James V. Mestaz

Strength from the Waters (eBook, PDF)

A History of Indigenous Mobilization in Northwest Mexico

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Strength from the Waters is an environmental and social history that frames economic development, environmental concerns, and Indigenous mobilization within the context of a timeless issue: access to water. Between 1927 and 1970 the Mayo people-an Indigenous group in northwestern Mexico-confronted changing access to the largest freshwater source in the region, the Fuerte River. In Strength from the Waters James V. Mestaz demonstrates how the Mayo people used newly available opportunities such as irrigation laws, land reform, and cooperatives to maintain their connection to their river system and protect their Indigenous identity. By using irrigation technologies to increase crop production and protect lands from outsiders trying to claim it as fallow, the Mayo of northern Sinaloa simultaneously preserved their identity by continuing to conduct traditional religious rituals that paid homage to the Fuerte River. This shift in approach to both new technologies and natural resources promoted their physical and cultural survival and ensured a reciprocal connection to the Fuerte River, which bound them together as Mayo. Mestaz examines this changing link between hydraulic technology and Mayo tradition to reconsider the importance of water in relation to the state's control of the river and the ways the natural landscape transformed relations between individuals and the state, altering the social, political, ecological, and ethnic dynamics within several Indigenous villages. Strength from the Waters significantly contributes to contemporary Mexicanist scholarship by using an environmental and ethnohistorical approach to water access, Indigenous identity, and natural resource management to interrogate Mexican modernity in the twentieth century.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Nebraska
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Oktober 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781496232908
• Artikelnr.: 72329679

Autorenporträt

James V. Mestaz is an assistant professor of Latin American history at Sonoma State University.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Their Technology, Our Way: Los Goros and Fuerte River Infrastructure,
1927 to 1942
2. Sweetness and Water Power: The SICAE Sugarcane Cooperative and Mayo
Struggles for Water, 1944 to 1958
3. When the State Fails the Gods Remain: Independent Mayo Water Control
Strategies, 1944 to 1957
4. The Inward Turn: Mayo Hydraulic Labor, Millenarian Movements, and
Changing Rituals, 1947 to 1963
5. From Our River to Theirs: The Effects of Hydraulic Development, 1955 to
1970
Epilogue: Remaining Strong
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index