Cartographic Mexico

This book presents a spatial history of modern Mexico. Using materials from various archival sources, Raymond Craib pieces together several narratives to illustrate the ongoing, yet never completed, creation of Mexico as a socially constructed reality. He thus follows in the footsteps of scholars like Derek Sayer and James Scott, and the expression “state fixations” in the title immediately brought to mind Scott’s book Seeing Like a State. It came as no surprise to learn that Craib spent time at Yale’s Centre for Agrarian Studies. What makes Cartographic Mexico unique is that it focuses on the long and arduous task of surveying Mexico’s varied terrain in order to establish clear land boundaries, as well as administrative borders. As its title indicates, the book shows that this process was not a straightforward technical undertaking.State fixations refers to the process of codifying the Mexican landscape in order to facilitate tax collection, the movement of armies, and the development of commercial agriculture. Prior to the invasion of American troops during the first half of the nineteenth century, there was no official map of Mexico and its territorial divisions. Moreover, most towns and villages had more than one name, and such names were subject to constant change. Craib shows how the loss of a good part of newly independent Mexico’s territory to the United States provided an impetus for better mapmaking, together with land registration and the gathering of census data to generate statistics. Mexican historians and geographers worked closely together in the formulation of new narratives and images that helped gradually transform the Mexican nation-state from vision into social reality. The mapping of Mexico occurred in several stages, mainly through a national Geographic Exploration Commission that had strong links to, and at times was almost synonymous with, the Mexican military. The book gives a good picture of the operation of this commission and its associated government agents. Continuing into the post-revolutionary period, we learn about the role of surveyors in the creation of ejidos (a new form of land tenure) — in some cases the same individuals who had earlier shaped the formation of new forms of private land ownership.“Fugitive landscapes” refers to the complex and seemingly chaotic state of land use and local administration. Local archives were usually incomplete and disorganized, and it was often difficult or impossible to establish clear boundaries when control over land and cultivation consisted of overlapping and ambiguous rights. Administrative boundaries, especially those associated with former repúblicas de indios, were frequently equated with rights of access to land, even though neither might correspond to actual land-use practices. Patterns of land use (especially those involving shifting cultivation or based on rights to crops rather than territory) were incompatible with permanent plots and fixed boundaries. Many examples illustrate the difficulties of both measuring and dividing communal land, especially in the face of resistance from private landowners wanting to avoid taxation and villagers afraid of literally losing ground. Craib shows that it was futile to impose straight-line boundaries, and the process of land division was as likely to create new disputes as to resurrect old ones. The challenges posed by identifying and establishing use rights for water were even more daunting, as shown by a case study in a chapter called “fluvial confusions.”Cartographic Mexico combines a broad sweep of several national institutions with detailed case studies, based mainly in central Veracruz. Although the book presents key national figures, including the cartographer Antonio García Cuba, we also learn a great deal about the surveyors who worked in the field and their daily interactions with local government officials and peasants. These interactions, both prior to and after the Mexican Revolution, involved an ongoing process of friction, accommodation, and compromise. While surveyors soon realized that it was almost impossible to classify and shape the countryside according to preconceived state schemes, they also obtained the practical knowledge of what was really going on the ground, which made it possible for the Mexican government to extend their control.Craib makes an important and original contribution to the literature. His book should be of interest to historians, geographers and anthropologists. Although it focuses on the period between the 1840s and the 1930s, one can draw lessons for contemporary Mexico. The book begins and ends with comments on President Miguel de la Madrid’s unsuccessful attempt, in 1985, to create a comprehensive land register. As shown in an epilogue, state fixations confront fugitive landscapes even today

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Archaeology · Art · Cartography · Census · Geography · Narrative · Population · Sociology · State (computer science) · Surprise · History · Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics

• The Mexican State, Porfirian and Revolutionary, 1876–1930

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