A Comment on La Zona Libre

A Comment on La Zona Libre

Markets, Trade & Neighbors—The Making of México’s Northern Border with the United States

Roberto R. Calderón, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of History

University of North Texas

~~~~

Octavio Herrera Pérez, La Zona Libre: Excepción Fiscal y Conformación Histórica de la Frontera Norte de México (México, D.F.: Dirección General del Acervo Histórico Diplomático de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2004), pp. 545.

I. El Libro en General

Octavio Herrera Pérez’s La Zona Libre: Excepción Fiscal y Conformación Histórica de la Frontera Norte de México (La Zona Libre: Fiscal Exceptionalism & the Historical Formation of Mexico’s Northern Border) is history written on a grand scale. Zona Libre is an ambitious project that seeks to establish itself as the definitive text in the field on the particular subject, which is the development of trade and tariff policymaking along the length of Mexico’s border with the United States. There can be no question that Octavio Herrera in pursuing this objective achieves his purpose in this important and lengthy study.

Zona Libre is a history that stretches over a long period of time beginning in the late colonial period and ending with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, in 1994. It is a history that has been widely recognized and awarded several prizes within México’s historical profession, both at the stage of its being a doctoral thesis and after. It is a history researched and written by a relatively young historian representative of that generation of Mexican historians that is in the process of assuming the mantle of leadership in many of their nation’s existing and emerging academic and cultural institutions. It is the kind of history that engages the rather serious subject from the standpoint of several lines of inquiry, and makes what might otherwise be perceived as a dense and difficult subject highly relevant and comprehensible to contemporary readers. Thus diplomatic, political, economic, social and regional history, for example, all contribute and are expertly woven into the book’s discussion.

In reading La Zona Libre we come to realize that the making of México’s northern border with the U.S. is a highly complicated story. Octavio aptly notes with a combined sense of wonder and determination that while the zona libre existed for a lengthy period of time, it is a subject that nonetheless failed to attract the historian who attempted to offer us the entirety of its history. Undaunted and committed to address this important missing link in the historiography, Octavio Herrera’s search to establish the ‘go-to’ synthesis and interpretation of the zona libre per the existing historiography succeeds and does so with compelling style. And with Matamoros, Tamaulipas being a pivotal site on the border leading to the making of this trade and tariff policy, it is appropriately a native son who undertakes fixing the significance of this historical relationship once and for all. Moreover, his documentation is generously abundant and the text benefits from a plethora of accompanying tables, graphs, maps, and related illustrations. In La Zona Libre one can read the history of this extended experience of economic policymaking on Mexico’s northern frontera from its origins to its current state of affairs.

II. El Objetivo Esencial del Libro

The book’s essential objective according to Octavio Herrera is “to demonstrate the existence of a recurring necessity, on México’s northern border, of a permissive customs mechanism that would compensate for the vicinity’s implied asymmetry with an economically stronger country, such as was the case since its [zona libre’s] origins and extending up until the present day. The foregoing has been complemented by the fact that, for more than a century-and-a-half, this region maintained insufficient ties that would link it effectively and make it a participant in the formative and later development of the internal national market, due to its being on the contrary, intimately tied to the U.S. economy by virtue of its proximity” (pp. 23-24).

III. Estructura del Libro

La Zona Libre is presented in three parts, each related to critical events occurring in the history of the particular trade and tariff exempting policy. This policy was expressed differently in the “three geographic segments” that the northern border may be divided into. Part one examines the genesis of the zona libre, and focuses on how it was a marginalized policy during the colonial era. After México’s national independence, the lower Río Bravo’s emerging and growing insertion in international trade is highlighted. Herein the rise of the city of Matamoros is notable in terms of how it will be tied to events leading to the making of México’s northern border with the U.S. After 1848, the economic asymmetry of the newly established border became fully evident, and the negative results for the northern inhabitants of México were particularly acute leading to economic crisis, loss of population, smuggling and political instability. Part one closes with a discussion of the circumstances that led to the actual establishment of the zona libre at the point on the lower Río Bravo where Tamaulipas and Texas shared a common border. By comparison, the history of the policy’s establishment in Chihuahua, however brief, is noted, the better to make known the “similarity in problems that faced the entire northern border in the decade following its establishment,” that is, 1848-1858.

Part two of La Zona Libre covers the period and events stretching from 1860 to the 1920s. During this period one observes the peculiarities of the policy’s “second significant manifestation” as it’s called here, and the expansion of the zona libre throughout the entire length of the Mexican northern border. In this period the various political forces opposed to the policy’s implementation gain strength and the policy is diminished, though by the same token renewed demands for its reimplementation surface. It is during this period too that the most extreme diplomatic tensions in México-U.S. relations occur prompted in part by the continued viability of the zona libre’s existence. The effect of the coming of the railroads to the border in the 1880s and later on the workings of the zona libre are also discussed. Noted is the case of the lower Río Bravo, in Tamaulipas, which gets bypassed originally the coming of the railroads resulting in the immediate area’s loss of international trade, depopulation, and etc. It isn’t until later after the turn of the 20^th century, that the railroads find their way into this section of the border’s economy and society.

The third and final part of the book examines the contemporary history of the zona libre, or at least its reestablishment in the mid and later parts of the 20^th century. The policy’s effects on that region of the border pertaining to Baja California are noted in particular. The effects of the prohibition of alcohol consumption and sales in the U.S. on the economic and social development of Baja California comprise an important segment of this discussion, as does that of World War II. Effects are produced that propel Baja California’s economy and population to flourish. All the various social, cultural, military, and political sources of change affecting the implementation of the policy in this period are included. The policy’s analysis is pursued right up through the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, signaling the joining of the border’s economic policies with those of the rest of the nation. This is a process in which tariff and trade exemptions peculiar to the border have subsided, but the process, as Herrera notes, is as yet unfolding.

~~~