Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico by Christopher R. Boyer (review)

Book Reviews was arrested due to a case of mistaken identity. Despite, or perhaps because of, this hardship, Avalos converted to Apostolicism, evangelized his fellow inmates in jail, was ordained by Antonio Nava via correspondence, and ended up serving as a catalyst for the spread of Pentecostal congregations in the Mexican state of Nayarit. The reader is also familiarized with the Alvarado brothers, Román, Rosario, and Juan, who, thanks to a chance encounter that their father had with the wife of a Hollywood singing cowboy , became Los Hermanos Alvarado, one of the most popular evangelical musical acts in the Americas. These are but three of the fascinating stories that weave together the religious genealogy of the Pentecostal borderland in this book. Perhaps the book’s greatest strength is its discussion of the role of music in the Pentecostalism of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands. Ramı́rez shows a dynamic musical form that, while having its origins in hymns such as those by Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, and Fanny Crosby, nonetheless became its own art form. In terms of subject matter, Pentecostal composers utilized not only biblical passages but also their own life experiences in their songs, such as Filemón Zaragoza’s work “Mi Plegaria,” or “My Plea,” which he wrote while working in cotton fields in Texas. The instruments they often used included guitars, banjos, and percussion instruments, which were not commonly heard in more traditional Christian services at this time. Throughout the book Ramı́rez has included numerous fascinating examples (both in Spanish and in English) of these songs to prove the strength of faith as well as the creativity of the Pentecostal music of the borderlands and beyond. In sum, Migrating Faith adds both width (in the geographical sense) and depth (through the intensely human and cultural story) to our knowledge of transnational Pentecostalism. Daniel Ramı́rez allows us to see what motivated the leaders and practitioners of the faith, what inspired them, and what drew them together across a border that was sometimes welcoming and sometimes forbidding. As such, this work adds a great deal to our knowledge not only of Pentecostalism on the U.S.-Mexican border, but also informs us of the development of Pentecostalism worldwide and what the author calls the movement’s “still considerable proselytizing charms” (3). Jana S. Pisani Department of Humanities Ferris State University POLITICAL LANDSCAPES: FORESTS, CONSERVATION, AND COMMUNITY IN MEXICO. By Christopher R. Boyer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015, p. 337, $26.95. Few countries exhibit as much environmental diversity as Mexico. This makes the country particularly attractive for scholars concerned with the ways landscapes both structured and were structured by human behavior. 301 The Latin Americanist, June 2016 Add to this the reach of the Mexico’s 1910 revolution, which profoundly altered rural people’s imaginings of woodlands as an expression of social justice, and one has a tantalizing field of inquiry. Not surprisingly, a rich body of scholarship has emerged that challenges earlier, idealized depictions of environmental activists and campesinos as “defenders” of the land from “outside” forces by interrogating how community and state formation are mutually intertwined. A model of research and scholarship, Boyer’s book is one of the finest of this new generation of environmental historiography. The author divides his study into two sections. The first traces the making of what Boyer calls “revolutionary forestry,” a specific social aspiration that arose in the historical conjuncture of agrarian populism and scientific management in the 1920s. The second section examines the period between the mid-1940s and early 1980s, when forests became increasingly subject to what Boyer identifies as the “development imperative,” wherein political leaders, deeming forest resources too valuable to remain under local control, reduced them to raw materials for economic modernization. The author focuses on two illustrative regions: the villages and forestlands of the western state of Michoacán, and the northern state of Chihuahua. Both are prudent choices. Though they offer some telling contrasts in terms of indigenous presence and degree of the foreign investment, the two states share important similarities. During the Pofiriato, both supported extensive logging operations and, in the postrevolutionary period, had farreaching development projects that included forestland...