The second world war was favourable to Mexico in many ways, mainly because it brought a great and lasting improvement in relations with the United States.
Angus Maddison, 19851
A rapprochement with the United States accompanied Mexico’s early 1940s shift to the political right. The Second World War gave Mexico a certain leverage in dealings with its northern neighbor. Mexico’s leaders took advantage of this leverage to modernize the Mexican army at U. S. expense, to settle on-going bi-national disputes, and to reap economic benefits from wartime trade with the United States.2
In response to Pearl Harbor, the Mexican government broke relations with Axis powers. Soon thereafter, the government seized assets of Axis nationals as well as those of Mexicans who still traded with the Axis powers. In the words of the British minister, this created an “unlimited opportunity for graft.”3
The Mexican government granted U. S. military aircraft the right to fly through Mexican airspace and land at Mexican airports en route to the Panama Canal. Cozumel became a base for U. S. anti-submarine warfare after it became apparent that German submarines operating in the Gulf of Mexico posed a greater threat than did Japanese invasion. While Squadron 201 was the only military unit that went into combat, 15,530 Mexicans joined the U. S. army and suffered 1,492
Casualties.4
In July 1941, the U. S. government agreed to buy the entire surplus of eleven Mexican strategic minerals. The next year, it provided a $40 million Export-Import Bank Loan for road construction, made available $40 million to stabilize the peso, and pledged to purchase up to $25 million of Mexican silver annually. A $6-million loan financed the construction of a rayon plant built in cooperation with the Celanese Corporation of America. Animosity resulting from the 1938 oil nationalization was set aside as the U. S. government paid Bechtel Corporation $20.8 million to build a refinery and pipeline in Mexico. The Mexican government used U. S. funds to upgrade highways and rebuild the Mexican rail system, thus expediting shipments north. U. S. war planners diverted scarce parts, rolling stock, and repair machinery to sustain Mexican railroads.5
Conciliatory discourse replaced the strident diplomatic language of the late 1930s. In 1942, U. S. Ambassador George Messersmith, who had replaced the aging Josephus Daniels, declared, “President Avila Camacho believes that we must live in the present and look forward into the future and forget, so far as is possible, the past.” That same year, Mexican Foreign Secretary Ezequiel Padilla declared that the border was “a line that unites us rather than divides us.” In 1943, to emphasize the cordiality and importance of U. S.—Mexican relations, President Roosevelt visited Monterrey, Nuevo Leon—the first time a U. S. president had ventured beyond the border. Avila Camacho responded with a visit to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in Corpus Christi, Texas.6
Mexico’s Second World War experience shaped the nation for decades to come. In 1937—1938, only 56 percent of Mexico’s trade was with the United States. By 1940, as the Second World War closed European markets, the United States accounted for 90 percent of Mexico’s foreign trade. This overwhelming U. S. dominance of Mexican foreign trade continued after the war. By 1946, some 350 new foreign companies, mostly American, had begun operations in Mexico. This was only the beginning of a decades-long increase in U. S. investment. Mexico’s wartime ability to settle debt disputes opened the way for Mexico’s postwar reintegration into international capital markets. The U. S. embassy, whose staff increased from 400 to a wartime peak of 800, remained as a major presence after the war.7
World History
