There is a voluminous literature on Zapatismo during the Mexican Revolution. There is far less, however, on postrevolutionary Zapatismo, especially its hydraulic dimension. After all, the Zapatistas did not just demand land; they also demanded water, without which land was useless for agriculture. And in so doing, Zapatista villagers changed their relationship not only to their environment but also to the federal government.
This is the story that Salvador Salinas ably tells in Land, Liberty, and Water. The book builds on a growing historiography focusing on water and revolution in modern Mexico, most notably the scholarship of Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor, who has also worked on Morelos. Salinas draws on environmental history to show how pueblos exercised their newfound political power acquired through the 1910s Zapatista war for “land and liberty” in order to ensure continued access to critical natural resources, especially water, in the 1920s and 1930s (p. 4)....
