El vacio imaginario: Geopolitica de la ocupacion territorial en el Caribe oriental mexicano

Book Reviews / National Period

395'

E'l vado imagil/ario: Geopolitiw de La oel/pacion territoriaL en eL Caribe orientaLmexicano. Edited by GABRIEL AARON MAcIAS ZAPATA. Coleccion Peninsular, Archipelago. Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social, H. Congreso del Estado de Quintana Roo, X Legislatura, 2004. Maps. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. 459 pp. Paper. This collection focuses on the part of the Yucatan Peninsula that became the state of Quintana Roo. The title was chosen because rulers and elites often treated the region as jf it were unoccupied, while in reality a number of }\tIaya lived there beyond the con­ trol of government. In the subtitle, geopoLitics reAects the importance that colonial and republican governments gave to the strategic uecessity of occupying it. Yet, occupation was dirficult and expensive because the small population and insignificant commercial activity produced a limited tax base. Truly, asJuan Bautista Alberdi said, "to govern is to populate." Governments had to offer incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to invest in economic activity. One popular incentive was land, which inevitahly resulted in conflict or disagreement with the j\·1aya living in the region. The book therefore concentrates on the interplay of government policies, entrepreneurial activity, and local people. Although coverage begins with the Spanish Conquest, the authors devote only one chapter to the colonial period before jumping to the late nineteenth century. Clearly, the sparse population of the region during the four centuries after the conquest diminishes the area's importance, since history is about people and not places. Still, the book would have been enh;mced hy more detailed treatment of the first hal Fof the nineteenth cen­ tury, when the independent government introduced new policies designed to stimulate economic activity and build the region's infrastructure. In the lone chapter on the colo­ nial period, Pedro Bracamonte y Sosa points out that the eastern half of the peninsula came to serve as a refuge for 1\1aya who sought to escape the colonia I regime or who had never been conquered. After 1590, the government considered this territory unpopu­ lated, but periodic military incursions revealed the opposite. The increasing threat of English expansion in the late colonial period pushed the government to consider ways to control the region and increase the size of the Spanish population at Bacalar, hut noth­ ingworked. Gabriel Aaron iVlacias Zapata's detailed study of the founding of Payo Obispo (modern-day Chetnmal) occupies almost one-third of the volume. Payo Obispo was established in 1898 as a customhouse to collect taxes on exports of logwood (}-faenw­ toxyLw'tl campecIJianurJl, or palo de tinte), but logwood exports were quickly surpassed by chicle and copra, which were not so easy to control from Chetumal Bay. As a result, other small towns developed on the east coast, breaking Payo Obispo's monopoly on extractive activities. The author pays a great deal of attention to the development of hinterlands to support these towns and to ejidos that were granted to the Maya in the region. The remaining shorter essays are all are useful contributions to the study of the region. Nlartha Herminia Villalobos Gonzalez presents a detailed study of state land policy, showing that the Porfirian government (ailed in its attempt to give possession of Maya land to non indigenous entrepreneurs. Martin Ramos Martinez studies Cozumel,

HAHR! May

which o'A'ed its twentieth-century growth to the rise of tbe chicle economy on the mJin­ bnd and then to small concerns producing consumer goods. The last four essJys deal with Quintana Roo since J960. Marta Patricia Mendoza Ramirez studies the policies designed to populate Quintana Roo after J960. In this period, the government settled people in the region and encouraged agriculture and livestock rather than tne exploitation offorest resources. During the presidency of Gus­ tJVO Diaz Ordaz (1964 -70), the government's need for foreign exchange led to the deci­ sion to turn Cancun into a tourist mecca. Bonnie LUclJ Campos Camara explores the development of tourist centers on the east coast of the peninsuLa, especially XcaLat. Tne area tirst developed to export copra, out when Hurricane Janet destroyed the coconut palms in 1955, it cleared tne way-literaJly-for the tourist industry to take hold. Birgit Schmook and Angelica Kavarro study the survival struggles of the ejiditarios of X-hazil. These MJya held on to enough forest land to allow them to diversify their economy before deforestation made it too late to do so. Leydi Hernandez Trueba's con­ cluding chapter is a lengthy studyofChetumal and its role as both state capital and com­ mercial hub of tne east coast. The book covers a wide range of largely unstudied history. Although one would have liked to see comparison with other similar regjons in Latin America, especially the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, the essays are significant additions to the historiogra­ phy of twentieth-century Mexico. ROBERT W. PATCH, University of California, Riverside 00110.1215/00182168-2006-148

Bittel' Harvest: The Social ]'lllmformatioll of!Horelos, ]vlexico, and the 01 igim ofthe 0

By PAUL HART. Albuquerque: University of New

Zapatista Revolution,

J840- J910.

Mexico Press,

Photographs. Illustration. ,'Vlaps. Appendix. Notes. Glossary.

2005.

Bibliography. Index. xi, 291 pp. Cloth, $42.5°' Bltter Hm'vest offers an interpretation of the rural origins of the Zapatista revolution

(J91O-19) in the state of Morelos. This forms the greatest historiographic value of the book. Hart proposed to explain "what started the revolution [in Morelos] and how a defeated rebeJlion in one of the smallest states in Mexico helped initiate a nationwide lanu-reform program that lasted for most of the twentieth century" (p. vii). The author recounts an entertaining story that captures in its web local, national, and international events of great importance. He argues that the ZapatistJ revolution, which emerged dur­ ing the same period as other rebellions in the north of Mexico, acquired a power of considerable dimension in the Mexican Revolution. Bitter Harvest grew out of the author's doctoral dissertation, constructed of nine chapters ordered chronologicaJly. These chapters describe the geography of Morelos, its ethnic composition, the social changes that took place during the colonial periou, the role of agrarian uprisings in the indepenuence movement, the historical development of political consciousness among the masses, liberal and conservative ideologies, and banditry and the battles against the intervention of foreign armies. Chapter 6 presents