The History of Golf in Mexico

Abstract

Chapter 1 analyzes the history of golf in Mexico, showing a long-term pattern of class and racialized dynamics associated to the sport. The first part describes how wealthy Anglo-American immigrants brought golf to late nineteenth-century Mexico. This section explains how the early development of golf was connected to the spread of modernity, capitalism, and Anglo-American racialized ideas, dynamics that informed the creation of a class- and race-based privileged space. The second part of the chapter chronicles the transformation that golf experienced after the 1940s when a growing number of affluent Mexicans joined this sport. The change, however, did not eradicate some of the early restrictive dynamics. The chapter ends by showing how the neoliberal policies introduced by the late 1980s significantly expanded the number of golf clubs existing in the country. Despite the considerable expansion, golf is still the preserve of the upper middle and upper classes in today’s Mexico.