What does Mexico produce and export?

The Sierra Madre Occidental is threaded with epithermal veins, formed where hot mineral-bearing water rose through volcanic rock and deposited silver near the surface. Spanish miners found them in the 1540s at Zacatecas and Guanajuato, and the silver peso minted from that ore circulated as a world currency for three hundred years, reaching China through Manila. The same districts, plus Fresnillo and the Sonoran belt, are still being mined. Mexico produced 24% of the world's silver in 2025 (USGS) and held 9.2% of world silver export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Because silver often occurs with base metals, much of it comes out of lead and zinc operations rather than dedicated silver mines, and gold frequently comes with it: 4.2% of world gold production in 2025 (USGS).

Copper is a different geology and a shorter history. The porphyry belt that runs through Arizona continues south into Sonora, where Buenavista del Cobre has been worked as an open pit since the late nineteenth century. Mexico held 3.5% of world copper export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), mostly as concentrate and cathode moving north.

Maize was domesticated from teosinte in southern Mexico roughly nine thousand years ago, and the country still grows a large crop: 2.0% of the world total in 2024 (FAOSTAT). It is nonetheless the largest buyer of foreign corn by value, at 9.8% of world corn import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). The two facts are not in conflict. Mexican farms grow white maize for tortillas and masa, treated as a food crop and supported as one; the imports are yellow dent corn from the United States for animal feed, starch and sweeteners, a trade that expanded after tariffs were removed under the North American trade agreement in the 1990s. Feed demand explains the soybean purchases too, at 3.7% of world soybean import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Cane grown in Veracruz and the Gulf lowlands gave 3.0% of world sugar production in 2023 (FAOSTAT).