By the late 1970s the economy faced certain limitations in the economic model, at the same time the United States were troubled with a rising trade deficit, sparking an international financial period of uncertainty.
A devaluation in 1976 caused some panic until Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) discovered the Cantarell Field, boosting perspectives to exploit the soaring oil prices and the government decided to invest and change the economic model.
The expansion was mostly financed by loans and foreign money, as cheap credits from private banks and a blind faith from financiers allowed big sums of money to be invested easily, at the same time a free spending public sector began to invest in nearly anything within the nation.
When the world economy was hard hit by the interest rates hike from Paul Volcker in 1982 to stop inflation in the United States, those highly indebted nations like Mexico, which invested heavily to develop its field, were in crisis.
The effects of the budget cuts impacted the economy across the board, as the sale and privatization of the assets in the economy and job cuts pushed thousands of people out of work, government payroll shrank, and the ongoing restructuring of the private and public economy to face the new realities derived a series of reforms, aiming a growth dependent on trade, private investment and a bulk of sectors, this was called to cut the importance of the oil for the macroeconomy, and its dominance on the export earnings.