Apostle of Progress: Modesto C. Rolland, Global Progressivism, and the Engineering of Revolutionary Mexico

Abstract

Apostle of Progress is a biography of Modesto C. Rolland, a propagandist of the Mexican Revolution and a noted civil engineer who played a prominent role in the modernization of Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in 1881 in La Paz, in what was then the remote territory of Baja California, he was the son of a French immigrant and a Mexican mother. Rolland pursued his university studies and early career under the dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz before supporting the revolutionary leader Francisco I. Madero, whose coalition overthrew Díaz in 1911. At that time, Rolland had already gained recognition as a leader in construction with reinforced concrete. After Madero's overthrow and assassination in February 1913, Rolland served as a communications officer for the Constitutionalists, an alliance arrayed against General Victoriano Huerta's new dictatorship. In particular, he became a propagandist for the Constitutionalists in the United States and, after 1915, an important cog in the eventual government of President Venustiano Carranza. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Rolland assisted the government in numerous projects: agrarian reforms, infrastructure projects, and, most importantly, the development of ports, particularly in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Among many other buildings, he designed Mexico City's Plaza de Toros, the world's largest bullfighting arena (built for 40,000 spectators), as well as the stadium in Xalapa, Veracruz. As Justin Castro argues, “Adapting ideas and technologies from around the world, especially the West, Rolland strove to create a more secure Mexican sovereignty and to increase Mexican unity through infrastructure, shared space, the adoption of foreign ideas, and the creation of nationalist sentiment” (p. 236).Castro's work seeks to rescue Rolland from historiographical oblivion by casting him as a representative of the Mexican manifestation of Progressivism. Thus, Rolland's life and career emerges in this book as an example of a transnational political movement that transformed first the United States and then Mexico, where Progressivism still flourished in the 1920s and 1930s after it had already ended in the United States. Progressivism focused primarily on material rather than political innovation: as Castro states, “Rolland often referred to himself as apolitical, and he does appear in some way to have disliked politics, but he was politically astute” (p. xviii). To Rolland—as to the Porfirian científicos—politics featured problems to be solved more than a discursive space. In Castro's mind, Progressivism distinguished the Mexican Revolution from the almost contemporaneous (and Marxist) Russian Revolution. Although it is fair to say that some Mexican engineers saw things differently: for example, the self-styled socialist Marte R. Gómez, a friend of Diego Rivera's and governor of Tamaulipas under President Lázaro Cárdenas.In Castro's words, “Recounting the story of the revolution without engineers and other mid-level planners makes for a very incomplete understanding of the revolution and the construction of modern Mexico” (p. xxii). It is difficult not to agree: there were, of course, other, more political ingenieros who played prominent roles in the revolutionary decades and who still await in-depth study. The most famous of these engineers was probably Alberto J. Pani, a fellow civil engineer who headed several federal ministries over the course of a decade, including the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Labor, the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and the Treasury. Another example was Luis L. León, a close friend and ally of presidents Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles and one of the founders of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, the precursor of today's Partido Revolucionario Institucional. Finally, the Carrancista presidential candidate Ignacio L. Bonillas was also an engineer—the one of his craft who came closest to the seat of power. But Rolland threw his support behind General Salvador Alvarado, one of three victorious generals who opposed Bonillas's candidacy and someone who shared Rolland's admiration of US Progressivism (p. 117).Castro's book is certainly an invitation to future studies of engineers and other highly educated (and mostly creole) professionals who played a significant role in the rebuilding of the Mexican state after the cataclysmic violence, hunger, and disease of the 1910s. Written in accessible prose and without jargon, it joins our growing corpus of biographical works on the Mexican Revolution, and its focus on an overlooked but important civil engineer adds a new dimension to our knowledge of the process of reconstruction.