ABSTRACT
The test of a successful self-reliant strategy of industrialization is the extent to which it reduces the gap between the high income in the high-productivity, high-technology sector and low incomes in the low-productivity, low-technology sector, by raising the performance of the latter, without impeding progress in the former. As the highly skewed income distribution and patterns of consumption, affected by the vicinity of the United States, shaped the technological profile of Mexican industry and the agricultural commercial sector, technological dependence on the outside world went on increasing progressively. The result was that as late as in the early 1970s no Mexican technological policies existed, little if any technology was created at home, the meaningful absorption of imported technology including management capacity into the economy, the society was hampered by absence of local technological capability. From the viewpoint of domestic buyers of technology it was risk-averting operation; from that of foreign investors, particularly transnationals, it was just an excellent business proposition.
