Mexico's advocacy to consider the human implications of the international monetary and financial systems at the Bretton Woods conference

This chapter develops a critical reframing that locates Mexico’s articulation for a fairer, more inclusive, and more sustainable approach to the international economic system at the Bretton Woods Conference. The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (July of 1944) established the basis for the international postwar economic system. The chapter analyzes Mexico’s participation by drawing on the archival evidence issued by the US government in 1948 and the Mexican officials involved at the time. In addition, a study of Mexican history is presented to provide real context to the current state of the literature, and specifically an intervention to the literature in North America that considers Mexico’s position at the Bretton Woods Conference. That literature has been based uniquely on Mexico’s foreign relations during a few decades of the twentieth century, ignoring the guiding principles of the Mexican foreign policy since the early nineteenth century.