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Despite Mexico sharing borders with three other countries, as recently as the beginning of the 1970s, there still predominated the idea that the only important border was the one with the United States. Chiapas, at the southern end of Mexico, constituted a territory apart, to which one could always turn in search of natural resources and political favors, but about which federal officials had little interest. As new variables appeared on the horizon—connected to both petroleum and hydroelectric exploitation and the Central American conflicts, as well as to the adjustments within the Mexico's political class—the scene began to alter, and the region went from abandonment to being of strategic interest. This work focuses on these considerations, and it seeks to prove that, by the beginning of the 1990s, the relationship between the federal and the state government spheres had already changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]