MEXICAN INTEROCEANIC CORRIDOR: TOWARD A LIKELY SOCIALLY INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE REGION IN SOUTHWESTERN MEXICO

Abstract

Mexican Interoceanic Corridor or Tehuantepec's Transisthmian Corridor (along with the Mayan Train) represents one the two largest iconic and challenging Mega Projects implemented in Southwestern Mexico, funded by Mexican Government, in the same so-called “Macrosouth region” or just Macrosouth, here on, (integrated by three economic subregions, namely, South-Pacific, Southern and South-western regions). Despite both projects ultimately aim to foster economic growth in such a region, the former aims to stimulate growth through an increased tourism flow from the wealthy Mayan Riviera zone toward the Gulf of Mexico's long-lagged region by railroad through the Mayan Train recently inaugurated by President Lopez Obrador,vid AMLO(Dec 22, 2023).Although the main focus of our attention here, namely, the Interoceanic Corridor, given its geoeconomic and geo strategic relevance for the country since it is expected to skyrocket Mexican exports and commercial activity through this facility and thus fostering economic growth throughout the Corridor stripe and spread it out throughout its neighboring regions such as those above referred in the coming years given its previlegious geographic location under the global context in which Mexico is currently immersed.

Accordingly, the article aims to assess and highlight the socio economic relevance of the Mexican Corridor megaproject and its likelihood to achieve by this means simultaneously economic growth and people's well-being in this region as an expected consequence of the intensive commercial thorugh its operation and industrial activity generated by the production of ten industrial parks to be implemented along the Corridor (backed by a host of full-fledged refurbished and renewed productive infrastructure around it) such as railway itself and road transport and port facilities along the end lines of the Corridor stripe (and the entire Macroregion) focused on supporting the expected massive commercial flow of merchandise and concomitant export boom back and forth through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, shortly. Furthermore, all these significant public investments, unlike prior neoliberal investment priorities in the past, these new investments are nurtured upon a framework of a socially inclusive and sustainable strategy tailored by the Mexican government for the Corridor zone to promote simultaneously economic growth and people’s well-being in the Transismithian stripe in the years to come. However, the challenge for the Mexican state, through its policymakers, is to achieve such an equilibrium between economic growth and population well-being in this region under a sustainable environmental context. 

Accordingly, in short, the purpose of this article is to explore the likelihood of Mexico attaining the above-referred equilibrium and implementing a socially inclusive strategy within a long-time deprived and lagged region from the rest of the country such as the Transisthmian Corridor stripe and its neighboring regions, such as the South-Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, in the foreseeable future along with its likely perspectives and socioeconomic and environmental implications.