Although social scientists usually do not speak in terms of laws, they believe they are at least able to make valid empirical generalizations. In studies of Mexican migration to the United States, for example, generalizations drawn from the research literature abound. Thus the problem is not that generalizations are lacking but that they are frequently inconsistent and contradictory. Often such inferences are simply invalid because they are based less on evidence than on the investigator's own preconceptions. As a result, the field of Mexican migration studies has been plagued by a fragmented debate that seems to go on and on without resolution.

After a decade of debt crisis and severe economic decline, countries throughout Latin America are seeking radical new treatments for their economic ills. Under pressure from internal political actors, international lending and aid agencies, or some combination of these, many Latin American countries are turning to outward-looking development strategies to stabilize their balance of payments and revitalize economic growth. Serving as the centerpiece for the new strategies is the promotion of “nontraditional” exports.

Looking back over patterns of economic adjustment and structural reform in Latin America since the debt crisis began in 1982, two broad trends stand out. The first is the dramatic fluctuation in macroeconomic policy between the orthodox programs traditionally advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the more interventionist or “heterodox” strategies that marked the policy environment after 1985 (Sheahan 1989). Although the orthodox-heterodox policy cycle is hardly new to the region and in fact has characterized the policy-making experience over the entire postwar era (Kaufman 1990), the 1980s represented the intensification of this cycle, especially in the extremity to which each set of policies was applied. The second trend follows from the first: the inability of states to follow through coherently on any given policy course (Fishlow 1989). While some exceptions to this trend can be cited (Chile, for example), the Latin American pattern has generally been one of failed adjustments and changed courses.

Scholars generally agree that after 1810 the Mexican economy, shattered by destruction of property and flight of population and capital during the long wars for independence, entered a severe depression. It has usually been assumed that this depression persisted well beyond mid-century, exacerbated by political instability, banditry, and intermittent civil warfare. This assumption was given shape and substance by John Coatsworth's influential 1978 article, which presented a picture of not merely miserable but deteriorating economic conditions for at least a half-century after 1810. Coatsworth calculated that per capita and total income fell until “sometime after 1860” and that a solid recovery was delayed until after 1880.