El Petroleo es Nuestro: A History of Oil in Mexico
Mexico's experience with oil contrasts sharply to the development of the same resource from the same formations in the United States, and it illustrates the most salient cultural, political, and historical differences between the two countries. "El Petroleo es Nuestro" uses the history of oil in Mexico to tell the story of the development of modern Mexico and its national institutions. Remastered and re-released for 2018!
Episodes
12 episodes
11 - What's Wrong with Mexico
Nothing's "wrong" with Mexico of course...but what makes it so different and so maddening?Recommended reading: Luis Rubio's "The Problem of Power" (http://tinyurl.com/h4zkxuz)
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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18:32
10 - The Mexican Energy Reform
After regaining office in December 2012, the PRI party carries out the single biggest change to the Mexican Constitution in 70 years with the 2013 Mexican Energy Reform. In some ways, the 2013 Reform is simple to describe because it was so radical...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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36:48
09 - Slouching towards Reform
Cantarell peaks. Chicontepec comes up dry. And the Multiple Service Contracts fail to produce an increase in foreign investment or in the production of hydrocarbons. And then the PEMEX tower explodes. Things go from bad to worse in this episode, b...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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18:57
08 - Yeah, Another Crisis
The Peso Devaluation of 1994 and fallout from the Carlos Salinas administration opens the door to the election of the first non-PRI president of Mexico in 70 years. Vicente Fox enters office to great fanfare, yet leaves PEMEX largely untouched,...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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21:30
07 - The Lost Decade
Mexico limps through the 1980's following a collapse in oil prices and an effective default on its national debt. When the Harvard-educated, neoliberal Carlos Salinas takes office in 1988, he takes on the old structure of Mexico's statist economy,...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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18:04
06 - Managing Abundance
We're back to gushers and glory here with the great oil finds of the 1970's: Reforma, Cantarell, and Ku-Maloob-Zaap. And we're talking about the closest thing PEMEX has to an American-style, larger-than-life oil personality: Jorge Diaz Serrano.Sug...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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25:41
05 - Poor Planning
In this episode, we struggle to make sense of PEMEX's adolescent period. Great measures - such as the formation of the Instituto Mexicano de Petroleo - are taken which will yield fantastic results a decade later. But disturbing patterns begin to e...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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20:24
04 - The Golden Age of Pemex
Antonio J. Bermudez assumes the Directorship of PEMEX and makes it the animal we have come to know and love. PEMEX truly becomes an oil company, making critical downstream investments and finally surpassing pre-Expropriation activity. But hints at...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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25:14
03 - The Expropriation
On March 18, 1938, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated the properties of the American, English, and Dutch oil companies operating in Mexico. Was this the ideological act of a political radical? Or a calculated piece of realpolitik that ...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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26:02
02 - Revolución
The oil companies withdraw from Mexican society as Revolution ravages the country. As Post-Revolutionary governments reassert control over the country, they go to battle with the oil companies over the validity of their holdings and soon find alli...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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17:19
