The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires by Terry Rugeley

Abstract

The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires, by Terry Rugeley. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2014. 355 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). Tabasco was never Mexico's most hospitable region. Searing heat, infectious diseases, and unpredictable floodwaters were among hazards facing inhabitants of this southeastern Mexican state. But environment proved even more vexing for Tabasco's would-be conquerors. In this lively history, Terry Rugeley argues that Tabasco's formidable terrain and tenacious inhabitants managed to frustrate every invader's attempt to tame region between end of Spanish rule and Mexican Revolution. The desire for autonomy and the need to expel some unwanted intruder, more than liberalism, conservatism, or any of ascendant ideologies of era constituted defining dynamic (4) of Tabascan history and culture during era. Through exhaustive research, Rugeley has stitched fragments of Tabasco's historical record--virtually any paper that did not find its way out of Tabasco before 1880s has been destroyed (5)--into a comprehensive history of region from pre-Hispanic period to 1920s, with an emphasis on tumultuous nineteenth century. The author's sources range from official correspondence, archived in Mexico City, Merida, New Orleans, and Washington, DC, to travelers' accounts, short-lived regional newspapers, and novels--any written source, it seems, that offered a glimpse into this historical black box. If book sometimes feels encyclopedic in its recounting of numerous foreign incursions and local power struggles, level of detail seems justified, given how little we know about this vital region. While land often plays a leading role in histories of other rural Mexican regions, water is protagonist in Tabasco. Indeed, Tabasco occupies little more than one percent of Mexico's national territory, but contains one-third of country's hydraulic resources. Much of state is covered by a vast swamp lying between Gulf of Mexico and highlands of Chiapas, penetrable only by region's mighty rivers--the Usumacinta, Grijalva, and Tonala--whose recurring floods and frequent course changes further limited availability of arable land and made any human settlement precarious. These conditions had profound effects on Tabasco's economic and political development during colonial and early national periods. For one, they prevented establishment of large agricultural estates; indeed, majority of cacao production, Tabasco's most significant export crop, lay in hands of Indigenous and mixed-race smallholders at end of colonial era. …