The Civilizing Machine: A Cultural History of Mexican Railroads, 1876-1910

4. The Price of Progress

f o u r The Price of Progress Popular Perceptions of the Railroad Accident The pilgrims travel On our railways, They experience frights in thousands And are hauled like baggage; The driver is a savage, The trains smell . . . not like flowers, (dirty, old . . . a horror!) And accidents Are now so common That travel causes terror. . . . And when the company kills, It says: “I wash my hands”; And if someone charges a penny Asking for compensation, the gringos scream: “No way!” and here they respond: “Bravo!” El Diablito Rojo, May 11, 1908 The often devastating consequences of railway accidents altered the relationship between Mexicans and the Porfirian government and its brand of modernization. This chapter explores a popular perception that train wrecks had become all too common , leading various sectors of society to grow disenchanted with the government’s program of order and progress. It t he price of progr ess 144 was not that opposition groups disagreed about the country’s need to exploit technological advancements, but they disagreed about the government’s methods. A belief that the government catered to foreign companies who did little to protect travelers galled the general public. Newspapers that targeted middleand working-class audiences articulated a growing disillusionment with the utopian promises of modernity and technological progress so often expressed by the ruling elite. Since illiteracy rates were high, this chapter also examines the tradition of corridos, as well as illustrations printed in the penny press and opposition newspapers, in order to gauge understandings of what the railway, and modernization more generally, meant to “popular” groups.1 Penny presses, it has been argued, were written for working-class audiences, while satiric opposition newspapers have been defined as having a “middle-class” character .2 Yet critical publications identified as middle class used well-known images that reached a wider audience, especially those that appeared repeatedly in penny presses such as Tio Samuel (Uncle Sam), El Pueblo (the people), and La Republica (the republic). Lithographic and woodcut images represented, especially in their roughness compared with the images produced in elite publications, a medium of counter-discursive illustration .3 As such, these images published in the penny press and satiric newspapers were necessarily of opposition, protest, and critique. Political ideas articulated in the press also could be circulated to illiterate individuals through public readings at social gatherings as well as through popular culture such as ballads and cornerstone parodies.4 Corridos, likewise, revealed the opinions, values, and norms of the often poor, illiterate people who sang these songs, leaving behind documents about their beliefs and feelings.5 Train wrecks were reported weekly. While the majority of accidents did not necessarily claim lives, journalists nevertheless used these sensational stories to fill up the gacetilla columns 145 (short news stories usually located at the back of newspapers). Indeed, the vivid descriptions of trains roaring off the tracks and dragging behind them the mangled ruins of iron and wood never failed to find space in newspapers. As much as the railroad represented the pinnacle of modern, sophisticated societies , a symbol indicative of economic and social advancements, accidents became moments where people’s apprehensions toward modernity, industrialization, and technological change found intimate expression. And while industrial accidents represented a tragic reality that modern societies faced, in Mexico it spurred an antiforeign backlash, especially against the nation ’s mainly American owned and operated railways, making it a unique case study. Although one study produced by the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (Ministry of Communications and Public Works—scop) during the Porfiriato did suggest that the country’s main rail line, the Mexican Central, had a much higher injury rate than its European counterparts, train wrecks nevertheless affected only a small portion of the population. The studies of accident rates, as well as the rates of injuries and deaths, produced for the scop reveal that when wrecks did occur, it was railway employees and bystanders who were most often the victims, not passengers.6 Table 1. Injury rates of major European railways in 1897 (for every 10 people injured on the Mexican Central) Mexican Central 10.0 Germany 0.5 France 1.0 England 1.8 Belgium 1.1 Source: Dr. Gloner v. F. C. Central, Indemnización de Daños, Dolores Físicos y Morales: Apuntes de Alegato Al Sr. Juez de lo Civil, Lic. Angel Zavalza por el Lic. José Diego Fern...