Fueling Mexico: Energy and Environment, 1850–1950

by Germ�n Vergara

Around the 1830s, parts of Mexico began industrializing using water and wood. By the 1880s, this model faced a growing energy and ecological bottleneck. By the 1950s, fossil fuels powered most of Mexico's economy and society. Looking to the north and across the Atlantic, late nineteenth-century officials and elites concluded that fossil fuels would solve Mexico's energy problem and Mexican industry began introducing coal. But limited domestic deposits and high costs meant that coal never became king in Mexico. Oil instead became the favored fuel for manufacture, transport, and electricity generation. This shift, however, created a paradox of perennial scarcity amidst energy every new influx of fossil energy led to increased demand. Germán Vergara shows how the decision to power the country's economy with fossil fuels locked Mexico in a cycle of endless, fossil-fueled growth - with serious environmental and social consequences.

Genres: History

300 pages, Hardcover

Published June 24, 2021

Reviews

[Charles Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book! Reading worth the energy expended. lol
Concisely written; crisply and chronologically organized (across mostly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries); easy (and fun) to read; interestingly sourced! From solar regimes, healthy diets, Huitzilopochtli (the sun itself), México profundo... to capital-intensive fossil fuel extraction, hyper-urbanization, displacement, unforeseen consequences, and grinding social inequalities. ¡Environmental degradation! A subversive reading of the "Green Revolution"is just one fun take found here.

Well done!