Editor’s Note: NGI’s Mexico Gas Price Index, a leader tracking Mexico natural gas market reform, is offering the following column by Eduardo Prud’homme as part of a regular series on understanding this process.

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The opinions and positions expressed by Prud’homme do not necessarily reflect the views of NGI’s Mexico Gas Price Index.

Mexican politicians have long insisted that the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a thin stretch of land that runs 120 miles from coast to coast, should compete with the Panama Canal as a transoceanic economic and transit zone. The isthmus is also symbolic: it serves as the division between North America and Central America, between modern, industrial Mexico and a rural place beset by a stifling lack of investment. Like past presidents, President López...