Pragmatismo corporativo. Estado y empresarios frente a la crisis de la agroindustria azucarera mexicana en la década de 1930

Abstract

The Mexican sugar industry had undergone relapsing overproduction crises due to structural supply-demand imbalances and low competitiveness. Exports were confined to eventual stock surpluses which lowered the domestic, profit-depending prices. This article studies the State reaction to stock accumulation after the 1930 Depression, which endangered the viability of a key sector in rural employment. This reaction was based on the expansion of the domestic market, the conversion of sugar into a salary good, as well as the cartelization and regularization of sugar production by the Government. This latter, in its turn gave access facilities to official credit in order to finance the performance and expansion of the sugar business. The success of this program was one of the most outstanding cases of public intervention in the political economy in the thirties and later.