The Integration of Peripheral Markets: a Comparison of Spain and Mexico

Since the mid-1980s, the Mexican motor industry has experienced exceptional growth, with annual vehicle output having exceeded the one million mark since 1996 (Table 6.1). This period of expansion, which was sparked off when the big North American companies decided to build a series of assembly facilities in the country, has been sustained by an export boom towards the United States. From an analytical point of view, these events have become a classic example of the Triad having integrated its periphery into its core, and they have come to symbolise a type of industrial development which the present article will from now on refer to as ‘Integrated Peripheral Markets’.1 Mexico is not the only country to have lived through this kind of experience. During the 1970s, the Spanish motor industry also followed a similar trajectory. At the beginning of that decade, Spain had been producing 500000 vehicles annually — but by 1997, this number had soared to 2.5 million (Table 6.2), and the country had caught up with France as Europe’s second largest vehicle producer, far ahead of Italy and the UK. More than 80 per cent of the production of foreign companies in Spain has been exported to the countries in the European heartland.