How can I find a list of US-based or US-backed corporations doing business in Oaxaca, Mexico? Something like the Directory of American Businesses in Mexico would be a good jumping off point, but I don't have access to it. The American Mexico Chamber of Commerce has a broad listing of American companies doing work in Mexico, but it is not specific to Oaxaca and would require quite a bit more digging to match this.
I should be able to find the banks doing business in Mexico, and specifically in Oaxaca, but could use a hand to find leads on corporations doing other types of work in Oaxaca -- for example, mining, agri-business, weapon suppliers/manufacturers to federal or state forces, fisheries, apparel/clothing manufacturing or assembly, the 'maquiladora industry', etc etc.
Pls help me find US companies with ties to Oaxaca.
One possibility is the "Full Text Search" in www.sec.gov "Edgar" database. This is for publicly traded companies only, so it would not help you find privately held companies. The search: oaxaca AND clothing gets 3 hits (must capitalize AND for it to work - lower case and gets 8000 hits because it also gets documents with only ONE of the words)
oaxaca AND assembly gets 4 hits, oaxaca AND maquiladora also gets 4, oaxaca AND mining gets 136 hits, oaxaca AND agro* gets 4 hits, oaxaca AND agri*gets 12 hits, and oaxaca AND mineral* gets 120 hits. These are by no means simple lists of US companies doing business in Oaxaca, but the fact that the city is mentioned in the companies' reports to the Securities & Exchange Commission may give you some helpful leads.
I suspect you will need to go to a library or use a library card to get remote access to commercial databases. Business Source Premier, available at many public libraries and probably many more academic libraries, does not seem to have much strictly on Oaxaca. Searching oaxaca and invest* I got 22 articles, some of which talk about a person named Oaxaca. Oaxaca and US or oaxaca and u s both get zero. Oaxaca and american gets 41 hits, but mostly because "American" is in the journal title; limiting to subject words gets zero, and even to Abstract words gets 14 articles that seem not to have much on US investment. Oaxaca and companies gets 24 hits, but they seem mainly about tourism.
Still in Business Source Premier, the search oaxaca and US companies, in "ALL Text" gets 8 hits, but they seem to be some of the same as in the earlier searches. oaxaca and US invest* gets 3 articles. Only the first one comes at all close: Country Profile: 2005 Mexico. Country Profile. Mexico, 2005, Preceding p1-59, 62p, 43 charts, 4 graphs, 2 maps. But it does not name companies, and only mentions Oaxaca in a paragraph on page 27 (pdf page 29), about the general economic situation in regions of Mexico.
mexico and US invest* gets 9 hits in the default search and 126 if you search ALL Text. But it's likely that this will take a long search in business databases, unless you are near a library that has that Directory of American Businesses in Mexico. The nearest I find to a likely list of places is Worldcat(OCLC) number 30710755, Compañías americanas que operan en México = American companies operating in Mexico /
Corp Author(s): American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico. Mexico, D.F. : The Chamber Year: 1900s-1980s. Libraries claiming to have this are:
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MD NATIONAL SECURITY AG NSA
AZ ARIZONA STATE UNIV v.8(1991) AZS
AZ UNIV OF ARIZONA AZU
CA LOS ANGELES PUB LIBR LPU
CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE CUI
CA UNIV OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO CUS
CA UNIV OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CSL
DC LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DLC
DC US CENT INTELLIGENCE AG LCI
IL CHICAGO PUB LIBR 1995- CGP
LA TULANE UNIV LRU
MN MINNEAPOLIS PUB LIBR MPI
NM UNIV OF NEW MEXICO IQU
NY NEW YORK PUB LIBR RES LIBR NYP
PA DICKINSON COL DKC
TX HIDALGO CNTY LIBR SYST HDL
TX SAINT MARY'S UNIV SNM
TX UNIV OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN 1987-1993 IXA
TX UNIV OF TEXAS AT EL PASO TXU
TX UNIV OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO TXJ
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The later version of this, Directory of American companies operating in Mexico; Lib of Congress Card Number 97656108; (OCoLC)36248054, appears to only be cataloged at the Library of Congress. But it would not hurt to check some of those 20 places above, that list the earlier title. Possibly they have it uncataloged.
I also tried Factiva (major business database at large academic libraries - maybe at NYPL?), searching latest 2 years: oaxaca and multinational*. I got 58 hits, and even though lists of companies don't tend to pop out in searches like this, even in the full text, there seem to be secondary references. For example in hit no. 5,
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"Mexican gov't says cops will stay in Oaxaca till job is done" 1108 words 7 November 2006 EFE News Service English (c) Copyright 2006. EFE News Service. All rights reserved;
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mentions the "APPO coalition of grassroots, civic and peasant groups..." and the '... "Revolutionary Coordination"...'. It says, "Now in their sights, according to the "insurgents" themselves, are the 40 biggest corporations operating in Mexico - many of them multinationals - along with "spurious" state institutions the rebels blame for leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's loss in the July 2 presidential election."
One of our Journalism experts here at U of MD tells me that Factiva is a more complete newspaper source than is Lexis Academic. But Lexis Academic is also at many academic libraries, and you may want to give it a try also, to get leads on groups that may have compiled names of companies. In public libraries, even small ones, you are fairly sure to have access at least to some online news sources - Proquest Newspapers is a common one. I find that it's good to try a number of databases, because different indexers see different things, and some will catch information that others miss - or at least will classify subjects closer to the way you or I do.
Jim Miller
jmiller2@umd.edu