@article{THESIS,
      recid = {1730},
      author = {Schwartz, Diana Lynn},
      title = {Transforming the Tropics: Development, Displacement, and  Anthropology in the Papaloapan, Mexico, 1940s-1970s},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2016-12},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {388},
      abstract = {This dissertation examines the ideas, practices, and  effects of state-led development programs in indigenous  communities of Mexico during the mid-twentieth century.  Using Mexico’s first experiment with integrated regional  development as a case study, it centers on the relocation  of over twenty thousand inhabitants of the Papaloapan River  Basin, most of them indigenous, who were displaced by the  construction of Latin America’s largest hydroelectric dam.  Leading the exodus of the indigenous population was a cadre  of Mexican anthropologists, who drew from their reported  expertise in indigenous culture and society to facilitate  among the relocated indigenes a culturally-sensitive  transition to modern life. By focusing on the interactions  between the displaced population, anthropologists,  agricultural engineers, local politicians and agrarian  activists in the Papaloapan, the dissertation argues that  development—as a process and not simply an a priori policy  prescription—shaped social scientific ideas and practices,  the consolidation of state power, and the very concept of  “indigenous” as not merely an ethnic denotation but a  salient political category to demand access to state  resources in modern Mexico.

This is the first historical  study of modern Mexico to connect the plans and practices  of economic development to indigenous politics. It upends  longstanding assumptions about the power and coherence of  the Mexican state during the mid-twentieth century by  examining how planners worked with the local people and  landscape as they carried out a project for  infrastructural, economic, and social improvement. Through  an analysis of projects and politics as they played out on  the ground during relocation and upon resettlement, the  thesis challenges prevailing scholarship that presumes  parity among actors executing the so-called will of the  government, to reveal the limitations of state knowledge  and power in 1950s Mexico, and the malleability of the very  social and political categories—among them the category  “indigenous”—that justified calls for improvement. The  dissertation represents a departure from not only  literature on modern Mexican history, but also the history  of Cold-War era development throughout the world.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1730},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1730},
}