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

1. The Discourse of Development

o n e The Discourse of Development The Railroad Debate of the Early Porfiriato Let us become the doctor of this extremely sick patient, of Mexico . . . there is in this great organism a state of alarming prostration; its advanced stage does not correspond with the capabilities at its disposal; its constitution is that of an athlete that cannot lift even the tiniest object; . . . in this inferior organism the diagnosis is anemia . The lack of activity, the lack of circulation, the lack of movement . There is blood, there is vitality, but it is completely motionless , and if it does move, it is with a hopeless sluggishness. And fine: now having made the diagnosis, science has for this case of an anemic human race one infallible cure: —Iron! the medic would say to his patient. —Iron! we would say, taking this analogy to its conclusion. —Invigorate the blood cells to trigger its circulatory potential. —Let us propel its powerful vitality by creating arteries so we can move freely and swiftly, circulating that activity that is heat, and heat that is light and life. La Patria, March 13, 1880 By the end of his first term in office (1876–80), Porfirio Díaz had worked effectively to foster the stability needed for economic development, an accomplishment demonstrated most clearly by the success of the railroad project. Policymakers believed the railroad would promote national integration and guaran- t he discourse of dev elopmen t 24 tee prosperity through export-oriented economic growth. The railway project allowed for the rapid transport of agricultural products and mineral resources to ports, invigorating the economy as well as allowing for the mobilization of labor needed for those sectors. It encouraged political stability and social peace by integrating isolated regions, where local caudillos often held sway rather than the federal authorities and by allowing government officials to mobilize the military against any potential armed political challenges. Thus the railroad helped the Por- firian government build the modern nation. Yet railroad development represented more than a national program to integrate the country and foster economic growth. The debate surrounding its construction also opened up a discussion in which both the Porfirian administration and its opposition defined their own versions of civilization, patriotism, and commercial development. By examining this aspect of the railway project, it becomes evident that transportation development was a cultural project, not just an economic and political one. Few historians have examined the discursive aspects behind national railway programs in Latin America. Paulo Roberto Cimó Queiroz examined railroad promotion in Mato Grosso , Brazil, and argued that the railway secured both political and symbolic interests. The São Paulo elite promoted railway development in an attempt to incorporate a vast group of planters far from Brazil’s center of power—many of whom had fostered separatist ideologies—into the national economy.1 In so doing, the Brazilian elite hoped to promote a sense of national identity through railroad construction. Kim Clark’s study of railway development in Ecuador also explored the discursive aspects that underpin state-building projects . She argued that a discourse of movement, energy, and connection emerged in the national railway debate that appealed to a wide range of social groups. Clark examined these debates using Raymond Williams’s interpretive framework of keywords, t he discourse of dev elopmen t 25 that is, words that call attention to struggles over meaning and that are obscured through common use. For Williams, keywords do not have a fixed meaning because people voice and transform them through conflicts over political, economic, social, and cultural projects. Clark, using this framework, revealed that the keywords used concerning the Ecuadorian railroad plan had an ambiguous enough meaning to help secure support from various elite groups, allowing government officials to undertake the project.2 This chapter builds on these studies by examining the discourses that surrounded railway development during the early Por- firiato. The symbolic dimensions of this project, in some cases, paralleled the examples from Brazil and Ecuador. Nevertheless, the rhetorical strategies used by both promoters and opponents of the railway project were shaped by their country’s historical development and peculiarities. Decades of political strife, warfare , and foreign interventions and invasions that had racked the nation since Independence framed the debate that emerged around the country’s need to expand its railway system. Politicians and the press argued, for example, about how...