OPEC'S AND MEXICO'S PETROLEUM IN THE CONTEXT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: COMPETITION OR COOPERATION

Although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in 1960, it was not until October 1973 and afterwards that it assumed wide international recognition. The Western industrial nations, who had been benefiting from OPEC's cheap petroleum resources long before the Organization's formation, began to paint the "wolf-image" picture of OPEC who had come to rob them of their material wealth and cause major dislocations in their life-styles and standards of living.;Another important undertaking of this study in the political economy of natural resources, aims at showing that Mexico, a renewed potential force in the world of petroleum, has a lot in common with the OPEC countries and a vested interest in their organization's survival, whether the Mexicans decide to join it or not. Mexico, however, is in the unique position of sharing a 2,000 miles long border with the United States, and a very unpleasant history of comprehensive U.S.-Mexican relations despite a mutual trade dependence.;Mexico's and OPEC's economic progress, despite their endowment with abundant petroleum, hinges on the process of accumulation of technical knowledge in their respective countries. This in turn is partially a function of the process of technological transfer from the industrialized world, who hinder such third world countries' development by coining its relationships with them in the context of strategic dependence on their natural resources, mainly petroleum. Another factor organically influencing the process of economic progress in Mexico and the OPEC countries is inherent in their respective cultures and their institutionalized patterns of thinking and behavior, which makes the development process of each a unique one despite their many common aspects.;The availability and valuation of petroleum have to be seen in the context of this evolving and "ongoing process," which is not predictable by sophisticated econometric models or any other mathematized form of analysis. So all economic analysis can hope to accomplish is on the order of contributing to the removal of some illusions, in the interest of minimizing human conflict and increasing human welfare.;A major undertaking of this research is aimed at dispelling this belief by revealing OPEC's "realistic" nature as a coalition of nations bound on utilizing their depleting asset as an instrument of economic progress, and not as a "cartel" with a prime motive for profit-maximization, as may have been the verdict of the orthodox economic profession.