Description
Book SynopsisIn this environmental history of twentieth-century Mexico, Christopher R. Boyer conceptualizes the forests of Chihuahua and Michoacán as political landscapes. Conflicts among local landowners, the federal government and timber companies politicized these geographies, demonstrating the crucial role that social forces play in the construction of environments.
Trade Review"Christopher R. Boyer’s superb history of forests, forestry, and conservation in Mexico makes innovative contributions to the historiography of the Mexican Revolution and postrevolutionary state formation, as well as to Mexico’s environmental history." -- Thomas Klubock * American Historical Review *
"Boyer’s book is a significant accomplishment because it points a practical way forward in ongoing policy debates over the use of Mexico’s temperate forests—which will always represent contested, political landscapes—as well as reinforcing the nation’s overwhelming drive toward modernity over the long arc of the twentieth century." -- Evan R. Ward * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"This volume offers a much-needed, detailed historiography of Mexican forestry.... [T]he analysis of community forestry, especially, contains offerings that make the read worthwhile." -- Nora Haenn * Agricultural History *
"Documenting one hundred years of forest history is not easy, but Boyer has accomplished it in a book that has much to recommend it for classroom use.... [A]n excellent book that includes something not typical in history texts: a dose of humor. If you have never heard of 'pyromaniac campesinos' (p. 97), pick up this book." -- Myma Santiago * The History Teacher *
"
Political Landscapes is an incredible work of scholarship and an energetic example of environmental history’s potential.... You need not be interested in Mexico or even in forests to appreciate how this book excavates the repeating patterns of environmental history as a more complete rendering of the past." -- Emily Wakild * Environmental History *
"[A]n impressive and important contribution to a number of fields. It will be necessary reading for scholars of Latin American environmental history, and deserves an audience among broad-minded policy-makers concerned with contemporary ecological problems. It will also be of great interest to historians of rural transformations and state formation in modern Mexico. The book’s clear prose and able blend of national trends with compelling local detail will benefit students in upper-level undergraduate courses and above." -- Thomas Rath * Journal of Latin American Studies *
"Boyer’s book represents a signal achievement by persuasively documenting the ways forests in Mexico were shaped less by market forces, management policies, or population pressures than by the effects of political negotiation among the people and institutions that vied to determine how and for whose benefit they would be used. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in postrevolutionary Mexico and is ideal for use in upper-division undergraduate classes." -- Steven J. Bachelor * The Latin Americanist *
"Christopher R. Boyer has written an empirically rich, conceptually sophisticated, and analytically sharp history of Mexico’s forests from the era of Porfirian development to the neoliberal present." -- Matthew Vitz * EIAL *
"A pioneering history of environmental politics, the timber industry, and community activism in twentieth-century Mexico. . . . Impressive in its scope. Few histories of modern Mexico explore such a broad period." -- Michael Snodgrass * Labor *
Table of ContentsIllustrations xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
Part I. The Making of Revolutionary Forestry
1. The Commodification of Nature, 1880–1910 25
2. Revolution and Regulation, 1910–1928 60
3. Revolutionary Forestry, 1928–1942 93
Part II. The Development Imperative
4. Industrial Forests, 1942–1958 129
5. The Ecology of Development, 1952–1972 167
6. The Romance of State Forestry, 1972–1992 203
Conclusion. Slivers of Hope in the Neoliberal Forest 239
Appendix 1. Federal Forestry Codes, 1926–2008 259
Appendix 2. UIEFs, 1945–1986 261
Notes 263
Bibliography 309
Index 327
