Mexicanization, privatization, and large mining capital in Mexico

Abstract

Until 1961, the year in which the government passed the so-called Mexicanization of Mining Law, the industry’s fate was marked by foreign capital’s iron grip on the nation’s largest and richest mineral deposits. Since then, mining has experienced an abrupt shift in direction as control over the industry has been transferred to the state and Mexican capital. In spite of the nationalist spirit that motivated this measure, it became evident very early that the real reason for the change was to develop a sector of Mexicanized mining capital that would become one of the most dynamic and internationally influential branches of the nation’s monopoly capital.1 The Mexican Mining Group is the second-most-important mining corporation in Latin America, with sales of US$1,823 million in 1999, and the third-largest copper producer in the world. When it acquired the U.S. company ASARCO on November 17, 1999, it doubled its sales capacity, making it the leading mining-metallurgical company in the region (Zellner, 2000: 54–55). In 1999, Peñoles Industries occupied third place in Latin America, with sales of close to US$1,000 million. Besides being the world’s primary producer of refined silver, metallic bismuth, and sodium sulfate, it also operates Latin America’s most important non-iron metallurgical complex. FRISCO, part of the Carso Group, registering sales of US$205 million.