Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico

Defending the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico. By Lane Simonian. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiv, 326pp. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $19.95.

Within the thin literature on Latin American environmental history, the strongest work has been done on Brazil and Mexico. Historians of Mexico have always taken the countryside seriously, but the extraordinary ecological transformations of Mexico City in recent times have inspired some Mexicanists to study urban environmental history. Lane Simonian is perhaps the first scholar to analyze the history of environmental thought, policy, and politics in Mexico.

Simonian's book mainly treats the intellectual and political aspects of biological conservation. Other aspects of environmental conservation figure only now and again. The chronological scope extends from precolumbian times to the early 1990s, although a bulk of the book deals with the twentieth century. The first sixty pages examine indigenous peoples' attitudes toward nature as expressed in religious and literary texts, as well as state policies from the colonial period through the Porfiriato; the remaining 160 pages focus on the years after the Mexican Revolution.

Simonian's focus on the twentieth century enables him to discuss both ideas and policies. He is particularly interested in the career of Miguel Angel de Quevedo, an engineer and naturalist, who held high office during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. He also pays great attention to government policies and the environmental movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Simonian's sources are numerous (over seven hundred entries in the bibliography) and varied. Old books and periodicals, recently published articles from Mexican and American newspapers, and theoretical works all figure prominently. In addition, he consulted archival materials from the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico, and National Archives and Rockefeller Foundation Archives in the United States.

Simonian concludes that on average, Mexicans have shown very little interest in biological conservation. However, he argues that this is changing in the 1990s; such a change is required to protect Mexico's natural resources. Clearly, Simonian is sympathetic to Cárdenas, whom he credits, too generously in my view, with making "sustainable development a top priority of his administration"(p. 219). The first conclusion is surely sound, although Mexicans do not stand alone in their casual attitude towards environmental change, and many Mexican peasants have long conserved what they could of their soils and waters. The distinguished exceptions to the rule deserve to be rescued from obscurity. Whether all this is genuinely changing in the 1990s it is too soon to tell. Recent polling data (for what they are worth) show that Mexicans are less concerned about their environment than most nationalities; this is consistent with the first part of Simonian's argument, but not with the more hopeful part.

Simonian's views are put forth in clear prose. The book is not spellbinding, but it is never hard to follow. Latter chapters take up the environmental record of the Mexican government president-by-president (only Cárdenas and, to a lesser extent, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, meet with Simonian's approval). This approach has its merits, given the power of presidents in the Mexican political system, but it makes it harder to give proper attention to some strong forces that shaped Mexican environmental policy and history, such as the oil industry and agribusiness.

Simonian also finds it difficult to relate the intellectual and political stories that form the core of his book to actual on-the-ground changes in the Mexican environment mainly because the historiography of Mexican environmental history is so thin. I hope this trend will change in the future. In any case, Simonian's book is a welcome addition to a slim literature, and is an accessible synthesis that belongs on any short list of works in Latin American environmental history.

John R. Mcneill
Georgetown University

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