Latin Americans lived in a fragmentary world; one person’s boom was always another’s crisis. I think this stills been true until nowadays; for example one of the most richest man in the world is a Mexican (Carlos Slim), and also almost 60% of the Mexican population live in poverty.
In the book it is established that progress came at a great cost, because the inequality increased; well, I would say this is very typical of Latin American societies because the positive economic changes that occurred in that time had a negative effect on the political stability and many of the times it came with great violence. When reading this passage of the book, I immediately thought about the current situation in Mexico, in which almost all of the positive changes in economy have extremely negative effects in some people’s lives. It mostly affects indigenous groups, who are not officially accepted by the same society, they’re just put on another side. When it comes to make a decision rather it is political, economic or any other kind, there are specific groups in society that are marginalized.
Another important point is the fixed political game, in the book it is presented like if it only happened at that time, but actually this political game has always been controlled by a small oligarchy, that group that has influence in every part of the society; people who has a lot of contacts, the ones that reassure their place in politics, and at the end of the day lead the “democracy”.
It is true in the textbooks that teach about Mexican or Latin American history the “good” part of the characters is showed, for example: about Porfirio Díaz (the 11 times president) he is definitely not a villain, he is the Mexican ex-president who changed Mexico, the one that introduced the railroad among many other things. But of course the negative repercussions are not thought. Talking about heroes and villains, it is hard to decide who plays what role; the Zapatistas and the Villistas were different groups that actually had the same interest and were looking for the same things to achieve, autonomy and they wanted their interests to be represented in a legal manner.. Indigenous communities across Mexico participated in revolutionary movements but all of them had ambiguous terms.
As always the Catholic Church is involved in the society and plays a role of a leading institution in Latin American societies; religion used to guide people what to do or not to do, the immoral behavior undermined their sense of order.
It’s surprising to me that you say in current Mexico economic development still comes at great cost of some people’s welfare. Knowing little about contemporary Mexican society, I would haved assumed that current statesmen have taken lesson from the revolutions in history, taking agrarian and working population more into consideration. It’s even more surprising that indigenous are still marginalized. I guess Australia may be a comparison to look at?
Economic development is supposed to be both the outcome and basis of social stability. Negligence towards some groups can be problematic for the state in the long run. It’s worrying to think, however, that some way of economic growth may even strengthen the oppressive regime.
I like the point you made about Diaz, and how in fact he himself is not a villain, but some actions he may have made had repercussions. Everything comes at a cost, and even a decision to positively alter Mexico, by introducing the railways would come with some type of negative repercussion that was not intended. It all goes back to the saying that progress comes at a great cost.