Historia mínima de la expansión ferroviaria en América Latina

This collection distills the extensive literature on the economic history of railroads across Latin America into a concise volume that provides a textbook-like overview of the railroad's origins, development, impact, and eventual decline there. The eight essays focus primarily on the so-called “golden age” of railroad development (1870–1930), the years when Latin America experienced the greatest expansion of the railway network and its most profound economic impact (p. 12). Each chapter also offers an epilogue that briefly discusses the decline of the locomotive's once predominant role in moving both the economy and people.The volume's editor identifies three goals in the introduction: to provide comparative analysis of eight case studies from Mexico, the Antilles (mainly Cuba), Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile, nations that possessed 95 percent of Latin America's entire railway grid during the golden age; to examine those case studies during each region's respective railway boom; and to investigate the economic impact of the railroad in each case. With this focus, the essays generally put forward a revisionist take on both dependency theory models and the new economic history of railroads insofar as they emphasize the role of government leaders, both national and local, in promoting foreign investment for railway construction. Rather than explain these policy choices as undermining national sovereignty through the imposition of foreign interests, the volume's contributors maintain that Latin American leaders, faced with the need to modernize their economies and integrate their nations into the global market, and having limited choices for doing so, took advantage of the unique opportunity offered by foreign investment to stimulate their economies and promote material progress.The chapters likewise, through a survey of the most recent literature in their fields, put forward a revisionist—and more balanced—argument regarding the railroad's role in developing domestic economies. The authors stress how railroad development promoted political consolidation, national integration, and the development of local industries, challenging long-held arguments that Latin American railways failed to generate significant backward economic linkages. Some of the case studies provide compelling evidence for such rethinking. Maria Lúcia Lamounier, for example, shows that by the end of the nineteenth century the Brazilian railroad system promoted the development of local industries producing cars, wagons, and locomotive equipment as well as technical and engineering schools. In Chile by 1888, Guillermo Guajardo Soto argues, railway development promoted the expansion of local metalworking industries that supplied the railroad's construction and operation. Even in nations where the majority of the historical literature has emphasized the negative aspects and insignificant economic impact of railway development, such as in Uruguay and Peru, the contributors seek a more nuanced understanding. For Uruguay, Gastón Díaz argues that railroad development promoted national integration as well as the development of the cattle ranching economy. Luis Felipe Zegarra, in his examination of Peru, seeks to put forward a more optimistic, although less convincing, assessment than the prevailing historiography when he argues that railroads served to better connect some isolated highland towns, drastically reducing people's travel time, while nevertheless acknowledging that 85 percent of the population continued to rely on older modes of transport.Each case study concludes with an assessment of why Latin America's railroad systems—unlike those of the United States, Japan, or most European nations—have declined in economic importance and as a common means for people's transportation. Each chapter highlights a combination of three factors. First, several governments after the 1930s nationalized railway systems, seeking to provide lower freight rates and higher workers' wages; in so doing, the governments diminished revenue that could have been used for investment and innovation. Second, the success of workers, through unionization, in gaining better wages, work hours, and safety conditions undermined the bottom line of railway companies both public and private, causing them to maintain service at the lowest possible standards. And third, the rise of the automobile and highway system came to supplant railway travel and transport.Beyond the no-frills tone of this volume's textbook-like overview, its intended audience is unclear. The publisher's decision to not include bibliographic notes lessens the usefulness of this volume for the group of readers it seems most oriented toward: economic and railroad history specialists seeking comparative case studies of railway development. This relates to a second weakness in the volume—namely, that the chapters rarely provide any comparative analysis between the case studies, something that would have been useful for the readers most interested in this topic. While the introduction is an exception to this, again the lack of notes and limited bibliography undermine its fine comparative analysis and useful summation of the volume

Boom · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Latin Americans · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · Engineering · Historical and socio-economic studies of Spain and related regions · History · Law · Regional Development and Innovation · Urbanism, Landscape, and Tourism Studies

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  Open Access•Kyle E Harvey•Journal of Latin American Studies•2020

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