Reclaiming Church Wealth: The Recovery of Church Property after Expropriation in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, 1860–1911 by José Roberto Juárez (review)

182 The LatinAmericanist Spring 2006 Mexico. Gallagher attributes this finding simply to the fact that “the costs of pollution are too smallto significantlyfactorinto the average firm’s location decisions”(p. 31). This might be true for Mexico where sheer market size, per capita income levels, and proximity (cultural,economic, and supplychain) to the US.pull foreign direct investment(FDI) toward Mexico.This may not be true in other national cases where these FDI conditions are not present,yet for Mexico,this findingis encouraging. Not so encouraging is Gallagher’s discussion of Mexico’s environmental regulatory record. After some initial success in government inspections leading up to NAFTA, the passage of NAFTA has seen a decrease in emphasis on environmentalconcerns (for both inspections and spending). In the final chapter, Gallagher calls attention to the Mexican government’s deficient stance on the environmentand suggeststhat greater environmental actionwill not detereconomicgrowth and investment,but may rather help reclaim a healthier and sustainable environment and economy. My primary criticisms of the book are with Stanford University Press. The monograph seems as though it was edited and readied for publication at the last moment as it contains numerous spelling errors, inconsistent references, and poor formatting throughout. This monograph, suitable for undergraduate and graduate study, should find its way into courses in international business, international economics, international relations, and MexicoLatin American Studies.I myself have adopted the book for my MBA course entitledManaging in a Global Economy. MichaelJ, Pisani Departmentof Management CentralMichigan University Reclaiming Church Wealth: The Recovery of Church Property after Expropriation in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, 18601911 . By Jose Roberto Juhrez. Albuquerque, NM: University of New MexicoPress, 2004, p. 251, $45.00. The main focus of Jose Roberto Juiuez’s groundbreaking book is the process by which the Archdiocese of Guadalajara was able to “recuperateat least 30 percent of its wealth between 1860 and 1911, and the nature and use of this income” (p. 2). In addition , the book also attempts to gauge the wealth of the Catholic Book Reviews 183 Church in Mexico on the eve of the nationalization of ecclesiastical property and capital in 1859. Juhrez’s book, the first systematic ,documentedstudyofthereclamationoftheCatholicChurch’s wealth in the aftermathof the Liberal elite reforms of the second half of the 185Os, concentrates on the Diocese of Guadalajara, which is just one of the dioceses controlled by the Archdiocese of Guadalajara. Because of the extensive archival sources, the author, who received his Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Texas and recently retired from Texas A & M International University, has left the study of other dioceses to hture historians. Juhrez provides the reader with a view of both the Catholic Church’s “devastating losses and impressive recuperation ” (p. 12). What makes Juarez’s book so impressive is his use of archives previously unavailable. Between 1966 and 1969,Juhrez and his wife dusted and categorizedthousandsof bundles of documentsthat they foundin completedisorderin a smallroom in the Archbishop’s Palace. They arranged 591 packages of documents and indexed 822 ledgers and bound documents.The efforts of the Juarez familyeventuallyculminatedin the creationof the Historic Archive of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, which, since 2001, has it own spaciousbuilding and professionalarchivist.Although the archives have a vast amount of documentsthat detail numerous land and building transactions, some important documents, such as the account books of the department that monitored the accumulation of funds, are missing. Many documents were lost or destroyed when the Liberals requisitioned the Archbishop’s Palace for Governor PedroAgazon in 1860 after the Government Palace had been damaged during the War of the Reform (18581861 ).It was not until 1890 that the Archbishop of Guadalajara made a serious attempt to organize the archdiocese’s documents. Unfortunately,duringthe chaos ofthe MexicanRevolution,many documentswere mutilated and destroyed.Many of the documents that had been confiscated by the federal government during the Mexican Revolution were not returned to the Archdiocese of Guadalajarauntil the restoration of friendlychurch-staterelations duringthe MiguelAleman administration(1 940-1946). Sincethe earlyyears of Spanishconquestat the beginningof the sixteenthcentury,the CatholicChurch had been acquiringvast amountsof land and money. By the eighteenthcentury,the Spanish crown was convinced that the Catholic Church had acquired too much wealth and was hindering economicdevelopmentin...