For any researcher doing detailed work about or in the region in east-central Mexico called the Huasteca, this book will be an invaluable aid. Its ten parts and forty-five chapters bring together much of the available census data and some basic historical material. The principal author, a geographer, directed a team including five other researchers. They offer information on the regional “system” which encompasses parts of five states, including its demographic composition and specific chapters on the principal productive activities: livestock, agriculture, fishing, industry, and trade.
The authors attempt an explicitly Marxist approach in their presentation, discussing the phenomenon of exploitation, and identifying some of the factors contributing to class struggle in the area. In the chapter on livestock this is particularly evident as differences between modern and traditional ranchers are further refined to separate small and large-scale operations. The authors reiterate the inherent laws of capitalist development which concentrate and centralize capital and which displace labor by machinery as part of the never ending quest for profit and greater capital accumulation.
Unfortunately, the book does not really integrate the sectoral descriptions into a unified picture of the Huasteca region. Furthermore, the descriptive chapters, while clearly based on a detailed examination of the available information and complemented by extensive field trips, fail to use the analytical framework of Marxism. Rather the authors seem to call for a better world, more complete and effective planning, and an end to the exploitative social relations that presently prevail. These rhetorical statements seem more appropriate for political discourse than for Marxist social science.
In spite of its Marxist pretensions, the book does not prepare the reader for the profound political, social, and economic changes which are imminent. The government recently announced the discovery of vast untapped deposits of oil and natural gas, the magnitude of which is still uncertain. It is clear, however, that the changes that the region will experience in the coming years in physical infrastructure, social structure, and productive activities will be far-reaching. Given the lengthy period of study and the resources dedicated to this research it is unfortunate that it only briefly discusses the region’s early developments in oil which led to the 1938 expropriation without considering its future potential and impact.
In fact, this omission is symptomatic of a basic problem with the book. Resource-rich and with a major port, the region’s residents are fundamentally poor. With new oil wells, pipelines, and unprecedented increases in economic activity and land and sea traffic, the region will provide an important contribution to the nation’s future development while it is likely that most of the local population will remain marginal. This series of essays, however, does not offer an understanding of the region’s true importance in Mexican history, past, present, and future.
