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Mexico’s largest forests are in the tropical east and south. It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the country was covered by forests in the mid-1500s, but indiscriminate exploitation has decimated this resource. Though conservation is practiced in some of the pine forests in the northern Sierra Madre Occidental, logging has heavily damaged some areas, and farmers in the Gulf Coast region and elsewhere continue to reduce rainforests with slash-and-burn methods and expanding pastures. The tropical forests of the south and east yield a wide variety of valuable products, including hardwoods, such as oaks and mahogany, and an assortment of fragrant woods, such as cedar and rosewood. In addition, the rainforests of Chiapas and the southern Yucatán contain sapodilla trees, which are the source for chicle, the latex traditionally used to make chewing gum (though most commercial varieties of gum are now manufactured with synthetic latex). Softwoods are found in the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental above 6,000 feet (1,800 metres). Stands of ponderosa, lodgepole, and other pines are especially well developed in the Sierra Madre Occidental, especially in the states of Chihuahua and Durango.
Fishing
Mexico has a bountiful supply of marine resources, but fish and seafood are not a major part of the national diet. Two shrimping areas of the Gulf Coast, from Tampico north to the U.S. border and from Veracruz south to Campeche, have been fished commercially since the 1940s. The Gulf of California shrimping grounds, first exploited on a large scale in the late 1950s, are now the most important in the country. The Gulf of California is also known for its game fish, such as black marlin and other billfish. Deepwater fish abound off the Pacific coast of Baja California. Since the formation of a commercial fishing fleet in the 1960s, this area has become the country’s main fishing ground, producing most of the total commercial catch. Sardines, anchovies, and tuna are the leading species taken. In the nearshore zone of the Pacific coast of Baja California, lobster and abalone are captured in commercial quantities. The rest of the commercial marine catch comes from the Gulf of Mexico, especially off the Campeche Bank north of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Resources and power
Minerals have been an important part of the economy throughout Mexico’s history. Mexico is the world’s leading producer of silver, which has long been the most valuable metal extracted there. The major mining area during the colonial period was the so-called Silver Belt, a region that extended from Guanajuato and Zacatecas in the Mesa Central to Chihuahua in the Mesa del Norte, with outposts such as San Luis Potosí farther east.
The Silver Belt is still Mexico’s primary source of nonfuel minerals, although now both industrial and precious minerals are sought. Silver is taken from the older centres of Guanajuato, Pachuca, and Zacatecas. Zinc, bauxite (the ore of aluminum), lead, gold, mercury, cadmium, and such trace minerals as antimony and manganese are also important. The once-rich copper deposits discovered in the late 1800s near Santa Rosalía in Baja California have been largely depleted. The country’s largest remaining deposits of copper are exploited in open-pit mines at Cananea and La Caridad in northern Sonora state. Iron ore deposits near Durango were first mined in the early 20th century.
Mexico ranks among the world’s most prolific petroleum-producing countries, and petroleum exports account for a large share of foreign-exchange earnings. The country has huge proven and potential reserves of petroleum and substantial reserves of natural gas. Mexico’s first commercially productive petroleum fields were discovered about 1900 off Tampico on the Gulf Coast. Shortly thereafter, foreign investors helped exploit additional fields farther south, near the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The oil industry was nationalized in 1938 with the creation of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), and the Mexican constitution stated that the oil industry must remain under state control. Latin America’s largest petroleum company, Pemex is a semiautonomous governmental agency charged with petroleum exploration, production, and marketing. It produces several hundred billion barrels of oil annually and operates major petroleum-producing fields in the Gulf of Mexico and along its coast, including the Poza Rica (near Tuxpan), the Tampico-Misantla basin, and various sites in Chiapas and Tabasco. Major natural gas fields are located near Reynosa in northeastern Mexico, near Veracruz, and in the Chiapas-Tabasco region of the Gulf of Mexico coast.
In 2008, however, because of declining oil production—which peaked in 2004—the Mexican Congress passed a series of controversial energy reforms that included provisions to allow private investment in Pemex for the first time since 1938. Among the agreements to emerge from those reforms was the 2012 U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement, which allowed for prospecting along maritime borders between the two countries and facilitated further opportunities for partnership.
In 2013 the government announced further reforms of the national energy policy. Growing imports of gasoline and other refined products, along with the federal government’s heavy budgetary dependence on petroleum royalties and taxes, led the administration of Pres. Enrique Peña Nieto to seek investment from foreign oil companies that possessed the capital and technology necessary to exploit Mexico’s deep-sea reserves and revitalize the industry. The government therefore proposed—and won congressional approval of—amendments to those articles of the constitution that had given Pemex exclusive control over exploration, production, refining, storage, and distribution of oil, natural gas, and basic petrochemicals. The amendments further broadened private investment opportunities. Leftists favouring the maintenance of a more strictly nationalist policy protested the new policy and stalled the passage of secondary laws intended to establish a taxation model in 2014. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who replaced Peña Nieto as president in 2018, sought to restore dominance of the country’s oil market to Pemex, and in April 2021 Congress amended the Hydrocarbons Law to terminate the ability of the Energy Regulatory Commission to regulate Pemex’s sales of petroleum-based products, gas, and petrochemical goods, thus reinvigorating Pemex’s market power.
A system of oil and natural gas pipelines has been constructed to move these products to major cities in the Mesa Central and to the U.S. border, where they formerly linked up with pipelines in the United States. Large oil refineries have been built near the Gulf of Mexico at Minatitlán and Reynosa to augment the older productive capacity of those at Ciudad Madero near Tampico. Additional refineries are located at Salamanca, Tula and Atzcapotzalco near Mexico City, Poza Rica, and Salina Cruz. Sulfur is found in conjunction with petroleum in many of the Gulf fields and is used in the manufacture of a wide variety of products. Petrochemical plants have been built in Veracruz state at Coatzacoalcos, the major export centre for sulfur products, and at Ciudad Pemex in Tabasco. Both are located in formerly unpopulated rainforest regions. A number of petrochemical sites are also found near refineries in the Mesa Central.
Thermal power plants, fired mainly by oil and natural gas, generate about three-fourths of Mexico’s electricity. Both nuclear power and renewable resources (wind, solar, and biomass) combined account for about one-tenth of the country’s electric power, and hydroelectric complexes provide about one-sixth of the country’s needs. In the 1940s and ’50s, hydroelectric power was seen as vital for the country. Because of their proximity to major population clusters, most of the early projects were located on the streams exiting the eastern and southern escarpments of the Mesa Central. Better transmission technologies subsequently permitted hydroelectric complexes to be located farther away, such as the Malpaso Project on the Grijalva River on the margins of the Chiapas Highlands.
Manufacturing
Mexico is one of the more-industrialized countries in Latin America, and its membership in NAFTA further expanded its industrial base, especially for export. Manufacturing accounts for about one-fifth of GDP and provides jobs for about one-sixth of the workforce. Chief manufactures include motor vehicles and parts; processed foods and beverages; paints, soaps, and pharmaceuticals; bricks, cement, and ceramics; iron and steel; metal products; paper and paper products; chemicals; electronics and other consumer products; and refined petroleum.
Historically, a disproportionate share of manufacturing was located in and around the Mexico City metropolitan area, largely because of its huge market and superior infrastructure. The capital’s metropolitan area still dominates manufacturing, and an impressive array of products are manufactured there and in neighbouring cities, including automobiles, electronics, iron and steel, foods, and a wide variety of consumer goods. The government’s efforts to disperse factories to sites away from the Mexico City megalopolis have been aided substantially by the increasing number of maquiladoras producing such goods as motor vehicles and automobile parts, electronics, clothing, and furniture. The overwhelming majority of maquiladora plants are foreign-owned and situated in Mexico to take advantage of low labour costs and less-stringent environmental regulations. Following the advent of NAFTA, there was an explosion of foreign investment in cities around the country but primarily in the Central and North regions. As a result, industrial employment became more dispersed than at any time in Mexican history.
Automobile assembly plants produce vehicles for export to the United States and Canada as well as for the domestic market, in such sites as Puebla and Toluca in the Central region, Guadalajara in the West, and Hermosillo in the Northwest. Textile production, traditionally more dispersed than other industries, has its older centres in Puebla and Guadalajara and newer ones in Torreón and Juárez. A growing number of electronics assembly plants, including television and computer components, have been concentrated in Tijuana.
Finance
Finance is a cornerstone of Mexico’s service sector and includes savings and loan associations, insurance, the stock market, and commercial banks. Altogether, finance accounts for roughly one-eighth of GDP but a much smaller percentage of the labour force. Mexico formerly had a dual banking structure consisting of governmental financial institutions and private banks that were owned by commercial and industrial groups. In 1982 the private banking sector was nationalized in an effort to reduce the perceived manipulation and exploitation of the financial markets by private capital. Mexico’s financial system was then again privatized in the late 1980s as part of the country’s embrace of neoliberal economic theories.
The Bank of Mexico issues the national currency, the peso, which is divided into units of 100 centavos. The country’s stock exchange plays only a minor role in providing capital. Most funds are secured through government bonds or bank securities.