Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico

While historians in general consider the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) as the crucial turning point in modern Mexican history, they continue to debate to what degree that decade-long conflict represented fundamental change or continuity in the twentieth-century trajectory of the nation's political and economic institutions. The emergence of environmental history in the past 30 years offers another vantage point for assessing this question. Christopher R. Boyer's Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico contends that while the developmental priorities of the post–World War II Mexican government mirrored the neocolonial policies of the Porfiriato, the revolution infused national forestry conservation policies with a social conscience in theory, if not always in practice. Drawing on his intimate understanding of the temperate forests of Chihuahua and Michoacán, as well as a broad documentary base of national, state, and local archives specific to the question of...