중남미

his book provides a vivid and thorough account of the early days of the Mexican electriscape, narrating how, during this process of crafting, electricity, capitalinos (Mexico City inhabitants), and notions of modernity shaped each other until becoming indissoluble. I began reading this book during a visit to Mexico City, my home for many years, and the scene of this historical piece. Fortunate enough to land by night, I was welcomed by the vast sea of lights from the city`s electriscape. The historical account from this book allowed me to relate differently to my city and the light spectacle that first welcomed me, as it vividly recreates how electricity slowly took over its streets, buildings, and homes after arriving in Mexico City as a beautiful stranger.Starting from the arrival of electricity as a scientific curiosity in 1886 and finishing with the nationalization of the electric industry in 1960, the book offers a series of vignettes to illustrate how the agency of common capitalinos actively shaped the evolution of the electriscape in Mexico. The way the book is structured invites us to reflect on how this bottom-up domestication of electricity by capitalinos, sustained by everyday interactions with electric wonders (streetlights, trams, and electric appliances), gradually led to electricity being recognized as fundamental for industry and the creation of a modern Mexico, which eventually led to its appropriation through nationalization. Through this story, the author also leads an extensive theoretical analysis of the history of technology, reflecting on how electricity influenced urban development, along with notions of modernity, class, gender, and race in Mexico City. In my opinion, the reliance on vignettes from ordinary places and people makes this historical account of the Mexican electriscape extraordinary. Such an approach recognizes the role and agency of capitalinos and their everyday experiences in shaping the electriscape they inhabit. This makes for a novel contribution to the history of technologies, especially one as relevant as electricity, in a frequently underrepresented context such as a Latin American city.Part One of the book introduces electricity as a newcomer that must prove its worth in the competitive landscape of technologies seeking to illuminate Mexico`s City streets. Chapter One illustrates how this new technology was adopted as much as contested by capitalinos, and how this bright, steady light changed how capitalinos interacted with their city. The second chapter analyzes the transformation of electricity into a tool for households, commercial stores, and the country itself to display modernity, making this technology an effective signifier of class and modernity among citizens in the same way it became a signifier for different degrees of development among countries. Within this context, the chapter shows how electricity and the use of electric lights served as lenses to understand and analyze the tensions within a struggling Mexico, which tried to blend modernity, identity, and traditions.Part Two of the book centers on the consolidation of the electriscape in Mexico City, as electricity moves like lightning, as an almost intangible signifier of modernity to a very material presence of electric transport, which shaped how capitalinos moved around the city. Chapter Three analyzes how electric transport shaped narratives of urbanity and how an ideal urban citizen implied a harmonious interaction with technology. Technology is used to contrast an idealized modern citizen with cartoons of lower-class and Indigenous citizens trapped under the wheels of modernity as if they were an obstacle (frequently very literally, as described by the author). Chapter Four narrates how, after electricity made its way into capitalinos` homes and businesses, people from all social backgrounds resorted to illegal practices to satisfy their increasing energy needs. The chapter describes how electricity meters on households, patios, and businesses became the battleground for democratizing electricity. At the same time, the chapter shows how narratives, used by capitalinos from all social backgrounds to justify electricity theft, served to challenge foreign and private companies as the owners of such a crucial element for a modern nation in post-revolutionary Mexico.Chapter Five of part three of the book illustrates and analyzes how electric appliances define a modern household and, more importantly, modern housewives. This chapter looks at how different advertisements promoted modernity in the household based on the acquisition and use of electric appliances by an ideal of fair-skinned, modern women. By doing so, the author uses the marketing of electric appliances as an entry point for a historical analysis of the entanglement of technology, gender, class, and ethnicity in Mexico City. Chapter Six focuses on how critics of a privately owned electricity system (e.g. blackouts and high tariffs) were mobilized in post-revolutionary Mexico by an increasingly strong electric workers union, which undertook its revolutionary legacy to defend one of the nation`s critical resources. The chapter illustrates how such fierce political contestation endowed electricity with irrefutable recognition as an essential element for the future of Mexico as a modern country and the well-being of its population, one too risky to leave in foreign hands. The chapter narrates how the nationalization of electricity entered the last conquests of a post-revolutionary, modern, and institutional Mexico, along with the nationalization of the oil industry, although such a narrative seemed to ignore or minimize the role of union workers.The book is written in clear and accessible language, which, combined with the powerful illustrations retrieved from archival work, facilitates the messages from the author, reaching a wide variety of academic and nonacademic audiences. This book should interest social science or interdisciplinary energy researchers who engage with historical approaches of electrification, the history of technologies, and the impacts of technological innovation in the Global South, and more specifically, in Latin American contexts. Moreover, far from any tensions between this book and existing work, Montaño`s book and extensive archival work complement recent publications drawing on the history of energy in Mexico, such as Vergara (Citation2021), and is also a great addition to classic literature used to describe the early evolution of the electriscape in Mexico, which is relatively scarce (Wionczek Citation1965).As a constructive reflection on the book and in terms of its structure, I believe it would have been better to merge Chapters Five and Three. Both chapters illustrate how electricity as a technology served capitalinos to understand issues around class, gender, ethnicity, and modernity, allowing some groups to exert power over others. In the same vein, I believe Chapter Four would fit better as Chapter Five, leading the reader toward Chapter Six, which analyzes the struggle of union workers and the eventual nationalization of electricity. Additionally, although the book is based on impressive archival work, the author only seems to offer some condensed insights into the specifics of the archival research, providing not much further information or reflections on how this process unfolded and its influence in the making of the book.Finally, although the book is incredibly valuable in understanding the historical relevance of electricity in shaping everyday life in Mexico City as well as in the capitalinos who domesticated electricity until it was normalized in the urban landscape, it could still provide some reflections on what this historical analysis tells us about the present and future electriscape in Mexico. In the existing context, electricity as a technology has been assigned a new understanding of modernity that responds to global efforts to combat climate change. In the Mexican context, however, the debate on the electriscape has shifted in recent decades between liberalization under an energy reform and the growing importance of transnational actors bringing alternative renewable technologies, and increased nationalization under state-owned companies based on traditional resources such as fossil fuels and hydropower, but more recently also solar and lithium. In this context, the book could provide some concluding reflections on the formation of the Mexican electriscape as a continuum, and the relevance that historical analyses such as Montaño`s should have for present and future discussions related to the crafting of the Mexican electriscape.