Mexico: 20th Century Developments

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920 ended the long rule of Porfirio Díaz and reshaped the country's political and social order, producing the Constitution of 1917 with its provisions for land reform, labor rights, and secular education. Out of this upheaval emerged the National Revolutionary Party, founded in 1929 and later renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which would govern Mexico without interruption for the remainder of the century.

Under PRI leadership, Mexico pursued a strategy of import substitution industrialization, relying on high tariffs, subsidies, and state ownership to spur growth from the 1940s through the 1960s, a period often described as the Mexican Miracle. Oil discoveries fueled further expansion in the 1970s, but mounting foreign debt, falling oil prices, and inflation triggered a severe economic crisis in 1982, prompting a gradual shift toward market liberalization that culminated in Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

Politically, the PRI's dominance began to erode toward the end of the century as opposition parties gained strength and electoral reforms opened the system to greater competition. The 2000 presidential victory of Vicente Fox, representing the National Action Party, marked the first opposition win in more than seventy years, closing out a century defined by revolutionary upheaval, single-party rule, and a gradual transition to competitive democracy.