I attached a link to my academia.edu site where I posted my recently published article: "Radiotelegraphy to Broadcasting: Wireless Communications in Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico, 1899-1924"  Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 29, no. 2 (Summer 2013: 335-365.
I discuss Rolland's involvement in radio in the 1910s and 1920s.


http://www.academia.edu/2092931/Radiotelegraphy_to_Broadcasting_Wireless_Communications_in_Porfirian_and_Revolutionary_Mexico_1899-1924


Best,
Justin Castro

Chapter One

Child of the Porfiriato, Child of the Periphery

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)

And the writing begins...Already feeling good about this chapter. I will be traveling to Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur next summer, 2014, to finish research on Rolland's childhood and his subsequent, numerous projects in the peninsula. Until then, I am going to go ahead and write with the substantial materials I already have.


Best,
Justin

Hola folks,

     Check out this before and after photo of Modesto C. Rolland in 1909. He looks young and dapper. The Rolland family provided the photo, which they obtained recently from UNAM. My wife, Angela K. Castro, did the photo restoration work. It is great! She will be handling many of the photos for my project on Rolland. She is also available for hire if anyone would like some old or damaged photos restored. Her email is acastro521@hotmail.com.

 




 

 

 

     I have begun work on the first chapter of the project: "Child of the Porfiriato, Child of the Periphery." It will examine the formative years of Modesto Rolland's life, from his birth in La Paz, in what is today Baja California Sur, in 1881, to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the year after he officially became a civil engineer and joined the Anti-Reelectionist Club in support of Francisco I. Madero.

 

 Saludos Cordiales desde Jonesboro, Arkansas,

--Justin Castro

 

A Quick Update

Just a quick update on things.

Towards the end of a grueling job search, Arkansas State University (ASU) offered me a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of History, which I happily accepted. My family and I will be moving to Jonesboro, Arkansas, July 15th. I will be teaching Mexican, Latin American, and world history.

                                                                  

Obtaining this position will allow me to further expand my research on Modesto C. Rolland, providing access to a regular salary, research funds, and a scholarly community conducive to producing quality work. ASU is also working on building a sister institution in Querétaro, which when completed, should allow even more opportunities for me to teach and research in Mexico.

I am currently revising my dissertation on early radio, the Revolution, and the Mexican state for publication. I plan to submit my book proposal within the next couple months. Although only a small part of the overall project, I do discuss Rolland's work as a communications officer for Venustiano Carranza and Rolland's work as president of the Central Mexican Radio League.

I am also going to start the first draft of the first chapter of the Rolland book this month. I am tentatively titling it "Child of the Porfiriato." I want to explore the time from Modesto's birth until the beginning of the Revolution. In addition to Modesto's life, which will be the main thread of this chapter and the entire book, I want to focus on the context that surrounded him, that is the Porfirio Diaz administration, life and development in the Baja California territories during the late 1800s and Mexico City in the early 1900s, education, engineering, and the expansion of Mexican nationalism and political unrest.

On another note, I know the Rolland family recently had another gathering in Mexico. Many of them toured the Plaza de Torros, which Modesto built in the 1940s. Modesto's grandchildren, Jorge Rolland and Deana Wicks, have dug up a number of documents and photographs of their grandfather's work on the stadium and of the designs for the Ciudad de los Deportes, which the stadium was a part of.

                                              

Construction at the Ciudad de los Deportes

 

 

Saludos,

Dr. Justin Castro

Modesto Rolland photo, c. 1920

 

 

Modesto C. Rolland, circa 1920

My wife, Angela Castro, touched the image up in Photoshop.

 Photo courtesy of Jorge Rolland.

 

 

--Justin Castro

"Conferencia sobre construcciones de cemento armado," El Imparcial, 5 dic. 1909, 12.

An article on a class on reinofrced concrete that Modesto C. Rolland gave at the Escuela Nacional de Ingenieros in 1909. Rolland was an early promoter and innovator of reinforced concrete in Mexico.

 

--Justin Castro

Tehuantepec Panel at the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies Conference

I was recetly informed that the panel I put together for the 2013 Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was accepted. Its title is "Business, Science, and Development in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 1850-1950."


ABSTRACT:

Our panel explores the intersection of business, science, and engineering in the development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the sates of Veracruz and Tabasco from the years immediately following the Mexican-American War to the beginning of the “Mexican Miracle.”  Two of the presentations specifically look at transportation projects across the isthmus, addressing their ultimate failures and what the undertakings say about the participating businesses, engineers, and governments. The third panelist will discuss the interplay between archeologists, ornithologists, and oil geologists in the region during the 1930s and 1940s, exploring how different scientists interacted and influenced each other’s fields while shaping Mexico’s petroleum and tourism industry.  All of the panelists will discuss development in the region, the influence of foreigners—especially Americans—and modernization, providing insightful research on the region, and nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexico.

 

Nicolas E. Gordon

University of Oklahoma

From the Crescent City to Jaguar Hill: New Orleans’s Interest in the Tehuantepec

National Railroad, 1849 - 1853

Though a small number scholars of various historiographic schools have explored the history of the Tehuantepec transit route during the nineteenth century, most have done little beyond constructing a basic narrative of the events and none have made a considerable effort at analyzing the reasons for the repeated failure of the project. Despite significant interest expressed in the route at various times by the U. S. Congress, leading engineers, and transportation magnates, the ultimate triumph of the Panama Canal has led some scholars to simply dismiss the Tehuantepec project as being neither economically or engineeringly feasible. Others, looking beyond this simplistic analysis have concluded that the project’s ultimate failure lay in the diplomatic and political strife between the United States and Mexico.  However, a sustained look at the available documentation reveals a more complicated story. While diplomacy and politics clearly played a role in the outcome of the Tehuantepec National Railway , the reasons for its ultimate failure lay not in lack of engineering skill or solely at the hands of governmental officials, but in the organization and operations of the various companies involved.  For my talk, I will explore these themes as they relate to The Tehuantepec Company of New Orleans, which attempted to construct a road and railway across the isthmus during the early 1850s.

 

 

J. Justin Castro

University of Oklahoma

Modesto C. Rolland, the Mexican Revolution, and Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

            My presentation explores transportation development across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec under the leadership of engineer Modesto C. Rolland, 1921-1952. The desire to build a transisthmian trade route in the region had been a recurrent goal of governments inside and outside of Mexico since the colonial era. The famed British engineer Sir Weetman Pearson put the finishing touches on the Tehuantepec Railway and its connecting ports in 1907, and trade across the isthmus reached an all-time high in 1913. However, the developmental designs for Tehuantepec during the subsequent revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras have received considerably less scholarly attention, perhaps because trade declined and new plans largely failed. However, Rolland’s life and work in the region provide important insights into state schemes for modernization, economic growth, and foreign relations policy during and after the Mexican Revolution.     

 

Robert Kett

University of California—Irvine

Stone, Feathers, Crude: On the Scientific Constitution of Southern Mexico

This paper explores the connections between three concurrent scientific projects in Veracruz and Tabasco in the 1930s and 40s - one archaeological, one biological, the other geological.  As part of Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society excavations in what would come to be known as the Olmec heartland, ornithologists were invited to collect specimens in a little-examined region of Middle America. This paper discusses how an attempt to define the archaeological culture of the Olmec, Mesoamerica’s cultura madre, also provided a site for natural scientific engagements with the region. While following their respective cultural and natural investigations in southern Mexico, archaeologists and ornithologists came into contact with another emergent scientific project in the region – the extractive efforts of oil geologists and prospectors. The presence of all of these scientists in southern Mexico was facilitated by similar historical circumstances, and the co-presence of these projects took on further importance as investigators from disparate disciplines exchanged supplies, materials and knowledge about the region. These projects planted the seeds of the petroleum refining and cultural and biological tourism industries that now dominate this region while propagating persistent imageries of the region and its resources. The complicated scientific ecology that characterized mid-twentieth century southern Mexico raises a number of important questions about scientific practices, their relations to each other, and their role in constituting the sites of their interventions, offering insights relevant to the time, place, and interaction among scientist and their work.

     The conference is the first week in April. I have just started writing the paper, and I am still working out the details. I will be sure to let everyone know how it goes.


    On a different note, I turned in the first draft of my doctoral dissertation--"Wireless: Radio, Revolution, and the Mexican State, 1897-1938." I will defend it, and hopefully, graduate this May.

Saludos,
Justin Castro