Migrant Flows: Hydraulic Infrastructure, Agricultural Industrialization, and Environmental Change in Western Mexico, 1940–64 (April 2021)
This article explores the relationship between the growth of irrigation works, environmental change, and rural migration in western Mexico from 1940 to 1964. It begins by analyzing how Mexico’s expansion of hydraulic infrastructure facilitated the transfer of industrial agricultural technology through the US-based Rockefeller Foundation. US-sponsored technical assistance programs privileged irrigation- and input-intensive production, undermining traditional Mexican land tenure and agriculture regimes while industrializing and privatizing natural resources. These processes altered rural livelihoods and landscapes in western Mexico, intensifying migratory flows already amplified by the Bracero Program. By examining the origins of western Mexico’s deeply rooted culture of migration through an environmental and technical lens, this article reframes conventional socioeconomic and political understandings of Mexican migrancy, revealing the essential roles of the natural and built environments in the growth of a mass phenomenon that dominates US-Mexican relations today.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Gabriela Soto Laveaga;
(2020)
The socialist origins of the Green Revolution: Pandurang Khankhoje and domestic ‘technical assistance’
Book
Amrith, Sunil S;
(2013)
Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants
Book
Boyer, Christopher R.;
(2012)
A Land between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico
Book
Wolfe, Mikael;
(2017)
Watering the revolution: an environmental and technological history of agrarian reform in Mexico
Book
John Hultgren;
(2015)
Border Walls Gone Green: Nature and Anti-immigrant Politics in America
Article
David D. Vail;
(2022)
False Gospels of Efficiency: Contested Knowledge, Determined Experts, and Unfaithful Lands in Rural Utah
Article
Araral, Eduardo;
(2013)
What Makes Socio-Ecological Systems Robust? An Institutional Analysis of the 2,000 Year-Old Ifugao Society
Article
Rodriguez, Veronica Perez;
Anderson, Kirk C.;
(2013)
Terracing in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico: Cycles of Resilience of an Ancient Land-Use Strategy
Book
Gemelli, Giuliana;
(2000)
The “unacceptables”: American foundations and refugee scholars between the two wars and after
Article
Albert G. Way;
(2023)
The Grass Problem: Agrostology, Agriculture, and Environmental Transformation in the New South
Book
Hochman, Gilberto;
Armus, Diego;
(2004)
Cuidar, controlar, curar: ensaios históricos sobre saúde e doença na América Latina e Caribe
Book
Clancy, Peter;
(2014)
Freshwater Politics in Canada
Book
Daniel Rothenburg;
(2023)
Irrigation, Salinity, and Rural Communities in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, 1945–2020
Book
Giacomo Bonan;
(2020)
Le acque agitate della patria: L’industrializzazione del Piave (1882-1966)
Book
Gamboa, Erasmo;
(2016)
Bracero Railroaders : The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in the U.S. West
Chapter
Molina, Natalia;
(2014)
Borders, Laborers, and Racialized Medicalization: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Public Health Practices in the Twentieth Century
Book
Dean E. Arnold;
(2015)
The evolution of ceramic production organization in a Maya community
Book
Rani T. Alexander;
(2019)
Technology and tradition in Mesoamerica after the Spanish invasion: archaeological perspectives
Book
Julia Obertreis;
(2017)
Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia 1860-1991
Book
Maya K. Peterson;
(2019)
Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia's Aral Sea Basin
Be the first to comment!