Mexico's golden age, el porfiriato

Southern Cone Economies
Mexico’s Golden era, The Porfiriato

Prof. Masimo Justina
11/25/11

Roberto Aguayo Diaz

México’s Golden era, The Porfiriato
The dictatorship in Mexico that lasted more than 30 years, is known as “El Porfiriato” Porfirio Diaz was the ruler of Mexico from 1876-1911, Mexico was really urged to find a real national identity, since it had only been independent forabout 60 years, Those 60 years were filled with foreign invasions, internal wars, and military revelations. But all this changed after Porfirio Diaz rose to power.
Porfirio Diaz was obsessed with modernism and really wanted to make out of Mexico something like Japan or Germany in present times. Foreign investments represented entire branches of the Mexico’s economy. They were the dominant factorin miner, oil, railroads, electricity, banks, industry and great commerce. With the participation of foreign investments the presence of extremely powerful corporations finally became an issue in Mexico, most of the times this is bad news but it is better to have giants than to not have any industry at all. Capitalism was introduced.
The development model or better said accumulation of capitalfollowed during the Porfirismo was the exportation, mainly primary goods. Especially because of the huge amounts of agriculture and mining resources that Mexico was being able to produce.
Limiting the possibilities of new insurrections, the general Diaz was able to start focusing in other aspects of the country, He had a really strong hand and no regard for road robbers, and outlaws, so peoplethought twice before doing illegal activities. When another political player Lerdo de Tejada stated to move military forces to rebel, Porfirio Diaz didn’t think twice to persecute, defeat and merely exterminate Lerdos people.
Since Porfirio got to power he tried to control the legislative power bribing merely the entire congress, with the purpose of having his own people in key positions, thefederalist republic was merely a name, after his second reelection he was the leader of an extremely influential bloque of people, that was made up by landowners, bankers, industrial players, clergy members, military, foreign capitalists.

A chamber of diputados and senators that from 1886 had quitted every will to fight for democracy modified the law to one that officially allows the indefinitereelection. This was the main cause of Porfirio Diaz staying more than 30 years in the presidential chair that actually became more a royal throne than a presidential chair.
As the economy grew and grew, population also grew, the government worked really hard on improving the communication within the country, the railroad was one of the most prideful advancements in the Porfiriato, since it wascontrolled by foreign countries and the government decided to buy them and improve them, railroads played a key role in this time since before it there existed the country was extremely miscommunicated, since no one ever had the intention of building a team between cities for them to work together to develop.
Mexico was for the first time becoming an integrated country. During the 31 years ofdictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, he ordered the creation of 19000 kilometers of new railroad lines. Also troops were more easily transported from a place to another and peace was easier to keep. Something similar happened with the telegraph which was bought from a foreign company by the government.
The main destiny of all the foreign investments was minery, which represented almost ¼ of the entireforeign investment, Until 1892-92 the main metals were precious metals, gold and silver, but from 1892 the extraction of industrial minerals like copper, plum, antimonium, zinc and mercury. During the Porfiriato the production of precious metals (gold silver) was multiplied times 4, but that was nothing compare to the incalculable amount of growth of copper, plum and zinc. The Mexican peso...