The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890–1917 (review)

During the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a coalition of officials, livestock wholesalers, retail butchers, and clandestine sausage makers challenged the foreign owners of the ironically named Mexican National Packing Company for control of Mexico City's meat supply. Their success put an end to the company's attempt to profit from the production and sale of "modern," refrigerated beef. In Britain and the United States, economies of scale had enabled a small number of producers of refrigerated meat to drive small operations from the market. Why that did not happen in Mexico until almost 100 years later is the subject of Pilcher's book.

As the author of a history of Mexican cuisine and, more recently, of Food in World History (New York, 2005), Pilcher is broadly knowledgeable about the economic, political, cultural, social, and culinary contexts in which meat in Mexico City is embedded. He draws on newspapers and a broad array of archival collections in Mexico and the United States, in addition to a range of secondary sources, for insights into comparative conditions in other countries. His astute analyses, deft comparisons, and lively writing style will appeal to a wide variety of audiences.

The first chapter provides a historical overview of meat in Mexico from the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century to conditions in the "1890s, at the dawn of the modern, industrial era in Mexico" (15). During the colonial era, meat was supplied by a monopoly, and quality assurance was in the hands of the butchers' guild. Meat was consumed fresh, and more often by the elite (who preferred mutton). The popular classes subsisted on corn, beans, and chiles, adding meat only a few times a year, generally at harvest time and for religious festivals. Independence and the political struggles of the nineteenth century saw a shift from arguments justified on the basis of political rights to a rhetoric that emphasized public-health values, but the wholesalers of meat tended to maintain their dominance. They were often able to depose troublesome government inspectors.

The next two chapters examine the first attempts to modernize Mexico's meat supply during prerevolutionary decades when President Porfirio Díaz dominated the government. Mexicans examined French and United States models of how to construct a modern slaughterhouse without recognizing the relationship between form and function. They chose (on the basis of cost) to build like Chicago but expected to retain a mixture of small enterprises rather than leaving the slaughterhouse in the hands of a private company. Plans included the latest technological innovations, such as aerial rails, but design and construction disputes, delays, and accidents marred the process. Pilcher provides an insightful analysis of what failure reveals about the relative strengths and weaknesses of government authorities, livestock wholesalers, slaughterhouse workers, retail butchers, and consumers.

The final two chapters detail the rise, fall, and aftermath of William DeKay's attempt to profit from refrigerating Mexican meat. Consistent with recent work in the economic and business history of Mexico, Pilcher finds that the Díaz administration was not simply playing favorites and "did not give undue preference to politically connected elites" (121). In any case, DeKay was disappointed that Díaz would not dictate that all beef be refrigerated. DeKay's efforts to ingratiate himself with Mexican presidents make him the very model of a modern, clueless foreign investor; in Pilcher's words, he demonstrated "the counterproductive nature of uninformed sychophancy" (129). Fresh meat's dominance in the Mexican marketplace lasted until 1992 when the federal government finally required refrigeration of meat at the same time that it ended the food subsidies that had characterized government policy since the Revolution.