Radio in Revolution: Wireless Technology and State Power in Mexico, 1897–1938 by J. Justin Castro (review)

On 18 March 1938, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas wrested control of the nation's oil supplies from foreign enterprises through his fabled expropriation decree. To make the proclamation known to all Mexican citizens, Cárdenas broadcast an official message over Mexico's patchwork of state-controlled and privately owned radio networks. Scholars have recognized the role of radio in the populism of cardenismo, yet few have systematically examined the development of radio technology in Mexico that underpinned Cárdenas' ability to maximize the medium to build the strength of the Mexican state. In Radio in Revolution, J. Justin Castro shows that the physical, technological, and legal infrastructures of Mexican radio began to take shape during the modernizing sweep of the Porfiriato in the late nineteenth century. Radio development continued through the violent phases of the Revolution, and became a powerful tool to aid the centralization of the ruling party during the 1920s and 1930s.

Radio in Revolution fills a long-neglected gap within the voluminous body of scholarship on the Mexican Revolution. Despite a wide range of recent regional and cultural approaches to Mexican Revolutionary historiography, the role of technology in that conflict has remained understudied. Castro's work begins with a discussion of the Porfirian state's cultivation of radio development in an effort to modernize the nation and centralize political control of frontier areas. The majority of the ten radio stations established during the Porfiriato forged connections between the Chapultepec transmitter in the capital and the nation's most distant edges. As had been the case with the modernization project in general, state efforts had clear limitations. Construction and maintenance of the Quintana Roo station, for example, was plagued by a lack of local materials and capital.

Following the exile of Porfirio Díaz, the numerous revolutionary factions relied upon radiotelegraphy (point-to-point transmissions) to oversee the movements of troops and armaments. Revolutionaries also quickly discovered the ability to jam the radio signals of their adversaries. In Morelos, Zapatista forces took advantage of radio transmissions from U.S. embassies in Mexico that were provided to them via New York Times reporter Stephen Bonsal. Castro's analysis of radio during the Revolution itself contributes new insights into the execution of the war from all sides. Significantly, his discussion of radio access in Morelos shows that "contrary to popular notions–then and now–[Zapatistas] understood that foreign reporters and radio relayed information and influenced foreign public opinion" (p. 49).

Once the violence came to a close, the victorious Sonoran dynasty availed themselves of the technology to build support for their ruling coalition that eventually became the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), the precursor of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Despite the turbulence of the Revolution, by the time Alvaro Obregón took office in 1920, Mexico boasted twenty-seven radiotelegraph stations. President Obregón, and then Calles, Portes Gil, Ortiz Rubio, and Rodríguez, built on the institutional groundwork that had been laid during the Porfiriato and then renewed during the presidency of Venustiano Carranza to tightly regulate the private radio sector and ensure that party officials in Mexico City oversaw messaging throughout the nation. The natural closing point for Castro's study is Cárdenas' 1938 expropriation decree—the event that marked the culmination of the use of radio technology to support the authoritarian, single party dominance of Mexico's national politics.

The greatest strength of Radio in Revolution is Castro's ability to cogently weave his analysis of Mexican radio development into a coherent and recognizable narrative of Revolutionary history that provides new insights into the nuances of the growth of state power in Mexico before, during, and after the violent Revolution of 1910–1920. As has been shown in recent scholarship on the Revolution, the nascent state was by no means a leviathan, and Castro's work adeptly illustrates...