Modesto C. Rolland attempted to develop a guano industry using droppings from birds on islands in the Gulf of California. Here is a 1937 letter from President Lázaro Cárdenas discussing the project.

A Sneak Peak at What I am Currently Working On: Modesto C. Rolland and the Baja California Peninsula

It is a proud thing to have been born in La Paz, and a cloud of delight hangs over the distant city from the time when it was the great pearl center of the world

—John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1941)

            The famous American writer John Steinbeck thought highly of Modesto C. Rolland’s home town of La Paz. During Steinbeck's fabled expedition with biologist Edward F. Ricketts along the coasts of Baja California, the author waxed poetically about the long and inviting history of the port during its  pearl-filled glory days. The locals, Steinbeck recalled, considered the city "a huge place—not of course as monstrous as Guaymas or Mazatlán, but beautiful beyond comparison." Size and beauty are relative, perhaps. But in a desert peninsula "unfriendly to colonization,"  La Paz had drawn the adventurous  from around the world.[1]

            In 1940, the same year that Steinbeck scoured the Baja coasts for marine (and human) life, Rolland was pressing desperately for the need to develop the  peninsula, to “conquer” it.  He stressed the need for dams, irrigation, roads, and free trade. “All Mexicans,” he said, “are obligated to think of the problem of Baja California and aid with affection and love in its development, since a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.”  In an increasingly modern Mexico, the land remained a beautiful but feeble appendage. Its future lied not in pearls or biology expeditions, but in development. [2]

      Book cover from the Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1995 Penguin edition

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                [1] John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 84-85.

                [2] Modesto C. Rolland, Observaciones realizadas en la jira por la Baja California en compañía del c. Presidente de la República, 14 Jan. 1940, Noveda, copy, 1-7.

Today I found this photo of Modesto C. Rolland at the El Buen Tono stand at the 1923 Grand Radio Fair in Mexico City in the INAH-SINAFO photo archive online.

 

Saludos,

J. Justin Castro 

Plans for the Baja Expedition are Moving Along

Ticket bought. I will arrive in San Diego, CA, on July 2. From there I will travel to Tijuana and then Mexicali. My first research stop is the Archivo Historico de Baja California: https://www.facebook.com/AHEBC. I just ordered Historian Paul Vanderwood's Satan's Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America's Greatest Gaming Resort about Tijuana. I love Vanderwood's work and I have been meaning to read this book. I also assigned it to a summer online history of Mexico course that I am teaching. Why not kill two birds with one stone?  I additionally read the Historia General de Baja California Sur and John Steinbeck's The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Any good book recommendations about the Baja California Peninsula?


Saludos,
Justin Castro
Jonesboro, Arkansas