“In the next years, the great challenge is to succeed in making these kinds of examples multiply very quickly,” Mr. Peña Nieto said this month.

Mexico fell into a deep recession in 2009 when American demand for Mexican-made imports collapsed. But the recovery under President Felipe Calderón has been notable, with growth expected to reach almost 4 percent this year, roughly twice that of the United States.

While Brazil is often thought of as Latin America’s economic marvel, Mexico’s economy outpaced Brazil’s last year and is expected to do so again this year. Business that had fled Mexico in favor of China has started to return, as the wage gap narrows and transportation and other costs rise. Auto manufacturing, for instance, is surging, with several new plants.

The Obama administration is not expected to let up on its security concerns — almost all of the administration members greeting Mr. Peña Nieto were from the security and foreign policy teams — but economic changes have already altered the relationship between the two nations in some concrete ways. Better opportunities for Mexicans at home, not just the flagging United States economy and stricter enforcement at the border, contributed to a significant slowdown in illegal immigration north in recent years.

A senior Obama administration official said Mr. Peña Nieto’s team made it clear from the start of talks after the July election that it would emphasize economic progress. But, the official said, “there will also clearly be things that we will want to see Mexico do, like accelerate judicial reforms, like being as open and as forward-leaning as possible on reducing human rights abuses when they occur, like ensuring that they do as much as they say they are going to do on corruption issues.”

Still, analysts suggested that Mexico’s president-elect was wise to play up a safer theme.

“The way to change the narrative is not to say, ‘Security is not as bad as it seems,’ ” said Christopher Wilson, a scholar at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. “The way to change the narrative is to talk about other things that are going well, and the economy is a good story now.”