Why Economic Development Works ― Culture, Education and Economics Do Matter: A Case Study of Monterrey, Mexico

 

By

 

M. Gene Aldridge and Susan C. Aldridge

 

New Mexico Independence Research Institute, Inc.

Troy State University

 

 

 

 

Presented at the 15th Annual Conference

of the

International Academy of Business Disciplines (IABD)

April 3-6, 2003

Orlando, Florida

Why Economic Development Works – Culture, Education and Economics Do Matter: A Case Study of Monterrey, Mexico

 

By

M. Gene Aldridge and Susan C. Aldridge

 

New Mexico Independence Research Institute, Inc.

Troy State University

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

Culture is about survival.  Culture creates the values by which we live.  Culture offers insight into the values that drive economic development within societies.  The cultural relativists have stymied understanding of culture by asserting that cultures are to be assessed as equally good regardless of the outcomes they produce.  Relativism is dismissed in this paper as academic hardening of the categories. Using the economic development criteria asserted by Harrison (1985), Aldridge and Aldridge (2003) have created new insights into the economic development process by offering Monterrey, Mexico, as a value-historical case study for creating economic growth and development in a city and state that resides within an developing nation, Mexico.  How is this possible?  How can cities, states and regions even surpass their own nation by creating new cultural values that drive economic growth?  This case study provides insights around commitments to private education, intensive international capital formation, fair play for all businesses, a health care system that exceeded the national one, by rewarding incentives for hard work and production, by providing critical thinking into the cultural process, and by fending off the federal government so that taxes could be modulated and kept relatively low.

 

 

Background on Culture and Economic Development

 

Underdevelopment is a condition in which a country, state, region or city has not kept up economically with the rest of the world.  Often we cite statistics to demonstrate this comparative difference. In Mexico, for example, 30 percent of the population of 99.6 million persons is in poverty (2001).2  We also can cite the fact that the maquiladoras manufacturing operations on the U.S. Mexico border have lost 65, 000 jobs since 2001.  But none of these facts and figures can explain the socio-psychological condition driven by culture that accompanies underdevelopment.

 

While statistics for underdevelopment can be impressive and helpful, what Augusto Salazar Bondy (Peru) has noted is that “underdevelopment is a state of mind.”  “Underdevelopment is an outlook and collective personality often leaving tell tale infirmities and maladjustments within the culture.”1 For example, what kind of culture allows young people to drop out of high school at a 40 percent rate just so they can have babies?  Teen pregnancy is high in some cities and regions, but what it indicates is a socio-psychological state of mind where young people find no value in work or career, but rather find value and self-esteem in only having babies.  This condition, then, becomes a workforce issue for economic development because industry does not want to bring new investments to an area where the young people will not become part of the workforce. “Underdevelopment is a state of mind” to borrow Harrison’s (1985) title from his book by the same name.

 

How we think is driven by culture, but what is culture?  In an article in Intercultural Communication, Aldridge (2002) defined culture as:

 

Culture is the shared system of symbolic knowledge and patterns of behavior derived from speech communication, that human individuals carry to provide predictable internal and external psychological stability so as to prevent chaos among human individuals. We learn cultural codes for social life, role expectations, common definitions of situations, and social norms in order to provide predictability and survival of the human species. Human language (spoken and written) is the symbolic glue for human culture. (Aldridge, 1997).4

While many of us have “things in common” between, among and within cultures, we are strikingly different on many fronts.  How we organize and approach our business life, what religion has to say to us, how the family communicates values and attitudes, the structure, process and outcomes of our educational approaches to society, our relations between the sexes, our use of time, and our view of government in the lives of individuals all play a role in our cultural lives that often go unnoticed by those persons living out these values.  Harrison asserts that it is “culture,” more than any other factor that will explain the economic growth of nations compared to one another.5

Economic development, then, is driven by cultural values that become hidden persuaders.  In one community in New Mexico, for example, economic development was driven by “grants” (economists call this rent seeking behavior) from the federal/state government rather than by the private sector per se.  So that by their behavior, they are dependent upon the government for economic development rather than considering themselves as an independent driving force for economic development. This cultural value was an indicant of a deeply held predisposition in the culture of the NM that if government did not help with the economic development process, then it would not happen.  Thus, the community, unknowingly, became a victim of government policies on economic development rather than an independent driving force for economic growth in the region.  If this same group had raised only private money and created the kind of environment that was driven by the private sector, then much more growth would have occurred and lower rent seeking behavior would have been the result on the part of the private sector.  The point here is that culture drives these values.

Cultural relativism, too, has been a problem for economic development because relativism asserts that all beliefs and cultures are equally good and that all knowledge is equally true and valid.2  What we have learned over many years is that this kind of relativistic thinking in economic development terms results in little progress for countries, states, regions and cities that need assistance in economic development.

The Alliance for Progress, for example, in Latin America was a disaster by President Kennedy because it did not account for the cultural differences that existed throughout Latin America.  Taxpayer money invested in this process was wasted.  Relativism, as a way of thinking, used primarily by anthropologists like Mead, suggested that one culture could not rise above the values and the knowledge of another culture because anthropology is an “objective” science.  In other words, relativism denies that any value or knowledge can rise above the others and find its privileged place. This line of thinking has caused many problems in our approaches to underdevelopment and to economic development for our communities.  Why?

Culture for humankind is an evolutionary process.  Culture seeks to find the best knowledge and values over time among human civilization and advance humankind.  Some cultures die.  They die because their values and knowledge were no longer effective at advancing the human condition.  What we have learned is that some values associated with culture do rise above the others because they work for societies.4  They make a difference in the lives of community members.  This is also true in business and economic development.  Why do some societies create economic growth while others do not?  Why are some societies managing poverty with new values and knowledge while others cannot?  These decisions affect human lives in all cultures.

The problem with “relativism” is that it is a useless philosophical paradigm for advancing the human condition.  It does not allow us to assert that one set of norms is privileged over other “truths,” values, or knowledge standards.  But even worse relativism is self-refuting.2  If a relativist asserts that all knowledge and values about economic development are equally valid, then they are implicitly making a judgment that even their position on relativism leads them to refute their own relativism in favor of other philosophical positions that are equally valid.  Thus, in relativism we never arrive at “truth” in science. Some cultures do provide more knowledge and values to advance the human condition than others.  For economic development to work, we must accept this understanding in order to find the values and knowledge that create economic growth.

Effective economic development asserts values and knowledge about economic growth.  So the view for the analysis of this case demonstrates a historical-value approach that seeks to discover ways in which economic growth has been demonstrated in a developing nation.4  We do not yet have good causal theory for economic growth, but a historical-value approach provides international investors and banking community members with options for analysis in the stimulation of economic growth for states, regions, and cities that may make a difference.  It might lead us to necessary and sufficient causes for predicting economic growth. Some candidate historical-value assumptions are as follows:

1.       Economic growth of a nation, state, region or city is a value to be embraced because it assists most of the citizens most of the time.

2.       Economic development is best managed via the private sector.  This means that government economic development tends to use money in non-productive, non-market ways and thus, reduces overall investments and when the government commitment or money runs out, there is no self-sufficient economic development left for the citizens.

3.       Economic development must have sustained education of values that support critical thinking, problem solving, vocational skills, basic intellectual tools, dissent, creativity, and equips people to meet the needs of the cluster of industries within the region, state or country that exist there.  Thus, talents are meshed with jobs that exist.  Human capital formation in this respect is essential.

4.       Creation of a health system that protects people from illnesses that are debilitating to economic growth overall.

5.       Creation of concentration of capital by private investors and international investors seems to be an important factor for economic growth.

6.       Economic development occurs in an environment where criticism and experimentation are encouraged.

7.       Rewards and merits exist in an economic development system so that all people feel that “the system” is fair based upon merit and achievement rather than “pull”.

8.       Culture exists because it offers human beings stability and continuity, thus economic development, to be successful, must do the same for a community, region or state.

9.       Free market economics, as opposed to socialism or other collectivistic organizational methods, is the preferred method of economic growth because it creates continuing investments in new ideas that are valued by the marketplace.

10.   Economic development works best in low tax environments or at the very least capped taxation that allows the citizens, not legislators, to raise the taxes by a continuing voting process for increases.

The Case for Culture as Partner in Economic Development

Historically, Latin American governments have traditionally not provided these seven attributes because their culture often will not allow it to happen.  That is a bold statement, but let me explain.  “Self criticism” is a rare commodity in Latin America says, Jean-Francois Revel. 3   What he means is that the “culture that is historically Spanish” does not often allow itself the privilege of self-criticism.  In 1830 even Simon Bolivar thought that (Columbia, Venezuela, Ecudador) were “ungovernable” and that Hispanic revolutions were like “plowing the sea”. 4     Carlos Rangel asserts boldly that the failures in Latin America have been those mostly provided by the Hispanic culture itself.5   Rangel goes on to discuss issues like Latin America’s inability to create harmonious and cohesive nations.  He discusses the impotence of Latin American countries to develop effective external relations and the instability in the Latin American forms of government.  Even Jose Ortega y Gasset has identified what he calls a dangerous characteristic of Spanish life, that is, “particularism” or the state of mind that suggests that Latin Americans do not have to pay any attention to others.6   If you suffer from the condition of particularism you always feel humiliated when you have to cooperate with the will of the collective.

 

 “The perfect Spaniard needs no one to help him. He is bounded by values like fatalism (life is formed by forces beyond our control), by hierarchy (you determine who you are by your birth rank in society), by dignity (the individual has worth, but this value is not connected to rights, initiative, enterprise or equality of opportunity) by male superiority (which flows from authoritarianism, paternalism, and machismo).” 7

 

This is in contrast to other scholars from Latin America who blame the United States for everything that ever happened to them.  Most notable of these writers is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Miguel Asturias, Pablo Neruda and the economic thinkers like Raul Prebisch. 8     U.S. culture indulges in self-criticism sometimes to a fault and plays into the hands of cultures that do not allow for self-criticism and would rather blame the outsider.

 

To be sure, American interests, security, economic and political, in Latin America, have not always been in the best interests of Latin America nor have our programs like Alliance for Progress, under John F. Kennedy, always produced the best results.  This is often called “dependencia theory”.  This theory espouses that the economic problems between industrialized nations of the North and the developing nations of the South are the result of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation by the North.  Because of U.S. cynicism, many of us have been taught that this is a fact, rather than a theory, that goes, for the most part, unproven.  In fact, when taken in its full measure, this theory is really quite paternalistic and condescending to Latin and U.S. American efforts to build reliable frameworks and partnerships for economic development.  It is time for Americans to admit that some of our foreign policy may have created some dependence, but to blame all the problems of Latin America on the U.S. or the Northern Hemisphere is too extreme.  It is true that exploitation theories muster moral and emotional support, but in the age of sound statistical theory building, these theories do not hold up to the facts. What other factors seem to cause a country or region to not develop economically?

 

What we have learned since these earlier debates is that culture does matter.  That culture can drive nations to create what Thomas Sowell calls “human capital formation” that energizes economic activity and creates sustained growth for a nation. 9   Sowell, and others now, have shown us that “cultural capital”, not race, not the luck of geographical location on our planet, or even other factors has had significant affects on the economic level of many groups around the world.  Even war cannot destroy the value of human capital so long as it continues to thrive.  Such is the case of Germany and Japan since WWII.  The case of the Roman Empire cannot sustain the same outcome of analysis.  The barbarians destroyed Roman culture along with the infrastructure and what was lost was human cultural capital. 10    What is clear from this discussion is that we need better relationships between those of us who study culture and those who create the policies about underdeveloped, economic development and economic growth for nations.  In this way, theory and practice can make a difference in our foreign policy.

 

This now brings us to our case study of Monterrey, Mexico and its own economic development success.  How is it that Monterrey, Mexico built human cultural capital to create the largest per capita income in all of Mexico?  What factors seem to play on Monterrey that allowed it to rise economically?

 

Short History of Monterrey

 

Monterrey was founded in 1596.  The search for silver and the exportation of slaves were the initial reasons for the commercial settlement.  It was founded by Diego De Montemayor along with 34 settlers from 5 agricultural families.  Deigo De Montemayor was from Montemayor, Spain. 11 Monterrey was named for the Viceroy of Mexico, Conde de Monterrey.  The key to early agricultural development was water and plenty of it from the nearby mountains.12 By 1710 Nuevo Leon, the state in which Monterrey resides, had over 1.5 million sheep. Land was, therefore, controlled by very few people under these agricultural conditions.  These early land holdings are still present via the descendents of these early land owners of Monterrey and Nuevo Leon.  These same families dominated the political and economic landscape of Monterrey for over 300 years.

 

Tourism and travel in the mid 18th century in the region created trading routes through Monterrey.  Lodging, trade and supplies were provided by the local people and a small group of bourgeoisie began to form around local commerce.

 

In 1777 Monterrey became the new seat for the Bishop of the Catholic Church.  The population had risen by then to around 4000 persons. 13 After Mexican independence from Spain in 1810, Monterrey became the capital of Nuevo Leon in 1824.  The U.S. Mexican War (1856) had an interesting effect upon Monterrey because the U.S. – Mexico Border now was only 150 miles from its core city.

 

During the period of 1850 to 1910 Monterrey seemed to have created a climate for capital formation economically.  Merchant traders began working hard to provide the necessities for trade.  Some of the trade involved smuggling of Confederate cotton during the American Civil War. 14  However, there was investment in mining and industrial smelting during this same time period also.  The Guggenheim’s established ore smelters and four foundries were built between 1890 and 1900. 15 By 1890 Jose Schneider began Mexico’s largest brewery.16 Likewise, parallel businesses began to emerge that created vertical integration of bottle caps, glass manufacturing, and packaging operations in order to support the beer industry. 17

 

What is even more interesting is that during the period of the 1880s, Governor Bernardo Reyes created tax exemptions which continued until 1910 for many of the industries of Monterrey. 18 This aided Monterrey in capital formation while creating new investment capital for further growth.   During this same time period the railroad arrived in Monterrey.  All of this created investment opportunities for American, British and French foreign investment groups to create new projects in Monterrey.

 

President Diaz in 1883 visited the U.S. and he was convinced that Mexico would need a stable government, tax incentives, and an open court system to attract capital to Mexico and to places like Monterrey. 19 Needless to say, Mexico needed stability because prior to Diaz the Mexican Presidency changed 75 times over 55 years from Mexican Independence in 1821 to the rise of power by Diaz.  Diaz can be credited with Mexican and American expansion by creating conditions conducive to foreign investment by 1888.  Diaz also favored wealthy land owners and he deprived local people of land opportunities.  During this time William Randolph Hurst capitalized on this opportunity by investing in cattle ranching.  Standard Oil and Mexico Petrol Company invested in oil development along the Gulf Coast. 20

 

From 1900 to the 1950s the Mexicans began to change their society.  In 1910 the land reforms were paramount, but they also wanted political and labor reforms as well.   During this period investors became nervous and the elite of Monterrey took their capital across the border to the U.S. during these turbulent times.  By 1925 these elite persons came back to Monterrey to stabilize the government of Monterrey and re-invested in Monterrey for the Mexican markets.  By 1910 there were 80,000 people in Monterrey. 21

 

The Garza and Sada families were prominent families who began to develop partnerships with many other local families in Monterrey.22  What these two families did for Monterrey would change the fabric of its culture for decades to come.  Today their descendents have founded at least four universities and a technological institute. 23 The development of the educational systems that were private created the human capital formation necessary to change the culture of Monterrey and Nuevo Leon forever.  Monterrey became quite independent of Mexico City and the conduct of business in Monterrey was clearly different than that which was conducted in Mexico’s capitol.

 

Because there was more emphasis on private sector development, city government oversight went unattended for many years.  Even today Monterrey is not without its housing problems and some environmental issues that continue to plague its economy.  From 1945 to 1950 the tax incentives were reinstated and the investment in Monterrey quadrupled. 24 New industries like furniture, clothes, cigarettes, soap, cement, and bricks grew during this period of time as well.

 

From 1950 to the 1990s the Monterrey elite became known as Grupo Monterrey wherein they used modern technology to produce consumer goods.  These elite families attended universities in Europe and the U.S. only to return to begin anew the human capital formation that was necessary to sustain Monterrey socially, politically and economically.  During this time period Monterrey saw yet another nine-fold increase in industrial development.  Petroleum, chemical, plastics, electronics, and heavy equipment were all growth industries during this period.  Investment remained strong for metal production and refinement accounted for half of the investment dollars during this growth period.  Grupo Monterrey owned over 375 companies by 1980.  The concentration of capital at this point was very high.  For example, “by 1984, 2.6 percent of Monterrey’s industries accounted for 88.6 percent of total capital investment and 63 percent of employment.”25

 

What Grupo Monterrey did, however, was to enforce cultural norms associated with how government would conduct itself.  This meant that values like sustained economic growth, stable government, and sufficient infrastructure are needed to sustain market growth.  While often troubling to the socialist leaders of Mexico, Monterrey’s business leaders insisted that these values be maintained.  Presidents Cardenas, Mateos, Echeverria and Portillo have all felt the political clout of the Monterrey business establishment over these values.  Monterrey even created their own labor groups and they did not like the regulation of school books by the government.  It is alleged that President Echeverria was directly or indirectly involved in the murder of Eugenio Garza (1973) for not following government dictates that would place the steel mill in government ownership.26

 

Alfa and Vitro groups were formed from the Grupo Monterrey experience with the government in order to control the government’s intrusion.27  The Partido de Accion Nacional or the PAN political party has strong power in Monterrey today.  It grew out of these early attempts by the PRI party to control Monterrey’s investment interests and convert them to socialistic systems.  Today profit and production still make Monterrey a hub of business and commercial activity.

 

Monterrey Today

 

Monterrey today has 3.9 million people and is regarded as the “Industrial Capital of Mexico”. 28 It is the third largest city in all of Mexico.  The businesses today are

centered on cement, glass, steel, beer and some high technology industries.  Laredo, Texas is the border city that is closest (145 miles) to Monterrey.  Laredo has created infrastructure to support the access for Monterrey by creating easy access for exports and the U.S. markets.

 

Monterrey has one of the strongest middle class structures in all of Mexico.  The educational level is 3 years above the rest of Mexico.  Monterrey treats all of its wastewater and was the first city to do so completely.  The population growth is 5-8 percent per year.

 

The Mexican university system has 240 institutions of higher education (vocational and colleges), and it has 69 universities.  One university exists in at least each state.  These university systems are overburdened and often do not produce the essential ingredients that will enhance the Mexican society in the near term or long term.  The complicated social history of Mexico has contributed to this problem.

 

Contrast Monterrey higher education where the private sector has not only opened new universities, but offered poorer groups the opportunity to gain from higher education through economic growth.  Remember, 30 percent of Mexico lives in extreme poverty.  Businesses of Monterrey realized that to survive they needed to have stable educational systems to support the demand for labor.

 

Today there are 30 institutions of advanced study and five large universities in Monterrey.  ITESM (Technological Institute for Advanced Studies) developed a network of campuses in northern and central Mexico to enhance the education opportunities for the region.  This institution is supported by huge funding from the private sector, separate from religious or political groups.  Again the leaders of this effort are the Garza and Sada families, founders of the Monterrey ethic on economic growth.  “Monterrey Tech” has 30 campuses in 26 Mexican cities offering 36 undergraduate programs, 31 masters programs, and 6 doctorate programs.  Enrollment is 10,800 graduate students and 49,000 undergraduate students supported by 6877 faculty.  Monterrey Tech has six institutional accreditations including the AACSB and SACS located in the U.S.

 

 

So What Economic Development Values Sustained Monterrey?

 

Using our criteria for success of developing economies with which we began our discussion, allow me to explore Monterrey’s economic success against these criteria…Monterrey created an environment based originally on agricultural, commerce and later high tech industry that allowed it to create a system of fair play for everyone.  While we can argue that elitists of Monterrey controlled its development, we can certainly point to the economic sharing that has occurred over many years for the entrepreneurial efforts.  The court systems provide for international arbitration that allows many groups to feel like they are being treated fairly in the legal process.

 

Two, Monterrey worked hard over many years to create an educational system that would work for the people of the region and the private sector supported it, not the public sector.  In essence, Monterrey developed its own labor pool of talented people who could deliver on all phases of the economic growth that it had generated.  Often this was accomplished without skipping a beat.  Compare this to many developing countries where there is no reasonable support from either sector, public or private, for education.

 

Three, Monterrey’s own health system is one of the better systems in Mexico. It often relies on support from nearby U.S. via border crossings for those who can afford it, but it has sustained the health of the population using clinics in industrial settings to make the difference for the worker.  It also formed its own labor unions to accomplish all this for the worker.  Public and private health systems are well developed.  San Jose Hospital is privately developed and so is Mugersa Hospital in Monterrey.

 

Four, Monterrey’s own schools have created an environment where people can think about and discuss issues without worrying about being too critical, thus changing the Latin American idea that it is an insult to criticize your neighbor.  Experimentation in business and government has been encouraged in Monterrey.  Their economic success, in part, is attributable to their educational system that produced the educated work force and the ability to problem-solve and risk judgment by colleagues.

 

Five, by creating educational systems that reward talent while focusing on the local economy and its needs, Monterrey was able to produce new industries and continue to benefit from ongoing economic growth over 400 years.  Because they saw the failure of the government schools to produce what was needed for them, business and industries of Monterrey created the focus on talent that met the economic needs of the region.

 

Six, if you are to make it economically in Monterrey, you make it because you work hard and produce for the economy through talent that can be applied to the industries of the region.  You make it on reward and incentives associated with profit and production.  While it is true that all segments of the social structure may not yet participate in the success of Monterrey, its success is much better at inclusion than the rest of Mexico or Mexico City per se.  Evidence of the large middle class supports this idea.

 

Seven, by fending off the Mexican Federal government, Monterrey was able to create stability in economics and politics while all around them there was chaos.  This fact alone is truly worth considering by nations whose various regions might be able to meet these same requirements for economic growth.  Being close to the U.S. border was very advantageous because as  the peso was often devalued  they could place their peso and/or dollar accounts in the U.S. banks while chaos reined in Mexico.  This meant that costly projects could be sustained without the usual work stoppage associated with Mexico historically.

 

International and Domestic Strength

 

Foreign investment in Monterrey created the right climate for continued growth and created a multi-cultural atmosphere where eventually English was the language of choice in the business schools so that local managers could work with other international business groups as they invested.  Joint ventures are used to channel the foreign investments not “green field” nonsense that so often exemplifies the American economic development programs.  For this reason corporations like CEMEX, CYDSA, FEMSA, IMSA, GRUMA, PROEZA, PROTEXA, PULSAR, VILLACERO, VITRO, ALFA, LAMOSA are the biggest players in joint ventures in Monterrey.  These conglomerates now want global market share and for this reason will be players in the continued economic growth of Monterrey.  In 2000 these groups produced over USD $ 31.3 billion in revenues.  Here, for example, are some of the key indicators for Neuvo Leon’s economic contributions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neuvo Leon’s Economic Base34

 

                         Sector                                                       Number

Manufacturing

13,251

Retail

55,302

Services

51,028

Other sectors

1,755

Neuvo Leon’s Share of GDP – Mex

8.6 %

Neuvo Leon’s Manfactured Share

9.4 %

 

Neuvo Leon’s Share of Domestic Production33

 

                   Production Sector                       Percent of Mexico’s Production

Glass

75%

Corn Flour

75%

Household Appliances

70%

Synthetic Fibers

60%

Cement

60%

Beer

50%

Ceramic Products

50%

Steel

25%

 

 

International companies are benefiting from Monterrey’s economic growth.  Corporations like Mitsubishi, Alcoa-Fujikura, Navastar, BASF, Nortel, Caterpillar, Packard Electric, Danfoss Compressors, Parker Zenith, Delphi, Phelps Dodge, Denso, Pioneer, GE, Phone Poulenc, Grainger, John Deere, SCI, Toyota, Kellogg, Union Carbide, Mercedes Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Solectron, IBM, Anderson Consulting and Hewlett Packard are all located in Monterrey or have presence there.  Once again, the intercultural communication that occurs between people via business transactions, raises all boats.

 

Continued Innovations

 

Monterrey continues its innovations by increasing its trash recycling programs to control the 3500 tons of trash produced each day. 29 Monterrey is working with the World Bank to develop a methane gas plant created with the use of garbage to create new power for the region. 30 It is expected to produce 8.5 megawatts at a cost of $11 to $12 million.  Cement kilns are being used to burn hazardous waste like oil. 31 HEB, the Texas owned department store has just opened in Monterrey with a 22 percent market share so far in 2001.32

 

The future of Monterrey is bright because of its cultural history that embedded economic development values into the fabric and structure of its society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References and Footnotes

 

  1. Bondy, Agusto Salazar: a Peruvian intellectual cited by Harrison on p.xii in Underdevelopment is a State of Mind, 1985, Madison Books, MD.
  2. Westacott, Emrys (2001) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/relativi.htm
  3. World Population Awareness, News Digest, March 19, 2003, www.overpopulation.org.
  4. Aldridge, M. Gene (2002) What is the Basis of American Culture?, Intercultural Communication, Nordic Network, www.immi.se/intercultural.
  5. Harrison, Lawrence E. and Huntington, Samuel P. (2000) Culture Matters, Basic Books, NY. p 162.
  6. Harrison, Lawrence E.,(1985) Underdevelopment is a State of Mind, Madison Books and the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Lanham, MD and London, UK.,
  7. Ibid. p. 3
  8. Revel, Jean-Francois(1979), “The Trouble with Latin America”. Commentary, February, p.47-50.
  9. Rangel, Carlos,(1977), The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, p. 6.
  10. Ibid. p. 67.
  11. Ortega y Gassett, Jose, (1937) Invertebrate Spain, W.W. Norton Co., N.Y., pp. 49-50.
  12. Wells, Henry (1969)The Modernization of Puerto Rico: A Political Study of Changing Values and Institutions, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p 28.
  13. Harrison, Underdevelopment is a State of Mind, p. 162.
  14. Sowell, Thomas (1998) Conquests and Cultures, Basic Books, New York, p. 334-338.
  15.  Ibid. p. 336.
  16.  Brosnahan, Tom et.al., (1992) Mexico 4th ed., Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorn, Australia.
  17. Bennet, Vivienne, The Politics of Water: Urban Protest, Gender and Power in Monterrey, Mexico, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
  18. Op.cit. Brosnahan
  19. Ibid.
  20. Op.cit. Brosnahan

16.    http://www.ir.femsa.com, received February 28, 2002, History of FEMSA

17.    Ibid.

18.    Op.cit. Bennet p. 7

19.    “Mexican Revolution” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2001, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington.

20.    http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_history/jtuck/jporfdiaz,html.

21.    Op.cit. Brosnahan

22.    Ibid.

23.    Ibid.

24.    Op. cit. Bennet p. 12.

25.    Ibid. Bennet on Vellinga(1988), p.45-46

26.    Op.cit. Brosnahan

27.    Op.cit. Bennet p.12

28.    Cummings, Joe and Mallan, Chicki (1999) Mexico Handbook 2nd ed., Moon Publications, Chico, CA.

29.    (http://www.usatrade.gov/website/mrd.nsf/MRDurl/IMI_MEXICO_POL_RECYCLING-IN-MONTERR_005ABF5D

30.    (http://thenewsmexico.com/noticiahist.asp?id=8735

31.    (http://www.texascenter.org/publications/kiln.htm

32.    http://www.elibrary.com/s/edumark/getdoc.cgi?id=218168290x127y50382w0&OIDS=0Q001D020&Form=RL&pubname=South_American_Business_Information&puburl=http~C~~S~~S~www.comtexnews.com&querydocid=47844750@urn:bigchalk:US;Lib&dtype=0~0&dinst=0

33.    United Nations International Conference on Financing for development 18th- 22d

  March 2002, Monterrey, Mexico- Agenda introduction.

34.    United Nations International Conference on Financing for development 18th-22d

  March 2002, Monterrey, Mexico- Agenda introduction.

 

 

Special thanks to our graduate students, Paul Abair, James Austin and Jennifer Shelton for their excellent research work on this paper.

©Copyright 2003 New Mexico Independence Research Institute

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