ditorialists proclaimed, was for the first time in over four centuries again in the hands of Mexicans.
And, indeed, in many respects the nationalized Mexican industry proved to be a success. Contrary to the expectations of Anglo oilmen, who clearly anticipated with relish the collapse of the industry in Mexican hands, the new management overcame great difficulties to restore the oil facilities to at least a moderately high degree of operational efficiency. They did so in spite of attempts at boycott, and in spite of the poor condition in which the previous foreign owners who had long failed to invest in development and modernization had left the properties.
In the process, the Mexican oil industry managers developed a degree of morale and esprit de corps which was the exception rather than the rule among Mexican public sector enterprises. The national oil company, PEMEX, was run by the "generation of 1938," and run well enough and honestly enough that PEMEX became one of the most respected of all Mexican institutions in the eyes of the Mexican people.
For two decades after nationalization and reorganization, the oil fields were treated by Mexico's economic planners and managers as a sort of cash cow. Improvements in the oil fields lagged, but the policy was successful to the extent that it fueled the rapid overall expansion of the Mexican economy. From the late 1950s on, greater attention was paid to the modernization and expansion of the oil industry itself, with the result that oil production was able to more than keep pace with rapidly rising demand for oil. After a period of dependency upon oil imports in the first few years of the 1970s, oil self sufficiency was again restored in 1974.
The regaining of self sufficiency, and achievement of exporter status, coincided almost exactly with the fourfold rise in world oil prices and the global oil boom of the middle and late 1970s. In this ...