Reviewed by: Ferrocarril y modernización en Quito: Un cambio dramático entre 1905 y 1922 [The railway and modernization in Quito: A dramatic change between 1905 and 1922] by Wilson Miño Grijalva J. Justin Castro (bio) Ferrocarril y modernización en Quito: Un cambio dramático entre 1905 y 1922 [The railway and modernization in Quito: A dramatic change between 1905 and 1922] By Wilson Miño Grijalva. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2018. Pp. 79. Ferrocarril y modernización en Quito: Un cambio dramático entre 1905 y 1922 [The railway and modernization in Quito: A dramatic change between 1905 and 1922] By Wilson Miño Grijalva. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2018. Pp. 79. Wilson Miño Grivjalva's Ferrocarril y modernazición en Quito is a welcome addition to a growing number of historical works about transportation and urban development in parts of Latin America that have received little attention by historians to date. Miño Grivjalva is by no means the first person to examine how railways and urban development have intertwined, but few people have done so about Quito, the capital of Ecuador. His main objective is to show how the trans-Andean railway between the port city of Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador's interior capital, excited municipal officials to expand modernization campaigns focused on public works. Consisting of an introduction, three short chapters, and a conclusion, this brief book is a revised version of Miño Grijalva's master's thesis. It leans heavily, perhaps a little too heavily, on contextualizing Quito's modernization schemes through secondary works authored by historians José Kuis Romero, Jean-Paul Deler, Sofía Luzuriaga, and historical anthropologists Kim Clark and Eduardo Kingman. The book's first chapter provides a generalized exploration of the global context of modernization in Latin America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Modern public works projects moved slowly in Quito, in part because the city lacked rapid communication with the rest of the world via the ocean, something that the railway changed. In addition to providing greater access to global trade, the railroad also further solidified a national market. Miño Grivjalva covers familiar discussions about Latin American export economies—cocoa and coffee in the case of Ecuador—and foreign investment. He portrays Ecuadorians as uncritically incorporating foreign experts and technologies, which runs counter to most of the works published recently in the United States about the history of technology in Latin America. They tend to emphasize contested perspectives and projects, local innovation, and hybrid adaptations. Good examples are Beyond Imported Magic (MIT Press, 2014), edited by Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes, and monographs such as Eve Buckley's Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Rocio Gomez's Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), and Diana Montaño's Electrifying Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2021). [End Page 628] Miño Grivjalva argues in his second chapter that the railway did not begin modernization campaigns in Quito, but it did amplify trends underway. He writes that the resulting projects were collaborations between national and local officials, business owners, and bankers, but he emphasizes the municipal actors. Specifically, he focuses on Quito cantonal council president Andrade Marín. Marín held several positivistic and progressive ideals common to reformers across the western world at the turn of the twentieth century. He promoted hygiene measures, systematic streets and communications grids, and increased access to water. The railway made these projects easier to complete by providing easier access to new building materials such as cement, iron, and glass. This access also provoked increases in the manufacturing of textiles, foodstuffs, and beverages. The majority of Miño Grivjalva's original contributions are in his final chapter, where he uses municipal records to examine the expansion of potable water, the modernization of local marketplaces, the installation of toilets, the ordering of streets, the distribution of vaccines, and the growth of gas-powered vehicles, telephones, lighting, and electric trams. As Miño Grivjalva shows, local...
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Nov 23, 2021
Luis E Alvarado + 2
Open Access
