Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill (review)

This book presents the story of the rise and fall of Mexico's domination of the international synthetic hormone trade from the 1940s through the 1980s. But it is far from a routine examination of business strategies, production schedules, and distribution logistics. That this study of mid-twentieth century Mexico features determined scientists, unscrupulous business managers, and nationalist public officials and reveals the complex interplay of bench science, international market trends, and government ambitions might just make it another interesting contribution to the histories of science, business, and public administration. What sets Jungle Laboratories apart is the fact that the men and women of the Papaloapan watershed in southeastern Mexico, who collected a native plant that provided the key ingredient for oral contraceptives, anti-inflammatory drugs, and a host of other miracles of twentieth-century medicine, are the protagonists of the story. By incorporating the experiences of those who went into the rainforest to collect, transport, and sell the root of the plant known as barbasco, Soto Laveaga shows that rural laborers helped shape Mexico's entry into the global pharmaceutical market through their own industriousness; knowledge of plants, soil, and climate conditions; and negotiation with managers and state officials. The author weaves together information gathered from archival sources and interviews in Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Chiapas to offer a rich and dynamic image of rural poverty, entrepreneurship, and social transformation over four decades of natural resource exploitation.

Jungle Laboratories is organized chronologically into nine chapters that offer a critical perspective on such topics as the discovery of barbasco, the development of scientific research leading to oral contraceptives, the expansion of the global steroid industry, and the Mexican government's efforts to incorporate root pickers and labor organizers into nationalistic images of a modernizing, science-focused nation. While early chapters on the identification in barbasco of diosgenin, which can be used to synthesize progesterone, will no doubt be informative to anyone interested in early efforts to develop the birth control pill, the discussion of how international firms' demand for barbasco affected the lives of the people who collected it, and how they, in turn, shaped the international trade of the product, are most compelling. The measures taken by the Luis Echeverría administration to use barbasco pickers for its own political ends provide a glimpse into the struggles among a variety of players for the right to define the contours and outcomes of national development projects.

Soto Laveaga devotes considerable attention to the origins and development of the state-run company, Proquivemex, under Echeverría. The goals of Proquivemex were to organize the barbasco pickers into agricultural unions, control the international sale of Mexico-produced barbasco, and, eventually, produce pharmaceuticals derived from Mexican plants in Mexico. In the Echeverría administration's imagination, Proquivemex's efforts would ensure that Mexico's barbasco pickers were recognized internationally for their contributions to science. In addition, the company's protectionist policies would both improve economic fortunes in Mexico and raise the pickers themselves out of poverty. Despite the sincere enthusiasm and patriotism Proquivemex's staff brought to their efforts to promote Mexican pharmaceutical products, their long-term vision would not be realized, as the rise of Chinese-produced diosgenin made a cheaper alternative to the Mexican products available and changes in the production of oral contraceptives necessitated less and less of the barbasco over time.

Soto Laveaga does not explicitly link her study to current international debates over genetic resources and benefits sharing. However, the story she tells regarding the barbasco trade, the negotiation of barbasco's meanings among diverse stakeholders and participants, and efforts to use state control of natural resources to advance a political agenda, resonates with ongoing discussions regarding who has sovereignty over native products that may have medicinal properties and sheds light on important facets of science, society, and economic development in mid-twentieth...