateos (1958–1964) issued a series of decrees that further limited vehicle and
parts imports. Thereafter the introduction of complete motors from abroad was
prohibited and manufacturers were required to use products of Mexican origin in 60
percent of their vehicles.19 These policies tended to reinforce the capital’s position as the
nation’s principal motor city, even as new manufacturing facilities sprang up beyond the
capital (for example, Volkswagen in Puebla and Nissan in Morelos). By 1970, a year after
inauguration of a state-of-the-art subway system, one half of all cars in the country were
being operated in the capital.20

In order to make way for this multitude of motor vehicles, planners and civil engineers
engaged in a radical reconstruction of the capital. During the 1950s and 1960s they
rebuilt and widened the Tlalpan causeway, carved out new urban highways like the
Miguel Alemán Viaduct, extended the Paseo de la Reforma, constructed a circular
freeway around the city, and paved over some of the last urban waterways like the Piedad
and Churubusco Rivers.21 Finally, in the 1970s, powerful Mexico City regent Carlos Hank
González moved forward with the dramatic construction of a gridded system of axial
thoroughfares (“ejes viales”) bisecting neighborhoods and cutting across the city. Yet
even after all of these interventions, the vast majority of residents continued to use a

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

diversity of public transportation options from taxis, peseros, combis, micros, and electric
trolleys to the newly built Metro.22

As motor vehicles expanded in Mexico City and around the nation, the protracted decline
of the railroad continued. By 1970 lines extended nearly 15,225 miles, divided among
Ferronales (72.3 percent), Ferrocarriles del Pacífico (11.5 percent), Ferrocarriles
Chihuahua al Pacífico (7.2 percent), Ferrocarriles Unidos del Sureste (6.1 percent), and
Ferrocarril Sonora-Baja California (2.9 percent). Yet over the course of the decade, the
sector’s share of federal investment dropped from 5.8 percent to below 3 percent.
Meanwhile, between 1970 and 1985, cargo traffic fell from 23 percent to 18 percent and
passenger traffic fell from 8 percent to 1.4 percent.23

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the country faced a series of dramatic economic
challenges that ultimately produced a radical transformation in the transportation sector.
Five years after the desablizing Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) oil shock of 1973, and two years after a devaluation of the peso, PEMEX had
discovered massive oil reserves. The promise of a resource windfall resulted in increased
public spending and mounting foreign indebtedness. By the summer of 1982, as
international interest rates rose, Mexico found itself unable to meet its debt obligations.
Thereafter, economic conditions rapidly deteriorated. By the late 1980s, a new generation
of technocrats had concluded that in order to unleash economic growth again, entire
areas of the economy would need to be restructured, including transport.24

When President Carlos Salinas (1988–1994) came to power, he turned his attention to the
railway system, which had been almost entirely nationalized by 1987. He enacted a series
of commercial reforms that would facilitate the system’s eventual privatization. Around
the same time, the federal government authorized private capital to participate in the
construction of toll roads through use of bank trusts (fideicomisos) established by the
Banco Nacional de Obras y Servicios Públicos (Banobras). Thousands of miles of privately
financed superhighways were built during these years; they earned the unfortunate
distinction of being some of the most expensive toll roads in the world. For many years,
consumers simply avoided them, opting to use a free, parallel system of old, crater-filled,
and poorly policed roads. In the aeronautical sector, while the state had previously
intervened in a number of instances to save airlines, during the late 1980s both
Aeroméxico (1988) and Mexicana (1989) were privatized.

Further efforts to privatize transportation infrastructure and services moved ahead

swiftly under Salinas’s successor, Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000). Constitutional reforms
enacted under the Zedillo presidency allowed the federal government to divide the
railroad into regional systems and offer them as concessions by public tender. In 1997,
the holding company Grupo Ferroviario Mexicano, which included Union Pacific Railroad,
Grupo México, and Ingenieros Civiles Asociados, won fifty-year concessions for the
Ojinaga-Topolobampo and Pacífico-Norte lines.25 Two years later the concessions were
merged, creating the Ferrocarril Mexicano (Ferromex), which by 2007 had become the
largest operator in the country. As the railways were being sold off, the government

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

began to relinquish its control of the ports as well. Under Zedillo, twenty-six seaports and
ten petroleum and minerals terminals were privatized. Meanwhile, in 1998, the
Secretariat of Communications and Transport privatized the nation’s airports, which had
been operated by the centralized public agency Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares
(Airports and Auxiliary Services, ASA) since 1965. The government did, however,
maintain control of airspace, radio navigation, telecommunications, and aeronautical
information.26 During the early 2000s, new low-cost airlines such as Volaris and Interjet
appeared in the country.

Privatization had a wide-ranging impact on travel and transport in Mexico. On the one
hand, it marked the end of railway passenger transport, although interest in commuter
rail lines has witnessed a resurgence in recent years. On the other, privatization
encouraged reinvestment in old and dilapidated infrastructure. At the turn of the 21st
century, railway cargo transport experienced a significant recovery, while a dramatic
transformation took place in the shipping industry. By 2000, more than 80 percent of
Mexican exports were being moved by ship through 107 ports and maritime terminals,
marking a radical shift in international commerce since the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Meanwhile, as aviation services expanded and as prices declined, air travel became more
accessible to Mexican consumers; in 2016 flights were being operated out of 1,424
aerodromes and 76 public service airports.27 As access to credit has expanded, middle-
class Mexicans have begun to acquire passenger automobiles in large numbers. Yet as the
country achieves mass automobile ownership, it is being forced to confront nagging
problems of traffic congestion, contamination, and, most recently, climate change.

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Discussion of the Literature

While professional historians, social scientists, chroniclers, and collectors have long
participated in the documentation of the ever-changing ways that people and things move
through space, the first scholarly studies to do so appeared in the early 1970s. Social and
economic historians began to examine the development and impact of the railroads
during the modernizing regime of Porfirio Díaz. The most influential of these studies was
John Coatsworth’s Growth against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in
Porfirian Mexico, which showed that although railroads had generated a dramatic decline
in the cost of transportation, they did not foster economic “development” as such. Others
historians, such as Sergio Ortiz Hernán, Arthur Schmidt, and Arturo Grunstein, examined
the internal administration of the railroads, public policy around them, and their overall
social and political impact.28 More recently, Sandra Kuntz Ficker, Guillermo Guajardo,
Paolo Riguzzi, Arturo Valencia, and Robert F. Alegre have examined the railroads from
business, technology, and labor history perspectives.29

In recent years, historians have begun to move beyond the railroad and examine other
forms of mobility. Scholars have long recognized the importance of road building and
motorization during the 20th century, but until the last few years, few studies were
extensively researched. During the last few years, new work by Michael K. Bess on road
building and Héctor Mendoza Vargas on automobiles and national integration has begun
to incorporate the global automobile age into the story of 20th-century Mexico.30 What is
lacking still, however, is a deeper examination of how private-sector actors “drove”
motorization, although important work has been done recently by Michael Lettieri in his
examination of the politically powerful bus industry.31

After many years of overlooking maritime travel, historians have finally begun to revisit
its role. While Mexico has nearly 7,000 miles of coastline, this “other” borderlands, which
straddles the land and the sea, has received scant attention. On some level, this is a
reflection of the limited significance of the sector following the colonial period.32 As late
as the 1930s, for example, the country had no merchant marine at all. And while the state
did acquire tankers after the expropriation of the oil companies in 1938, it took until the
1950s for private operators of any significance to emerge. Enrique Cárdenas de la Peña’s
Historia marítima de México provided an early examination of maritime transport, and
historiographical interest has only increased in recent years. Promising works include the
Catálogo de fuentes históricas para el estudio de los puertos en el Golfo de México, siglo
XIX, edited by Mario Trujillo, Clara Rivera, and Carlos Ruiz,33 and Johanna Von
Grafenstein’s two-volume study of ports in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean from the
17th century to the 1930s.34 The Mexican Pacific remains under-examined, however,
Karina Busto’s recent doctoral dissertation on Pacific coast ports and commercial
networks between 1848 and 1927, has shed new light on the issue.35

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Since it emerged as an experimental technology in the early 20th century, aviation has
enjoyed considerable attention by both the Mexican government and the private sector.
While a few studies have explored the history of human flight in the country, including
Dan Hagedorn’s Conquistadors of the Sky: A History of Aviation in Latin America, much
work remains to be done.36 This is partly due to a lack of sources, although a few
historians, like Peter Soland have ventured further into the field.36 Much as is the case
with the study of the automobile, little work has been done on the role of private-sector
actors. While business historians have been making important contributions to the
historiography of Mexico, they have largely overlooked this industry.

The history of urban mobility deserves special treatment, particularly in Mexico City. As
Bernardo Navarro observes, the capital’s history has largely been the history of transport
and services.37 The city has long functioned as a hybrid space where old and new coexist;
fluvial transport routes, for example, persisted until the 20th century, with paddleboats,
canoes, and other vessels sharing space with mules, railways, bicycles, and motorized
vehicles.38 At the same time, major social and political battles in the city have often
revolved around questions of transport and mobility.

Primary Sources
Many, if not all, historical archives in Mexico have something to contribute to the history
of travel and transport, whether it is the massive Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) or
one of the small municipal archives scattered around the country. Because travel,
transport, and mobility more generally are such everyday activities, they are captured by
many documents held in these repositories. At the AGN, for example, one can find
everything from elaborate infrastructural studies commissioned by the federal
government to letters sent to presidents from isolated communities requesting, for
example, that the state send them an engineer to help build a rural road. One archive that
has been under-utilized, but provides extensive information on the role of the state as a
regulator of mobility is the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y
Transportes. For the history of urban transport, the Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de
México is a rich source that includes, among other things, a catalogue of the first driver’s
licenses issued in the city at the turn of the 20th century. For the history of tourist travel,
especially in Cancun, the Archivo Histórico de la Universidad del Caribe, in Cancún,
Quintana Roo, is indispensable. An interesting source of information on 20th-century
infrastructural projects is Acervo Histórico de la Fundación ICA. The archive holds,
among other things, around one million aerial photographs taken by Compañía Mexicana
Aerofoto between 1930 and 1994.

The railways preserve the most extensive documentation of any mode of transportation.
The many companies and agencies of the 19th and 20th centuries left behind enormous
amounts of material that historians are still trying to parse through. In addition to the
AGN, one of the key repositories of railway documentation is the Archivo Histórico del

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Centro de Documentación e Investigación Ferroviarias (AHCEDIF), held in the Museo

Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Mexicanos in the City of Puebla.

As much as traditional archives offer important insight into the history of travel and
transport, some of the best primary source materials are available elsewhere. Daily
newspapers, for example, provide seemingly mundane but important information on
practices of mobility, including how much one paid to travel and how quickly one could do
so. Industry journals and magazines, meanwhile, provide a view of the unique concerns of
various sectors and private actors. Examples include the busing magazines produced by
Alianza de Camioneros and the official publications of automotive manufacturers, like
Ford News, among countless others.

Further Reading
Álvarez Palma, Ilse Angélica, ed. Automotores y transporte público: Un acercamiento
desde los estudios históricos. Zinacantepec: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2017.

Beatty, Edward. Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico. Oakland:
University of California Press, 2015.

Bess, Michael K. Routes of Compromise: Building Roads and Shaping the Nation in
Mexico, 1917–1952. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Coatsworth, John H. Growth against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in

Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981.

Freeman, J. Brian. “Mexico City and the Conquest of the Car.” In Mexibility: We Are in the
City, We Cannot Leave. Edited by Friedrich von Borries and Moritz Ahlert, 100–107.
Mexico: RM Editorial, 2017.

Guajardo Soto, Guillermo A. “Mobility History in Modern Mexico: An Uneven Landscape.”

In Mobility in History: Themes in Transport: T2M Yearbook 2011. Edited by Gijs Mom,
Peter Norton, Georgine Clarsen, and Gordon Pirie, 183–190. Neuchâtel, Switzerland:
Éditions Alphil, 2010.

Guajardo Soto, Guillermo A. Trabajo y tecnología en los ferrocarriles de México: Una

visión histórica, 1850–1950. México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2010.

Hassig, Ross. Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political

Economy of the Valley of Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

Islas Rivera, Victor. Estructura y desarrollo del sector transporte en México. Mexico City:
El Colegio de Mexico, 1990.

Jáuregui, Luis. Los transportes, siglos XVI al XX. Mexico: UNAM, Editorial Océano, 2004.

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Kuntz Ficker, Sandra, and Paolo Riguzzi, eds. Ferrocarriles y vida económica en México
1850–1950: Del surgimiento tardío al decaimiento precoz. Zinacantepec: El Colegio
Mexiquense: UAM Xochimilco: Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, 1996.

Leidenberger, Georg. La historia viaja en tranvía: El transporte público y la cultura

política de la Ciudad de México. Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2011.

Lettieri, Michael. “Los tentáculos del pulpo: La Alianza de Camioneros y la cultura

política del sistema priísta en la formación de la política de transporte, 1934–1958.” In
México a la luz de sus revoluciones, vol. 2. Edited by Susan Deeds and Laura Rojas, 605–
642. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2014.

Matthews, Michael. The Civilizing Machine: A Cultural History of Mexican Railroads,

1876–1910. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Suarez Argüello, Clara Elena. Camino real y carrera larga: La arriería en la Nueva
España durante el siglo XVIII. Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios
Superiores en Antropología Social, 1997.

Van Hoy, Teresa. A Social History of Mexico’s Railroads: Peons, Prisoners, and Priests.
New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Notes:

(1.) The research and writing of this article was supported by UNAM-DGAPA-PAPIIT grant
IN400116, “Las infraestructuras públicas de México desde la expansión económica a la
reforma estructural, 1940–1990. Un enfoque histórico interdisciplinario.”

(2.) Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York:
Norton, 1997), 248; and Richard W. Bulliet, The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 39, 42, 109.

(3.) Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political
Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 61.

(4.) Bernardo García Martínez, “Los primeros pasos del ganado en México,” Relaciones:
Estudios de Historia y Sociedad 15, no. 59 (Verano 1994): 16.

(5.) Sergio Ortiz Hernán, Los ferrocarriles de México: Una visión social y económica
(Mexico City: Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, 1987), 48.

(6.) Edward Beatty, Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico (Oakland:
University of California Press, 2015), 40.

(7.) “Mexico,” in Streets and Highways in Foreign Countries (Washington, DC:

Government Printing Office, 1891), 462–467; and John H. Coatsworth, “Indispensable

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

Railroads in a Backward Economy: The Case of Mexico,” Journal of Economic History 39,
no. 4 (December 1979): 943–944. See also, Fred Wilbur Powell, The Railroads of Mexico
(Boston: Stratford, 1921), 91–98.

(8.) Juan Félipe Leal and José Woldenberg, Del estado liberal a los inicios de la dictadura
porfirista (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, 1983), 59.

(9.) Frederick A. Ober, Travels in Mexico and Life among the Mexicans (Boston: Estes and
Lauriat, 1884), 205.

(10.) The scholarship on Mexican railways is vast. See for example, John H. Coatsworth,
Growth against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in Porfirian Mexico
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981); Daniel Lewis, Iron Horse Imperialism:
The Southern Pacific of Mexico, 1880–1951 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008);
and Teresa Miriam Van, A Social History of Mexico’s Railroads: Peons, Prisoners, and
Priests (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

(11.) Andrés Molina Enríquez, Los grandes problemas nacionales (Mexico: Imprenta de A.
Carranza e Hijos, 1909), 257.

(12.) Quoted in Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 25

(13.) Michael Matthews, The Civilizing Machine: A Cultural History of Mexican Railroads,
1876–1910 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014); and William H. Beezley, Judas at
the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1987).

(14.) Sandra Kuntz Ficker and Paolo Riguzzi, eds., Ferrocarriles y vida económica en
México (1850–1950) (Zinacantepec, México: El Colegio Mexiquense: Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco and Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, 1996).

(15.) Frank Tannenbaum, “Technology and Race in Mexico,” Political Science Quarterly
61, no. 3 (September 1946): 376.

(16.) Elsbeth E. Freudenthal, “How Aviation ‘Firsts’ Took Place in Mexico,” Americas 4,
no. 1 (July 1947): 100–107. Lawrence Douglas Taylor Hansen, “Los orígenes de la Fuerza
Aérea Mexicana, 1913–1915,” Historia Mexicana 56, no. 1 (July–September 2006): 213–
214.

(17.) Guillermo Guajardo, “Mobility History in Modern Mexico: An Uneven Landscape,” in

Mobility in History: Themes in Transport: T2M Yearbook 2011, eds. Gijs Mom, Peter
Norton, Georgine Clarsen, and Gordon Pirie (Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Éditions Alphil,
2010); and Carlos Bravo, Apuntes para la historia del autotransporte (Mexico City:
Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, 1982).

(18.) Bravo, Apuntes, 180.

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

(19.) Yolanda Montiel H., Industria automotriz y automatización: El caso de VW de México

(Mexico City: CIESAS, 1987).

(20.) Bravo, Apuntes, 180; see also Gustavo Garza and Fernando Aragón, “La
contaminación atmosférica de la ciudad de México en escala megalopolitana,” Estudios
Demográficos y Urbanos 10, no. 1 (January–April 1995): 50; Gustavo Garza, “Evolución de
las ciudades mexicanas en el siglo XX,” Notas. Revista de información y análisis 19
(2002): 11; and Tokue Shibata, “Los problemas de la contaminación ambiental en la
ciudad de México,” Estudios de Asia y África 19, no. 4 (October–December 1984): 567.

(21.) Salvador Novo, New Mexican Grandeur, trans. Noel Lindsay (Mexico City:
PetróleosMexicanos, 1967); Javier Delgado, “De los anillos a la segregación: La ciudad de
México, 1950–1987,” Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos 5, no. 2 (May–August 1990): 242;
and Gustavo Garza, Una década de planeación urbano–regional en México, 1978–1988
(México: El Colegio de México, 1989).

(22.) J. Brian Freeman, “Mexico City and the Conquest of the Car,” in Mexibility: We Are
in the City, We Cannot Leave, ed. Friedrich von Borries and Moritz Ahlert (Mexico City:
RM Editorial, 2017).

(23.) Guillermo Guajardo, Fernando Salas, and Daniel Velázquez, “Energía,

infraestructura y crecimiento, 1930–2008,” in Historia económica general de México: De
la colonia a nuestros días, ed. Sandra Kuntz Ficker (México: El Colegio de México—
Secretaría de Economía, 2010), 681.

(24.) See Enrique Cárdenas Sánchez, El largo curso de la economía Mexicana: De 1780 a
nuestros días (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2015).

(25.) Eric Moreno Quintero, “Privatización ferroviaria mexicana: Fechas, hechos y cifras
95–98,” Boletín NOTAS del Instituto Mexicano del Transporte, no. 45 (March–April 1999).

(26.) “Historia,” Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares.

(27.) Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, Aviación mexicana en cifras, 1991–

2016 (México: Subsecretaría de Transporte-Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil, n.d.);
and Guajardo, Salas, and Velázquez, “Energía, infraestructura y crecimiento,” 687.

(28.) John H. Coatsworth, Growth against Development: The Economic Impact of

Railroads in Porfirian Mexico (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981); Sergio
Ortiz Hernán, Los ferrocarriles de México: Una visión social y económica, 2 vols. (Mexico:
Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico, 1987–1988); Arthur Schmidt, The Social and
Economic Effect of the Railroad in Puebla and Veracruz, Mexico, 1867–1911 (New York:
Garland, 1987); and Arturo Grunstein, “Railroads and Sovereignty: Policymaking in
Porfirian Mexico” (doctoral dissertation, UCLA, 1994).

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

(29.) Sandra Kuntz, Empresa extranjera y mercado interno: El Ferrocarril Central

Mexicano, 1880–1907 (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1995); Guillermo Guajardo and
Paolo Riguzzi, “Railroad Culture and Mobility in Twentieth Century Mexico,” in
Technology and Culture in Twentieth Century Mexico, ed. Araceli Tinajero and J. Brian
Freeman (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013); Arturo Valencia Islas, El
descarrilamiemto de un sueño: Historia de Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, 1919–
1949 (México: Secretaría de Cultura, El Colegio de México, 2017); and Robert F. Alegre,
Railroad Radicalism in Cold War Mexico: Gender, Class, and Memory (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2013).

(30.) Héctor Mendoza Vargas, “El automóvil y los mapas en la integración del territorio
mexicano, 1929–1962,” Investigaciones Geográficas 88 (December 2015): 91–108.

(31.) Michael Lettieri, “Los tentáculos del pulpo: La Alianza de Camioneros y la cultura
política del sistema priísta en la formación de la política de transporte, 1934–1958,” in
México a la luz de sus revoluciones, vol. 2, eds. Susan Deeds and Laura Rojas (Mexico: El
Colegio de México, 2014).

(32.) Enrique Cárdenas de la Peña, Historia marítima de México (Mexico: Olimpia, 1973).

(33.) Mario Trujillo, Clara Rivera, and Carlos Ruiz, eds., Catálogo de fuentes históricas
para el estudio de los puertos en el Golfo de México, siglo XIX [compact disc] (Mexico
City: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, CONACYT,
2003); Mario Trujillo, El Golfo de México en la centuria decimonónica: Entornos
geográficos, formación portuaria y configuración marítima (Mexico City: Cámara de
Diputados LIX Legislatura, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en
Antropología Social, M.A. Porrúa, 2005); and Johanna Von Grafenstein, ed., El Golfo-
Caribe y sus puertos (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2006).

(34.) Karina Busto, “El espacio del Pacífico Mexicano: Puertos, rutas, navegación y redes
comerciales, 1848–1927” (doctoral thesis, El Colegio de México, 2008); and Jaime Olveda
and Juan Reyes, eds., Los puertos noroccidentales de México (Zapopan, Jalisco: Colegio
de Jalisco, Universidad de Colima, 1994).

(35.) Dan Hagedorn, Conquistadors of the Sky: A History of Aviation in Latin America
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008).

(36.) Peter Soland, “Civilian Aviation in Mexico,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of

Latin American History.

(37.) Bernardo Navarro, “El metro de la ciudad de México,” Revista Mexicana de

Sociología 46 (1984): 85–102.

(38.) Héctor Romero, Historia del transporte en la Ciudad de México: De la trajinera al

Metro (Mexico City: Secretaría General de Desarrollo Social, 1987); Carlos González, ed.,
Treinta años de hacer el metro: Ciudad de México (Mexico City: Espejo de Obsidiana,

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Travel and Transport in Mexico

1997); and Armando Palerm et al., Los hombres del metro (Mexico: Sistema de Transporte
Colectivo-Metro, 1997).

J. Brian Freeman

Department of Humanities, Indian River State College

Guillermo Guajardo Soto

Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities, National

Autonomous University of Mexico

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