Enterprise and Society, Vol. 5 No. 2 254-280 (2004)
Enterprise & Society, Vol. 5 No. 2, © the Business History Conference 2004; all rights reserved
J. Walter Thompson, the Good Neighbor Policy, and Lessons in Mexican Business Culture, 1920–1950
Julio E. Moreno is assistant professor of history at the University of San Francisco. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress.
Contact information: Department of History, University of San Francisco, 1030 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA 94117, USA. E-mail: moreno{at}usfca.edu.
Abstract
This article looks at the corporate history of J. Walter Thompson to examine the nature of U.S.-Mexican relations in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. It contends that local conditions, along with a cadre of "progressive" Good Neighbor Policy diplomats, forced American companies to adopt the role of "commercial diplomats," altering the nature of what, up to 1940, had been a tense and bitter binational relationship. The article shows how Thompson's role as a commercial diplomat changed its previous "capitalist missionary" approach and how it complemented American diplomacy, including national security measures to displace German commercial influence in Mexico during Word War II.