Despite the fact that there are indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica today who contend that they are still resisting the European conquest, Mexico and Central America have had a long history of connections to the West.
Indeed, Mexico's National University (founded 1551) is one of the Western hemisphere's oldest European-influenced universities. Thus, Western thought and culture have been influential in the sphere of economic ideas.
But contrary to the claims of those who critiqued Mexicans and Central Americans for imitating imported economic ideas that did not fit local conditions (e.g. dependency theorists such as Andre Gunder Frank, who charged that Latin American elites blindly adhered to wrong-headed free market ideals during the nineteenth-century export boom), foreign ideas have not been thoughtlessly adopted. Rather, they have been reformulated and adapted to fit the local and national contexts. This refashioning is partly a consequence of the distinct histories and cultures of the region. For example, a history of revolt and concern with unrest has helped to make social liberalism prominent in Mexico. Similarly, the region's proximity to the United States has inspired anti-imperialist discourse. Refashioning has also been inspired by politics. Foreign concepts have been “nationalized” by incorporating national symbols to give them greater credibility.Despite the fact that there are groups that adhere to divergent philosophies, some of which are shaped by certain Mesoamerican ideals and others that are influenced by strands of Western thought, there is a prominent materialist ethic in Mexico and Central America. This contention clashes with much of the earlier writings on the subject by contemporary actors and scholars. Colonial and national-era elites complained about natives' lack of individualism and materialism. Nineteenth-century liberals lamented about the Catholic Church's non-materialist philosophy and influence. Similarly, scholars have argued that a Protestant work ethic accounts for the United States' material progress and a lack of that ethic explains Latin America's sub-par performance.
However, recent historical scholarship on ethno-history, the Church's economic role in society and comparative histories of the Western Hemisphere has challenged the idea that a nonmaterialist philosophy predominated in Mexico and Central America.Another similarity is that trends in economic ideas have evolved in related ways in both regions. Nevertheless, public economic discourse and academic economics are much more developed in Mexico than Central America. Indeed, leading twentieth-century Latin America economic journals, such as Trimestre Economico [Economic Quarterly], and publishing houses for economic texts, e.g. Fondo de Cultura Economica [Collection in Economic Culture], are Mexican. This contrast between the regions is largely a consequence of the fact that intellectual culture (the press, the arts, etc.) and academia are more established in Mexico than Central America, a difference stemming from the two regions' contrasting development. Despite the fact that both have high degrees of inequality, Mexico is one of the wealthiest parts of Latin America (today some predict it will shoot ahead of Brazil in coming decades), and Central America, which is comprised of several small nations, is one of the poorest.