ABSTRACT
Criticisms were first raised in 1974; even sharper criticism followed in 1976 and 1977, when the Mexican economy suffered its first really significant recession since the beginning of the industrialization process. The agricultural sector in Mexico was strong until the 1960s, when the migration of labor from rural to urban areas served to stimulate the industrialization process. By 1980, the Mexican administration assumed that the international oil boom would last forever and that proceeds from growing oil exports would assure the country continuous and self-sustained economic growth. Inflation, with its magnitude and characteristics, is a relatively new experience for postwar Mexico, just as was the "stagflation" of the mid-1970s. The reduction of the large proportion of primary hydrocarbons in total exports and their gradual substitution by oil-based products should be considered a basic requirement of oil policy in the years to come.
