The Frontier of Known Territory: Colonization and Demarcation of Uncultivated Lands in Mexico in the 19th century

Abstract

This work proposes an analysis of the policy measures taken by the successive governments of Mexico, from Independence to the Porfiriato, in order to control the territory through the creation of agricultural colonies. While the projects of the 1820s reveal optimism and a classical conception of the notion of the frontier, the intellectual elites and Mexican policies quickly recognized what little knowledge they had of the Mexican territory, including the lands controlled for the longest time –those between the port of Veracruz and Mexico City. As a result, the projects were modified to adopt a strategy of frontier control for territory in closer and closer proximity. Various events propelled this evolution: the loss of Texas as a consequence of the S. Austin colony, the Maya rebellion in the Yucatan and the political instability that hindered the design of truly public policies. More than a century after the great botanical explorations, the government had to contract foreign companies in order to know the potential and status of lands as nearby as Veracruz. The agricultural colonies, originally conceived as a means to integrate marginal regions to the national economy, were finally installed on indebted private properties, on lands that were already inhabited and sometimes claimed by neighboring towns, or along the railroad lines that were to be used to reconquer and unify the national territory.