Editing Porfirio Díaz (section)

== Economic liberalization under Díaz ==
{{Main|Economic history of Mexico#Porfiriato, 1876–1911}}
[[File:MetlacBridgeKahlo-2.jpg|thumb|right|The Metlac railway bridge, an example of engineering achievement that overcame geographical barriers and allowed efficient movement of goods and people. Photo by [[Guillermo Kahlo]].]]
[[File:Hacienda Temozón Yucatan Nov 2018 05.jpg|thumb|right|{{Ill|Hacienda Temozón|es}} refurbished into a [[Marriott International|Marriott]]-licensed hotel by night. This hacienda was approached for industrial mass production during Porfiriato.]]
[[File:Fundidora, El Boleo.jpg|thumb|right|El Boleo's mill]]

Díaz sought to attract foreign investment to Mexico to aid the development of mining, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure. Political stability and the revision of laws, some dating to the colonial era, created a legal structure and an atmosphere where entrepreneurs felt secure in investing capital in Mexico. Railways, financed by foreign capital, transformed areas that were remote from markets into productive regions. The government mandate to survey land meant that secure title was established for investors. The process often obliterated claims of local communities that could not prove title or extinguished traditional usage of forests and other areas not under cultivation. The private survey companies bid for contracts from the Mexican government, with the companies acquiring one-third of the land measured, often prime land that was along proposed railway routes. Companies usually sold that land, often to foreigners who pursued large-scale cultivation of crops for export.<ref>Holden, R.H. ''Mexico and the Survey of Public Lands: The Management of Modernization, 1876 – 1911''. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press 1993.</ref> Crops included coffee, rubber, [[henequen]] (for twine used in binding wheat), sugar, wheat, and vegetable production. Land only suitable for pasturage was enclosed with barbed wire, extinguishing traditional communal grazing of cattle, and premium cattle were imported. Owners of large landed estates (''[[hacienda]]s'') often took the opportunity to sell to foreign investors as well. The result by the turn of the twentieth century was the transfer of a vast amount of Mexican land in all parts of the country into foreign hands, either individuals or land companies. Along the northern border with the U.S., American investors were prominent, but they owned land along both coasts, across the [[Isthmus of Tehuantepec]] and central Mexico.<ref>Hart, John Mason. ''Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War''. Berkeley: University of California Press 2002.</ref> Rural communities and small-scale farmers lost their holdings and were forced to be agricultural wage laborers or pursue or move. Conditions on haciendas were often harsh.<ref>[[Friedrich Katz|Katz, Friedrich]] "Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies," ''Hispanic American Historical Review'', 1974, 54(1)</ref> Landlessness caused rural discontent and a major cause of peasant participation in the [[Mexican Revolution]], seeking a reversal of the concentration of land ownership through [[Land reform in Mexico|land reform]].

For elites, "it was the golden age of Mexican economics, 3.2 dollars per peso." Following his personal interview with Díaz, James Creelman relates in his 1908 Pearson magazine article that "conditions for investment in Mexico are fairer and quite as reliable as in the most highly developed European countries"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Creelman |first=James |date=1908 |title="Porfirio Díaz, Hero of the Americas." |url=https://library.schlagergroup.com/chapter/9781961844278-book-part-019 |journal=Pearson's Magazine |pages=9}}</ref> such as France, Great Britain, and Germany. For some Mexicans, there was no money, and the doors were thrown open to those who had."<ref name="crow">{{Harvp|Crow|1992}}</ref> Economic progress varied drastically from region to region. The north was defined by mining and ranching while the central valley became the home of large-scale farms for wheat and grain and large industrial centers.<ref name="skidmore"/>

One component of economic growth involved stimulating foreign investment in the Mexican mining sector. Through tax waivers and other incentives, investment and growth were effectively realized. The secluded southern [[Baja California Territory|Baja California]] region benefited from the establishment of an economic zone with the founding of the town of [[Santa Rosalía, Baja California Sur|Santa Rosalía]] and the prosperous development of the [[El Boleo]] copper mine. This came about when Díaz granted a French mining company a 70-year tax waiver in return for its substantial investment in the project. Similarly, the city of [[Guanajuato City|Guanajuato]] realized substantial foreign investment in local silver mining ventures. The city subsequently experienced a period of prosperity, symbolized by the construction of numerous landmark buildings, most notably, the magnificent Juárez Theatre. By 1900 over 90% of the communal land of the Central Plateau had been sold off or expropriated, forcing 9.5&nbsp;million peasants off the land and into the service of big landowners.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Meade |first=Teresa A. |author-link=Teresa Meade |title=A history of modern Latin America: 1800 to the present |date=19 January 2016 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-1187-7248-5 |edition=Second |location=Chichester, West Sussex |oclc=915135785}}</ref>

Because Díaz had created such an effective centralized government, he was able to concentrate decision-making and maintain control over the economic instability.<ref name="skidmore"/> This instability arose largely as a result of the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of peasants of their land. Communal indigenous landholdings were privatized, subdivided, and sold. The Porfiriato thus generated a stark contrast between rapid economic growth and sudden, severe impoverishment of the rural masses, a situation that was to explode in the Mexican Revolution of 1910.<ref>{{Harvp|Eakin|2007|p=26}}</ref>

During 1883–1894, laws were passed to give fewer and fewer people large amounts of land, which was taken away from people by bribing local judges to declare it vacant or unoccupied (''terrenos baldíos''). A friend of Díaz obtained 12 million acres of land in Baja California by bribing local judges. Those who opposed [[Yaqui#1820s–1920s: Yaqui Wars and enslavement|were killed or captured and sold as slaves to plantations]]. The manufacture of cheap alcohol increased prompting the number of bars in Mexico City to rise from 51 in 1864 to 1,400 in 1900. This caused the rate of death from alcoholism and alcohol-related accidents to rise to levels higher than anywhere else in the world.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Meade |first=Teresa A. |title=A history of modern Latin America : 1800 to the present |date=19 January 2016 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-1187-7248-5 |edition=Second |location=Chichester, West Sussex |oclc=915135785}}</ref>

One location effected by Diaz's new laws and the privatization of communal indigenous lands was the town of Papantla. This was a town that had became famous for growing a majority of the vanilla that heavily benefited Mexico's economy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kouri |first=Emilio |title=A Pueblo Divided: Business, Property, and Community in Papantla, Mexico |date=2004 |publisher=Stanford |isbn=978-0-8047-5848-2 |edition=First |page=113 }}</ref> Many of the local Totonac revolted after they were phased out the condueñazgo, a type of land distribution where individuals could co-own land and buy shares of property and its profits. The new land privatization efforts stripped shareholders of ownership, causing violence and rebellions against Mexican elites. Some Totonac peoples made efforts to legally regain their land, sending many formal dissents to the government. Diaz intervened numerous times stating, "I have been informed...that the subdivision of Papantla's lands is a very difficult thing, and that it is provoking much irritation."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kouri |first=Emilio |title=A Pueblo Divided: Business, Property, and Community in Papantla, Mexico |date=2004 |publisher=Stanford |isbn=978-0-8047-5848-2 |edition=First |page=252 }}</ref> These laws ultimately ended traditional views of communal landownership and restructured the social hierarchy in the region.