In the 1950s the Mexican government built an industrial city, Ciudad Alemán (pop. 12,000 in 1970) in the state of Morelos. Frank C. Miller’s short monograph is an attempt to explain the socioeconomic effects (occupational structure, social mobility and stratification, migration patterns) of the new city on the surrounding communities. More specifically, the study aims to develop a model that might be useful to evaluate large-scale development projects and to understand “the effects of rapid technological change . . . and adaptive strategies that people use to cope with it” (p. 4). Unfortunately, the eleven mini-chapters of this monograph fall short of these goals and, instead, end up presenting descriptive materials of doubtful relevance interlaced with social science abc’s (explanation of Gutman scaling) and common knowledge about Mexico. The expert will profit much more by reading the doctoral dissertations written by the University of Minnesota anthropology students from which Miller summarizes, the only interesting pages to be found in this book.
The study about Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico) is even more disappointing. John A. Price, also an anthropologist, has written an incredible hodge-podge collection of stories, historical materials, and anecdotes (including a Caesar salad recipe for culinary scholars, p. 56). The first two chapters, “The Urbanization of Northern Mexico” and “The Urbanization of Baja California,” are unrelated to the major themes in current social science literature on urbanization such as adaptation to city life, occupational structure, etc. Then, the reader is introduced to “Contemporary Tijuana,” in a chapter that in all probability would have been rejected by the editors of the tourism sections of average newspapers. The only salvageable parts of this book appear in Chapter 5, "The Drug Traffic of Tijuana,” and in Chapter 6, “Life in Tijuana’s Prison,” even if the information contained in Chapter 5 had already been published elsewhere. The rest of the book continues to present unrelated materials, for example, one chapter about the nearby town of Tecate. In sum, this is a book without a theme, without methodology, and with little data.