During the late sixteenth century Coalcomán and Motines formed an administrative unit within New Spain. Today the area is the northern Pacific coast of Michoacán, Mexico. Donald Brand, a cultural geographer at the University of Texas, directed comprehensive explorations here in the summers of 1950 and 1951 involving colleagues and graduate students. Most of the field reports are published in the present volume.
The introduction details the mechanics of the exploration, including not only places visited, but the elevations, flora, fauna, and food available along the way. One member even contributes a literally firsthand account of a finger-bite by a scorpion, the often lethal Centruroides limpidus: “… less than five minutes later I could feel a tingling in my toes and the other hand.… In about 20 minutes my hands and feet felt as though they were asleep.… I tried to drink water but it had a very unpleasant taste … of corroded brass” (p. 22).
In Part I Brand charts the vicissitudes of the area like an Old Testament prophet, noting drought and flood, epidemics, and plagues of locusts. Obviously the product of hundreds of hours of patient research, this section ranks him among the half-dozen U. S. scholars on intimate terms with the Archivo General de la Nación and other Mexican sources.
From the Spanish Conquest until 1950 the chronicle of statistics requires little imagination to clothe it: “The most exact census to date was made of Michoacán population in the spring of 1868, according to which the district of Coalcomán possessed 9,573 inhabitants of which only 342 could read” (p. 101). Only once does Brand lose his dispassionate attitude:
The long and sordid story of those who betrayed their own revolution needs to be told in detail for many parts of Mexico. The information is available in many places, but few Mexicans yet dare to tell the story. We have neither the time nor the space to narrate what we have uncovered concerning land holdings in the valleys of the Coahuayana, Maquilí, and Ostula rivers. However, we should mention here that highly placed and influential persons in Colima and Mexico City have been involved as well as comparatively small local “chiselers” (pp. 113-114).
Apparently as yet few North Americans as well as Mexicans dare tell the story.
Part II, about half of the book, is devoted to the natural history of the area. Geology, paleontology, and physiography are covered by Fred Bullard and Coyle Singletary; botany by Billie Turner and Brand; zoology by Brand, James Peters, and Robert Storer. An appendix holds a sketchy archaeological survey report by José Corona Núñez in Spanish.
Generally the treatment is thorough. Excellent bibliographies in both sections will be of enormous value for students of the area as will the many questions posed. For students of other parts of Mexico the work of Brand and his colleagues will serve as a model.
