Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico is a pioneering history of environmental politics, the timber industry, and community activism in twentieth-century Mexico. Christopher R. Boyer explores these interdependent topics from the perspectives of three protagonist groups: federal forestry agents, commercial loggers, and the indigenous peoples of Michoacán and Chihuahua, two states whose forest products sustained Mexican development. Readers learn how generations of state conservationists balanced the commercial exploitation of woodlands with the community welfare of their inhabitants. Along the way, this environmental and political history offers welcome insights into the labor history of logging.
Political Landscapes is impressive in its scope. Few histories of modern Mexico explore such a broad period (1880–1992). Boyer balances the institutional history of Mexico’s forest service and its shifting resource-management strategies with the grassroots effects of both logging and conservation on contrasting regions. It is a uniquely Mexican tale because after the 1910...
