‘Neither motorists nor pedestrians obey the rules’: Transit law,public safety,and the policing of Northern Mexico’s roads,1920s–1950s

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century, Mexican authorities implemented transit laws to regulate motor traffic and address concerns about road safety. The northern city of Monterrey, Nuevo León serves as a case study for this process. Monterrey’s location at the junction of two major national highways, as well as its proximity to the United States, made it an important site for cross-border trade and tourism. Local officials in Monterrey developed US-inspired rules to modernise traffic patterns and bolster tourism. This essay examines how state authorities in Nuevo León coped with an influx in regional motor traffic, passing transit laws that reflected ideological priorities in favour of US-style economic development and technological modernisation.