Summary

The Ministry of Communications and Public Works, the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas, or SCOP, was a powerful institution that accompanied Mexico along important historic eras: the Porfiriato, or rule by Porfirio Díaz; the Mexican Revolution; the reconstruction decades of the 1920s and 1930s; World War II; and the subsequent decades of economic, demographic, and political growth. SCOP responded to global and political crises by helping defend and protect the nation in a unique way: by ensuring that Mexico had strong and stable buildings, rivers, causeways, etc. SCOP also unified Mexico from the inside, quite literary. Since 1861, when the Ministry was established, to 1958, when it dissolved and became the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, progress was measured in the number of kilometers of paved roads and telegraph and telephone lines, in the number of bridges, damns, tunnels, canals, and radio stations in operation, as well as in the state of new or restored government offices, hospitals, post offices, telegraph buildings, schools, and other public structures it was commanded to construct.

The Ministry was responsible for constructing and maintaining a wide range of public services, from the telegraph to the drainage system, to canal and tunnel construction, to the management of ports and building government schools. Understanding its impact, then, requires bringing together the role that art, architecture, local and regional political forces, international events, and new advances in technology and mass communication had on Mexican society. In a more deliberate way than other government bodies, SCOP was in a perpetual state of revision and renewal; the word most frequently used to describe new and existing projects was transformation. Every action the Ministry took was intended to integrate and unify the nation, both symbolically and factually. SCOP leaders always looked to the future and worked to ensure that as a nation Mexico was well connected and prepared for what was to come.