Mexico practiced neoliberalism, a strategy that calls for free markets, balanced budgets, privatization, free trade, and limited government intervention in the economy. By the 1950s, Mexico was welcoming foreign investment, and the country’s GNP began a spectacular growth that continued until the early 1980s. This “Mexican Miracle” – based largely on huge supplies of natural gas and oil – became a model for less developed countries everywhere. With the “oil bust” of the early 1980s, the plummeting price of oil sank the Mexican economy and greatly inflated the value of the peso.
