A few decades ago there were still beginnings and ends. Well-kept fences marked respected chronological frontiers. The historical landscape was tidy. The Industrial Revolution started in 1760 and the Middle Ages ended in 1453; the countries of Latin America were colonies until 1810 and from then on, republics. In that annus mirabilis, monarchical laws and institutions were discarded and republican ones substituted: we were born again. Now we know—or fear—that we change less than we care to boast about and that continuities are at least as important as departures. Méndez Beltran’s contribution will help those travelers who wish to climb over the Chilean fence of 1810 without risking mind and limb. She has addressed herself to a study of the laws and institutions—especially the Tribunal de Minería, 1787–1826—that regulated the mining industry in Chile from the closing Bourbon decades to the threshold of Portalian republicanism and beyond.
The Bourbon legislation was promulgated in Chile in 1787, after New Spain and Peru. It survived the vicissitudes of the Wars of Independence, was pressed into republican service in 1833—albeit by default and somewhat modified—and continued to discharge its duties ably, if not brilliantly, until it was finally superseded in 1888 by Chile’s first really new Código de Minería since the days of Charles III. To survive 101 years is certainly not a record, but it is not an indifferent performance for a legal corpus regulating the most important economic activity of the country.
This is a useful book despite its shortcomings, many of which are clearly not attributable to the author. It can fairly be said that this work suffers from the absence of a stern editor and a good publisher. The editor would have pruned the verbosity and the trivia without difficulty. He would also have eliminated superfluous listings and statistical tidbits in favor of austere descriptive paragraphs in simple Spanish prose. If encouraged, such an editor would have reminded the publisher that books of this kind are almost useless without an index.
Had Méndez Beltran’s work been published in a young country without a tradition of literary excellence and historical scholarship, it would have been best to ignore the flaws and lend as much encouragement as propriety permits. This is not the case. The book is graced by one of the prestigious imprints of the Western Hemisphere. More, this is one of the last books—if not the very last one—designed by Mauricio Amster, without doubt the most talented, elegant, and erudite book designer to work in Latin America during the last forty years. He is now dead, and it is a sobering reflection on the state of the University of Chile’s publishing house that this ineptly produced book is the best it could do with what was evidently a well-thought-out and professional design.
