YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Gillingham

lines on the record: 80
first: 2026-03-25
most recent: 2026-03-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Construct using Mexican, American, those FBI involvement, and British archives as much as I can the path of the silver in this decade the first great decade of money laundering, which is the nineteen twenties.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm writing a book which is a prehistory of money laundering and it's based on a document I found in the British Foreign Office which is a query from a director of the great bullion dealers Johnson Mathy and it says I've just been in touch with a person on a steamship lying off in the Channel Islands who has £5 million worth of illicit government Mexican government silver on board. I'd like to buy it pennies on the pound and what would your advice be? And the first bit of advice is check that the silver actually exists and don't tell the Mexican government. I would like to know what happened next at that end because I think I know at the Mexican end where it came from and how it got onto the ship in New York Harbor. So I'm hoping to reconcile”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In New York then, so oh no, that's great because I just found a place. No, it's downtown. It's called Santo Loco, and it's Takeria, which is exceptional. And in case you find that to be inverse snowbury, I would say that underneath the Takeria there's a hidden quite smart restaurant. There's almost a sort of speakeasy restaurant. Both of them are superb, and I intend spending a lot of time in both of them. So that's my answer for New York. Get DeSanto Loco and have two of that. You have to try two. One is their mushroom taco, which is a revelation, and the other is their carnitas.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Orn Chicago I'm not sure for the simple reason my family's actually based in New York, and so when I go out for dinner it's usually in New York.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd hope to have a private jet on this or else a driver. I would go to San Cristobar Las Gas, the colonial capital of Japas.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and I would make sure to go there during the annual Ferrier, which is notable for two things apart from the fact that it's a great week-long party. And one is you get some of the best bullfights in Mexico, and two is this is one of the very few times when gambling is legal temporarily there. When you combine that, again, it's a pretty colonial town. And I'd make sure and go and see that Symphony Orchestra, which is superb. Argentine conductor from Agos Calientes, I think I take a plane and go to, I'm trying to do maths now, three days in each place. So in nine days, two more cities, I would go to Kalapa in Veracruz precisely because it's particularly untoured for its quality as a city and their surroundings are beautiful sort of temperate climate, and then the final one is really cramming things in.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I would send them across the border in California and Tijuana. I would then tell them to fly to, I think, probably Zacatecas because the sort of Baroque splendor of Mexico, it's not captured anywhere with the same intensity. I mean, this was the center of the financial, the wealth-producing world. It had the biggest mine in the world under the colony. That translated...”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, well, it did very well, and I can see why it was clever, complex, it was provocative, and it had a killer twist to it. What's not to like?”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recent novels of Alvro Enrique, who two novels really stick out. One is like a modern Werti Arteo Cruz. It's called Decency Decentia, which anybody who sort of likes Mexican humor, likes Mexico City will just get. And the other is your empires have been dreams in English, which is a retelling of the conquest as this glorified heist by a bunch of fortunate thugs, which I think most historians would agree with and has some twists in it which are stunning. And Alvaro, of course, has the advantage of he actually reads quite a lot of history. So when he writes history, the details are there and you find yourself nodding, oh yeah, yeah, can believe that.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Artemio Cruz, because of the real human complexity of it. So it's the story of a young revolutionary who manages through violence, luck, business smarts, extortion to move from being very poor beginnings to being a major Mexican mogul. The story skips between his life in sort of decadent old age, and he's made it, but in the classic sort of the hollowness of wealth, he's made it, but in human times he's totally emptied, and then the beginning the story if he got there. I find it so moving, so tragic and so deeply evocative of the Mexico I read about, the Mexico I study. I say, if I'd read it 10 years later, who knows? And if I'd read it last year, I might actually be ranking it below the”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally, and I'm glad you say that because Savage Detectives is very much a sort of insider's novel of Mexico. I mean, the mockery of the Unam and specifically its faculty, its faculty of law and philosophy is just so spot on and yet in part because it is so close to what I study, which is the mystery of the origins of the one party state and the Pri. And in part also, I think it's one of the first Mexican novels I read and things you read or things you listen to between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, they mark you and stay with you fairly or unfairly.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“it live. In a night spot, suddenly the polkas, the wheezing, the songs which sort of max conversion of gangster rap, you think, actually, yeah, this is quite good. I was in Ensenada a couple of years ago and out in this bar with a sort of masked guy with an M16 on the door and three Norte bands inside and it was fabulous. So, you know, even my least favorite has some legs to it. It can be very good fun and very evocative.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like the fact that they do superb girly pop. That's a terrible, but they have really good from the last 20 years women singers who are extremely intelligent, tuneful, dynamic, varied. I'm thinking specifically of Julieta Benegas and Natalia La Furcad, the latter in this in my book, wrote a song back in the year 2000, which is a hilarious reflection on her sister's pregnancy, the state of the world, and called The First Lady of Mexico a racist worm. This is music which is thought-provoking and tuneful. And so I like that. I think it's at its best. It's a very clever music. And what for me is its worst with apologizes to everybody who likes delorte. Norteo music. I cannot stand recorded. But if you've ever heard...”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's the black, dark humor there is profoundly mixed. And I think that's one of the reasons why the British can really appreciate Mexico is we've got a similarly dark sense of humor.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did it, I think, because of a desire to get the current dominant party Morena really further dug into regional power by having sympathetic judiciary. I think that Morena's local and regional activists were very keen on it. I think it was. Philosophical populism as well from the Amlo government, and I think it was absolutely. It's one of the most unfortunate things I've seen come out of Mexican politics in the last decade.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it matters greatly. I always found it strange the idea of electing any sort of judicial Poor idea, I think, in Mexico because of the interest of local drug trading organizations in having sympathetic judges. And it's a lot lower cost to get them elected than to threaten them. Judges are people who it's generally a bad idea to kill. The state doesn't like it. Happens really regularly, but still quite a high risk strategy as opposed to just having them in your pocket. And while electoral turnout across Mexico is admirably high and remarkable, judicial elections have just been the glaring exception to that. I think turnout was thirteen percent. And I think that in itself is a condemnation of the whole project. And so while recognizing flaws in longstanding flaws in the Mexican judicial system, this is I think a disastrous reform.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Predict because of those structural factors nothing to grow, little to try the ship, that it will, and the wealth you point out, it will continue thus. And in 20 years, I would hope with an even greater sense of security in the countryside around it.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah but yeah Nov and Leon the state is also not sort of it's not front line these things as you sort of imply shift rapidly and so until quite recently Pacific coastal state was really quite tranquil it's now the most violent state in Mexico until two years ago Sinaloa, because it was controlled by a single drug trading organization, the Sinaloa cartel, was also counterintuitively really quite safe. It's not anymore because that's in China. Monterrey, I think it's very bad business to have a war over drugs in somewhere which doesn't grow them, somewhere which isn't important to transshipment, and somewhere where there are such fantastic possibilities of extortion, middle and small income businesses. And so I would already be quite happy around Nueva Leon. And I would”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“shifting over the last twenty years as cartels come and go, but it's never had that single organization dominance which makes places safe.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've got the avocado industry, huge prize for extortion, which is increasingly many drug trading organizations, principal or major part of their portfolio and avocado farmers and lime farmers are great to extort. And then finally, we come back to my favorite themes, mountains. It is quite easy to hide things like MethLabs and it's quite easy to kill soldiers who come looking for you. Mitch O'Kan is sort of made for guerrilla warfare. This combination of a place where you can produce a lot of excellent illicit goods. You can transship them and you can kill state actors who come after you and make Midshuakan this re-central violence, the final pieces over all these resources. It's been a front line over different cartels.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all me neither. A story in that state is a combination of production and transshipment. For transshipment you've got the ports of Lazrocarnus which is a huge port. There is a total white elephant. It was bought in the built in the 70s as a way of sort of honoring the great revolutionary leader Carnas. It was not connected ever to anything really. So you've got this fantastic infrastructure from both coastal but also Trans-Pacific trade. So it's a very good place to begin precursories and fentanyl more recently. Precursors for meth. So that's part of transption transshipment. It's also that whole Pacific coast obviously is a major transshipment zone. There's also the production and methamphetamine is large recently but in the highlands also heroin and poppy and marijuana.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here the place I spent longest in is a village in the north called Ichatiopan, about hour and a half drive, at least back then, out of Tasco, where a lot of people go, sort of Silver City. Ichkatiopan was about 1,500 people then really very poor and one cafe on the main square and well very, very little else. I ended up like a feeble foreigner going with a little camping stove and many, many cans of Campbell's soup and tuna fish and saltines. Yeah, that those parts of the countryside then you had endemic threats to your stomach.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and I would say the northern Sierra of Puebla is also strong concentrations. But was that just for the off-the-beaten track fascination or was there a specific reason which took you there?”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of that was the roadway. That was one of the roads like the Costa Grande, where you were told, okay, between basically dawn and dusk. It's not too bad as a sort of roll of the dice, but from dusk to dawn, that would be foolish to travel.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I didn't. There was a couple of reasons, and one of the key ones was that region was perceived as being extremely dangerous while I was there. And so there were horror stories like the Egyptian consul took a wrong turn instead of going along the coast, went up into that area and was sort of killed and dismembered, completely breaking the rule that foreigners are untouchable. And no, I didn't, and I wouldn't put it at the top of parts of Guerrero, I would like to explore at length either. Why have you been there?”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, if you drive a north at what's called the Costa Grande, so you go to Acapulco, you try and write, you go up what's called the Costa Grande, and you get the tourist towns in Guatanejo, Estapa. And after about four hours of driving, you get to a And that and the village just about next door called Troncones. I spent a lot of very, very happy time there when I was a kid. So that's my favorite part.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guerrero Coast, and one of them is actually American, a hugely successful major landowner. And so you think of Guerrero as being, you know, slightly remote, etc. It's also got the major port of Acapulco. It's extremely dynamic. It's multi-ethnic. There's a lot of competition and there's a long history of, again, this desire to be left alone.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next door, or it's relatively close to Mexico City, and so it's threatening to Mexico City in the Way Sonora or Yucatan isn't so much. And so when some fairly oppressive conditions, you can imagine them land monopolization, political thuggery, etc. combine in a state with people who really are very keen on independence and are relatively close to city, the answer is this sort of reinforcing cycle of repression, opposition, repression, and that's what you've seen in Guerrero going back really on and off across two centuries of Mexican independence, but specifically intensified from Porfiriato onwards. And what's forgotten sometimes is really interesting is those three families which really run their”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a place which is very dear to me. I actually from my doctorate really tried to dive deep into two states. And Guerrero was one of them. So I went to villages and did sort of that level work in various places. And in part, yes, it's geographic determinism. It's mountains. But then you say, well, hold on. Sierra Mandre runs all the way up into the rockies. Can you tell us a bit more? And I think it's because of a long tradition of the drive for political independence exacerbated in its intensity by a large Afro-Mexican population on the coast who distinctly conscious that they have been discriminated against who are good at violence. I think it's because Guerrero is next.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, totally and land, as you say, and hideship Cork is one of the centres of the great hunger, the great famine of the nineteenth century. So there's that. But then I was educating Britain and I was lucky enough to come across the smartest historian I had ever met, a historian of the revolution called Alan Knight. And I was deciding what I wanted to do with my sort of intellectual life. I met this person and thought, okay, that's what I'd like to do. And thanks to the Oxford system, I could spend one semester entire just working with him, just on the Mexican Revolution, and that changed everything. And then there's a flip answer, which is Mexico's weather is a lot better than England's.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's strange mix, isn't it? Yeah, you've got a good ear. It's sort of a hybrid. Growing up in Cork, I was supposed to give a talk last month at the university there and I was thinking, you know, what can I say to link the two up? And truly says what I've been talking about this fierce local independence, local pride, identity. This is so quirk. I mean, cork sees itself.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a small group of, well, I know there's a small group of British historians and they're rather good at what they do. My own story is actually not wholly British because I grew up in Ireland in the southwest in a county called Cork. And I was actually thinking.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Study that it's wonderful called San Jose de Gracia in the highlands of Jalisco, and there we've got this really good qualitative micro study. I wouldn't just say yes, actually we don't want to have 6.7 children. Thank you very much. And so we will use contraception and sorry to the men, you're just going to have to like that. And why is that that globally correlates to primary education? And women's primary education, how many women for all the floors are getting through the doors for those first three years? By the end of the 60s, it's 73%. Again, go global to what was then a band of middle-income countries. There's nothing like it.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The pill, condoms, etc. Now at this stage, the obvious question was okay, well, hold on, so the church doesn't say anything, but on a micro level, inside families, conservative people used to until the 70s the total fertility rate was nearly seven for a family. And, you know, traditionally, having children, especially male children, is a symbol of success. And, you know, economically it used to be useful to have the spare hands on. So what changes at a micro level goes back to education women who are educated have far more autonomy to say yes to contraception. And you see this really clearly in rates of uptake of the pill, which in the 60s goes through the roof as soon as it is available. And we've got surveys from hospitals, people are there, do you take the pill? Yes or no? Yes, you do. And even in really conservative societies, there's a village which has been very...”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This again is the product really of two things which we've already been covering. And one is this really joined up non-coercive population control of the 70s and 80s, which was a global model. Mexico hosted the global conference on this, I think twice or three times. It got a prize from the UN. And how could it do this compared to the rest of Latin America? Two things. First of all, by keeping Catholicism out of political life more than almost anywhere else. And so whereas you have priests inveying against the evils of contraception, again, across most other Latin American societies, the revolution and the 19th century before it meant that Mexico has a unique degree of separation of church and state. As the church just doesn't say anything, as the government goes about aggressively pushing”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say that probably is part due to the urban rural divide and Mexico's population is now overwhelmingly urban. It tips in nineteen sixty for the first time there's more city dwellers than country dwellers. There is a chasm between education in the countryside and education in the city. So I would be interested in those numbers if you disaggregated them down to towns of I would say 4,000 plus and saw how that broke down because my bet would be that you would have far higher globally comparative or even beyond rates in the cities which as you say would make sense you think well hold in a minute you've got a country which invests by comparatives relatively well in education”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that Mexicans would absolutely agree with you, and I would beg to differ apart differ. The first thing I'd say is that since forever a key skill in migrating has precisely been English acquisition. And again, this is kind of global. I mean, you get this everywhere. There's this realization. And migration selects the most entrepreneurial, the most dynamic generally. And so this sector goes to the US either preps beforehand or else learns very quickly here. It's one of the reasons that they're economically so successful. Back in Mexico, 7% speaking English. Do you think by global comparatives that's low?”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mexico has a lot of human capital, and one of the reasons that this population control works is because you get far more people going through those critical first three years of primary school. Ideally, everyone goes through high school, No, but that's just not a global reality. And the key metric is how many people are you getting through three years of school, which teach you to read, write, and do rudimentary maths? And Mexico's record on that is far better than most middle-income comparatives. There's a really good study says especially women far more get those first three years than precisely actually in India, Kenya, and Egypt. We're looking now at this phase of takeoff. I'm talking about of the 70s and 80s. And so I think the human capital there is really there.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speed of growth. So maybe it's just that Mexico has actually gone a stage beyond India. India is, if you want, playing catch up. That's me thinking on my feet. What do you think?”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, maybe we can go back to that because that also fascinates me per capita income growth. Again, I think... As an extremely good question, I think that Mexico has an overall impressive medium-term GDP growth. And so at the end of the 60s, it's the 27th largest economy in the globe. Right now it's the 13th. The question becomes, really income distribution? So I think that if you look at it not in question of a few years or maybe a decade, but over a longer term, Mexican economic growth has been impressive. This isn't all down to hard work or smart policy. It's down to the great advantage of being next door to the world's largest market. But what it does mean is that you have maybe not the sort of extremely accelerated economic growth of right now in India, but post NAFTA, you actually do get quite a lot of quite fast sort of takeoff.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is steeper than anywhere in the world. That's speed. What does that mean? It means that you come to the 70s and just as population control starts to be a global concern, Mexico has this very joined up state. It's impoverished, but it's pretty joined up and takes a look at what they see as being a problem, which is population growth, putting too much strain on state infrastructure, social services. So we need to control that ASAP. And they put together this non-coercive campaign, unlike India. India identifies the same problem.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think Mexicans would see that as extraordinary success because Mexicans had the greatest demographic transition in history, you know, the way you get population growth and any species is basically an S-shaped curve in the right sort of right environment. And Mexico had this exceptionally steep curve and its population 1910 and 2000 increases 700%.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These factories on the border, tax free zones to assemble US components. Alcoholism, what remains the real economic stress with this huge outmig of young people expresses itself as it does in a lot of people with drinking, with what's interesting though is not with drugs. Alcohol is this very strong constant. I mean, you know, speaking as a Brit, speaking about other people's alcohol consumption is slightly hypocritical, and I'm not going to really go there. But it is interesting that historically while Mexico is a hard-drinking society, and we're going back to the colony now.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that villages should be subsidized and Mexican policymakers have realized that for a long time and done so. I think that last year Most. This depends very much where you go, but the reason half the men aren't there is precisely because they have migrated to work, whether it be migrating to cities, whether it be migrating to the north, and remittances are a key source. They are the lifeline for many villages. And that's the way it's been for nearly a century. And you get a certain amount of small scale cultivation, as always, of maize, tomato, squash, chilies, etc., or full sort of nutrient package. That's a small portion of what people are actually doing in villages. And that's increasingly uneconomic on a sort of market local level. And this is why you get this out-migration that you talk about. It's not just mail. It's also women ever since they set up Maquiladoras. There's been huge outflow of the more entrepreneurial to the”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sorry, I don't understand the last part of that question. When you say minimizing involvement, do you mean just stepping back and letting villagers get on with whatever their sort of collective goals are? I didn't quite understand.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, that's a good question. I would say no, actually, and that generally cargo holders work as intermediaries with the state in the 20th century. And so by investing in fireworks, buying a share in a bull for a fiesta and buying some pulke, whatever your local hooch is, and not just maintaining some stability, but doing it in part by bread and circuses gives a level of control and local nuts and bolts of knowledge, which the central government then uses as part of this basic quest for stability and with stability going all the way back to Porfiriato comes sort of development. And I think that this is a vast generalization the cargo system has great flaws, but the reason it endures is it also has great strength.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it is talking about human capital. I think that the cargo system actually, through its distribution of social capital, brings a lot of talented people to actually make the strange swap. I mean, the cargo system whereby an indigenous zone assume political office with absolutely zero payoff and at quite considerable cost in terms of cash and time, it makes sense because it brings the sort of brightest and best into office over and over again. This is when it works. This is a very broad generalization. The only real downside is a gerontocracy. And when you look around our political system, it's quite clear that gerontocracy isn't limited to societies which work the cargo system.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They want what every peasant sort of globally once before you get rapid economic change, which is what they call subsistence autonomy. What does that mean? I want the guarantee that I can grow enough food to get my family through the next harvest cycle. And you can see the logic to that. That's actually a more conservative and stable economic structure than relying on commercial food purchase when your own income is low and unstable. What I'm trying to say is it makes very good sense.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could say that the same about the Lebanese globally. I mean, you want the great diaspora merchants, you think, Armenia, you think Lebanon. And so I think they bring that. I don't think, I mean, you know, look at how much land there is in Lebanon, the Bakkar Valley is tiny. You can drive up and down it in about three hours if you're feeling quite brave on any given day. And so I don't think you're absolutely right. Land is not a Lebanese aim. In Mexico, as a very strongly peasant economy, peasant society until 1960s, really.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is used for precisely the sort of commercial farming which generates the sort of profits, economies of scale that sort of a command economy or China might actually achieve. And in some instances, that's not just run by the government, but it's run by the government as a sort of almost shell company or front for the major foreign corporations and the key example is from the US, Anderson, Clayton, one of the giants in food production, cotton, etc. They are, through the Mexican government, instructing a heroos exactly what to grow. So in the end, functionally, what's the difference and the pressure on the countryside and the attraction of the city means that you're going to get this sort of Chinese style and level of urbanization, irrespective of the agrarian reform.”
2026-03-25 · Conversations with Tyler · Paul Gillingham on Why Mexico Stays Together · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source