ABSTRACT
This chapter covers four critical moments in Mexico’s relationship with the United States: the Bucareli agreements in 1923, the expropriation of the oil industry in 1938, the 1982 debt crisis, and the 1995 economic bailout. In each, the traditional understanding of Mexican sovereignty stood in the balance. Of course these were not the only critical episodes for Mexico’s relationship with its northern neighbor. Rather, as I noted in the introduction, the aim of this work is not to give an exhaustive account of the bilateral relationship, but to provide an illustration, built upon a representative sample of the di erent ways in which the central theme of the relationship between Mexico and the United States has been approached. The four cases presented here su ce to substantiate the claim made in the introductory chapter. The resolution of each case was not only crucial for Mexico in the four historical moments analyzed: each represented a turning point in Mexico’s political economy, and therefore o ers a key moment in the construction of its sovereignty.
