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Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City
2022 Alfred B. Thomas Book Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS)
2022 Bolton-Johnson Prize, Conference on Latin American History (CLAH)
2022 Best Book in Non-North American Urban History, Urban History Association (Co-winner)
2023 Honorable Mention, Best Book in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Many visitors to Mexico City’s 1886 Electricity Exposition were amazed by their experience of the event, which included magnetic devices, electronic printers, and a banquet of light. It was both technological spectacle and political messaging, for speeches at the event lauded President Porfirio Díaz and bound such progress to his vision of a modern order. Diana J. Montaño explores the role of electricity in Mexico’s economic and political evolution, as the coal-deficient country pioneered large-scale hydroelectricity and sought to face the world as a scientifically enlightened “empire of peace.” She is especially concerned with electrification at the social level. Ordinary electricity users were also agents and sites of change. Montaño documents inventions and adaptations that served local needs while fostering new ideas of time and space, body and self, the national and the foreign. Electricity also colored issues of gender, race, and class in ways specific to Mexico. Complicating historical discourses in which Latin Americans merely use technologies developed elsewhere, Electrifying Mexico emphasizes a particular national culture of scientific progress and its contributions to a uniquely Mexican modernist political subjectivity.
2022 Bolton-Johnson Prize, Conference on Latin American History (CLAH)
2022 Best Book in Non-North American Urban History, Urban History Association (Co-winner)
2023 Honorable Mention, Best Book in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Many visitors to Mexico City’s 1886 Electricity Exposition were amazed by their experience of the event, which included magnetic devices, electronic printers, and a banquet of light. It was both technological spectacle and political messaging, for speeches at the event lauded President Porfirio Díaz and bound such progress to his vision of a modern order. Diana J. Montaño explores the role of electricity in Mexico’s economic and political evolution, as the coal-deficient country pioneered large-scale hydroelectricity and sought to face the world as a scientifically enlightened “empire of peace.” She is especially concerned with electrification at the social level. Ordinary electricity users were also agents and sites of change. Montaño documents inventions and adaptations that served local needs while fostering new ideas of time and space, body and self, the national and the foreign. Electricity also colored issues of gender, race, and class in ways specific to Mexico. Complicating historical discourses in which Latin Americans merely use technologies developed elsewhere, Electrifying Mexico emphasizes a particular national culture of scientific progress and its contributions to a uniquely Mexican modernist political subjectivity.
- GenresHistory
392 pages, Hardcover
Published September 14, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 2, 2023
This is the type of book my grad school professor would have had us read as a reference point on how to do research and the types of sources to use, particularly around the centering of everyday people as key players in a historical moment. The overall story of look Mexico got electricity and the usage patterns depended on who you were in a way that reflected and reified existing class and racial differences is mostly only fascinating if you care about Mexican history or electrical history. Nonetheless, it was an interesting read primarily for the sources themselves from analysis of the covers of electrician union magazines to court cases around electric street car accident cases and electricity theft by individuals and businesses.
December 31, 2021
Electrifying Mexico es un libro muy oportuno, es un estudio del proceso de transformación de la sociedad mexicana, en especifico de la Ciudad de México durante la larga transición que trajo la electrificación.
Diana Montaño nos cuenta la historia de los actores más importantes en la electrificación de la ciudad y del país: las personas, los consumidores, las amas de casa que adoptaron sus rutinas de cocina al uso de electrodoméstico, los usuarios de maquinaria, los conductores de tranvías, etc.
En esta historia de la electrificación enfocada en los usuarios se deja ver la complicada vida social, económica y política detrás del uso de la electricidad. Las constantes negociaciones entre monopolios, entre intereses nacionales y locales, las tarifas como barreras al uso de la electricidad e incluso el robo de energía como un mecanismo para la difusión de la electricidad, todo esto en lo que la autora llama "el paisaje eléctrico" electricscape.
Es un libro muy interesante, muy ad hoc a los tiempos que vivimos donde las discusiones sobre la transición energética están presentes todos los días y donde el legado de la electrificación del país en el siglo XX contrasta con las necesidades energéticas presentes y futuras del país.
Diana Montaño nos cuenta la historia de los actores más importantes en la electrificación de la ciudad y del país: las personas, los consumidores, las amas de casa que adoptaron sus rutinas de cocina al uso de electrodoméstico, los usuarios de maquinaria, los conductores de tranvías, etc.
En esta historia de la electrificación enfocada en los usuarios se deja ver la complicada vida social, económica y política detrás del uso de la electricidad. Las constantes negociaciones entre monopolios, entre intereses nacionales y locales, las tarifas como barreras al uso de la electricidad e incluso el robo de energía como un mecanismo para la difusión de la electricidad, todo esto en lo que la autora llama "el paisaje eléctrico" electricscape.
Es un libro muy interesante, muy ad hoc a los tiempos que vivimos donde las discusiones sobre la transición energética están presentes todos los días y donde el legado de la electrificación del país en el siglo XX contrasta con las necesidades energéticas presentes y futuras del país.
April 4, 2022
Read for SECOLAS Thomas Book contest --- 2022.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews