Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico by Mikael Wolfe

Abstract

Reviewed by: Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico by Mikael Wolfe Jacob Blanc Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico. By Mikael Wolfe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017, p. 336. $26.95. Mikael Wolfe has provided an entirely original framework for understanding the largest and most emblematic achievement of the Mexican Revolution: the massive redistribution of land. As Wolfe argues in Watering the Revolution, the dismantling of landed estates into communally held ejidos was only half the battle. The second, more complex task was to actually make, and to keep, the land productive. In practice, this meant water. Over the course of the twentieth century, the response to this challenge materialized as an evolving series of efforts to modernize the control and dispersal of water. Focusing on the Laguna region that straddles the states of Durango and Coahuila in north-central Mexico, Wolfe deftly shows how the redistribution of land (reparto de tierra) was inextricably linked to—and in the end, undermined by—the redistribution of water (reparto de agua). Tracing the continuity of technocratic attempts at water management across numerous political contexts—from the Cárdenas-era agrarian reforms of the 1930s, through the so-called Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s, and the neoliberalizing policies of the 1980s and beyond—Wolfe argues that the incompatibility between the reparto de tierra and the reparto de agua weakened the viability of agrarian reform and, in a larger sense, doomed Mexico to a seemingly endless cycle of ecological crisis. To be sure, Wolfe acknowledges the long-standing natural components of these issues, as regions like the Laguna had confronted drought and inconsistent river flows for generations. What changed after the Mexican Revolution was not necessarily the root causes of environmental crisis, but rather how state attempts to alleviate the crisis—and in turn, fulfill the legacy of the Revolution—served to only make matters worse. Concrete-lined canals, motorized groundwater pumps, and most controversially, high dams became the avenues through which short-term planning overrode long-term sustainability. The unequal redistribution of water exacerbated social inequality in the countryside by establishing what Wolfe calls "water haves" and "water have-nots." Whereas in theory the redistribution of land chipped away at the traditional power of the latifundio land-holding elite, Wolfe shows that disparate access to water created a new dominant class: the acuifundio. And while it might be tempting to assume that the water have-nots (ejidatarios for the most part) were staunchly anti-technology or anti-modernization, Wolfe's well-researched book shows that for many local communities, projects like the Nazas River dam represented a logical next step toward fulfilling the promise of the Mexican Revolution. Yet these liquid fruits of the Revolution were accessible only to a select few – namely, [End Page 575] the businessmen, politicians, and engineers who benefitted from the acuifundio. Seen together, these perspectives shed important new light on the limitations and contradictions of post-revolutionary Mexico. As a case study on the short-sightedness of natural resource management, Wolfe greatly advances an emerging body of scholarship – such as Eve Buckley's work on Brazil – on the envirotechnical history of Latin America. Watering the Revolution is a must-read for Mexicanists, for environmental historians of Latin America more broadly, and for political ecologists. While Wolfe's primary contribution—foregrounding the history of water in a scholarly field that has focused almost exclusively on land—is strongly stated and developed, his sources and methods are less clear. Gestures to archives and document bases in Mexico and the United States are sprinkled throughout the book, yet the precise methodology remains opaque. Given the extraordinary amount of data compiled (economic, ecological, and agricultural, among others), the lack of a roadmap for sources is a bit disorienting. Notwithstanding this structural concern, Wolfe has given us an innovative and highly engaging study that will be of interest for generations to come, in no small measure because his cautionary tale of ecological mismanagement will likely only become more relevant as time goes on. [End Page 576] Jacob Blanc School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of...