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