Abstract

PEREZ MENDOZA, Joel. “Mexicanizing the border”: the construction of the Highway Fronteriza Del sur, its implications for colonization and consolidation of Mexico’s Southern Border (1959-2000). Entrediversidades rev. cienc. soc. humanid. [online]. 2024, vol.21, e202414.  Epub June 13, 2025. ISSN 2007-7610.  https://doi.org/10.31644/ed.iei.v21.2024.a11.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the Mexican government promoted the construction of a highway in the Lacandon Jungle, drawn parallel to the border line and connecting the city of Comitan in Chiapas, with Tenosique, in Tabasco. The purpose of this new infrastructure was to strengthen the Mexican state’s control over this region, to promote colonization in order to fix the border by establishing a “barrier of human values” and to allow the extraction of natural resources, thus achieving the “Mexicanization” of this borderland. Based on oral and archival sources, it shows how the progress of the Carretera Fronteriza del Sur (Southern Border Highway) influenced the economic, political and social dynamics of this borderland throughout the four decades that took its construction.

Keywords : Border highway construction; Managed colonization and migration; Mexico-Guatemala cross-border relations; Selva Lacandona colonization; Settlement dynamics; Government development program..

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