Ever since Friedrich Katz's monumental Pancho Villa (1998) signaled that biography is an acceptable medium with which to engage the history of Mexico—few authors having done so over the prior 30 years—the genre has enriched the historiography with a steady trickle of works. Some profile great men, a very few profile great women, while others function as case studies: lives of lesser-known subjects whose careers illuminate a stretch of the country's history, transcending watersheds as they do so, and so often heightening our sense of continuities.
Justin Castro's well-titled Apostle of Progress falls into the latter category. Few will have heard of the brilliant engineer and polymath Modesto Rolland, yet his five-decade career, most of it in public service, illustrates the developmentalist struggles and debates that emerged as Mexican leaders of contrasting ideologies, from Porfirio Díaz to Lázaro Cárdenas, sought to “modernize” their country. The Baja California-born son of a French immigrant, Rolland first made his mark just before the 1910 Revolution, patenting designs with reinforced concrete. He was still in his twenties, and his early successes set the tone for the rest of his life. On one hand, in applying his ideas to low-cost housing and potable water projects he strove to better the lot of the poor. On the other, he shared the patronizing belief of Porfirian technocrats (and many of their postrevolutionary successors) that he knew better than anyone what his country needed, a confidence borne out in his pamphleteering on topics from land grants to labor law. All the while this arrogance made him a rather insufferable colleague and husband.
This is not to say that Rolland's plans were mostly follies. Some of his designs, like the Xalapa Stadium—built in the 1920s and still in use today—more or less fulfilled his dream of projects that would bring social classes together. Others, like free ports on either side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, were hampered by political indifference and Rolland's own irascibility. Still others, however, like a 12-track railroad that would haul ships between those ports, carry a whiff of Rube Goldberg mechanics.
Castro offers a persuasive portrait of Rolland, including how his stubbornness and honesty, assets early in life, became liabilities later on. He thereby reveals how much in the history of public policy and state-led development is contingent on the character of its enactors. Had Rolland been more congenial (and more willing to grease palms, one may infer), he would have gotten a lot more done. To some extent Rolland was a product of his middle-income family and rigidly hierarchical times, but he also made his own choices, such as open criticism of politicians, who in turn blocked his path. Eventually, Rolland made too many enemies. He remained energetic in his 70s, but with doors closed to further service he was left to repairing relations with his long-ignored family.
Rolland's story is further instructive in illustrating the influence of engineers on the moderate current of the Revolution led by Francisco Madero and then the nationalistic current led by Venustiano Carranza; the mutual influence of Mexican and US progressives between the 1910s and 1930s (a theme that recalls Tore Olsson's recent Agrarian Crossings); nation-building attempts to develop the far-flung states of Yucatán, Baja California, and Oaxaca; and the simultaneous growth of capitalistic and state-funded industrial development after the Revolution.
The biography suffers from two weaknesses, however. First, its evaluation of Rolland's achievements is inconsistent. In commenting on the social impact of his Plaza México, the world's largest bullring, the author fixes on an anomalous riot provoked by a substandard bullfight and ignores the larger popular history of the venue. In summarizing the economic impact of Rolland's Tehuantepec port developments, Castro offers unsourced generalizations about the lack of benefit to “the vast majority of workers” (226) and no quantification at all of the benefit to trade.
The second weakness is stylistic. Although Castro makes a commendable effort to offer a readable narrative, his chapters refuse to forego the introduction-content-conclusion format of most monographs, so the text is a good deal more repetitive than it need be. These introductions also summarize Rolland's private life, depriving the ensuing narrative sections of any suspense, surprise, or pathos. And there are quite a few clumsy, stating-the-obvious transitions (“Rolland was not alone in . . . ”). Still, a biographical study is definitely a sound choice for attracting readers to subjects they might otherwise avoid, from debates over tax policy to innovations in concrete, whose drabness belies their importance to the fulfilling of the promises of the Revolution.
