Sport, modernity and development. Motorsports’ impact in Mexico

Abstract

This article has as main purpose to describe the emergence and development of motorsports in Mexico. In addition to the narration of the outstanding sports event, that definitively have an important impact in the institutionalization of the Mexican automotive activity, we make a simultaneous analysis where we explore social, economic and political conditions that helps to understand the reasons for the existence of a Mexican automotive tradition and it’s characteristics, where we can highlight the intermittent sport practice, derived from a society where the conflict seems ever present. The study begins with the advent of the automobile in the country during the early 20th Century, and promoted by the modernizing aspirations of the Porfirio Diaz’ administration; culminating in the first decades of the 21st Century, marked by another important modernization impulse, in this time sponsored by the needs of the private sector. The conclusions allows us to understand the Mexican sport, at least until the 70s, as a product and a producer of strong modernization and social integration processes, then losing his seat to other sports, perhaps in part because for be incompatible with the ideals of social equity, a postrevolucionary governments’ value. Furthermore, today we can see a timid resurgence of sports in Mexico, this time tinged by a desire to show, inside and outside, the results of the questionable economic policies of the last 30 years.