Watering the Revolution ─ An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe expands our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform by investigating the environmental and technological history of water management in the Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the Mexican Revolution, and the decades that followed, water distribution and management undermined agrarian reform despite being one of its indispensable components. He highlights the intrinsic tension between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for technological development during the contested modernization and transformation of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government's decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted environmental and technological policies.

Mikael D. Wolfe is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.