The Collegian

Issue date: 9/18/07 Section: News

For The Ecology of Oil, Professor of History Myrna Santiago received the 2007 Bryce Woods Award from the Latin American Studies Association two weeks ago. The award is given for the best book on Latin America written in English, with another awarded to the best book written in Spanish.

The Ecology of Oil is about the changes the oil industry brought to Huasteca, Veracruz from the time it arrived in 1900 to the time it was nationalized in 1938. The arrival of the industry brought changes in land tenure, social hierarchy, and environmental degradation. During the Mexican Revolution the oil workers were strong revolutionaries with policies to the left even of the government as the union leaders advocated anarchy and nationalization from the beginning.

Santiago's work on the book actually goes back to her dissertation research, and as a result her knowledge of the subject is not only expansive, it has involved much applied research on her part, involving trips to the library and to the industrial sites in Veracruz.

In the book, Santiago placed a heavy emphasis on environmental degradation as the oil industry transformed the northernmost tropical rainforest into nothing with fire explosions and random drilling. As the industry was not very old itself at the turn of the 20th century, it had poor equipment and was prone to oil spills and explosions. Santiago documented the worst of these explosions, which happened at the Dos Bocas site on July 4, 1908, creating a lake of oil, salt water, and water approximately two miles long that to this day has an electric fence surrounding it in an effort for containment. Unfortunately, the fence cannot contain the wind which still blows poisonous chemicals toward one shore.

In the book Santiago documents geologist Charles Hamilton's impressions of the site five years after the explosion: "The entire surface of the dark fluid in the crater was in constant motion of currents and eddies, whirlpools and blows of oily mush, hot salt water and evil smelling gas. It was evident that the high banks were undercut and could slough away into the heaving, seething, liquid cauldron…It smelled and looked as I imagined hell might look and smell" (139).

Another key element of the book is the discussion of the social hierarchy and their respective perceptions of nature. With the arrival of the industry came segregation, new systems of hierarchy, and unfamiliar and dangerous labor.

The massive amounts of hard laborers required by the oil industry were mostly Mexicans and Americans, through which the local area went through a population boom. Santiago discusses how while the oil executives saw nature as something to be mastered, the laborers wanted to get away from it because it was so dangerous and consumed so much of their day. As a result, two very different cultures sprung up within the industry: one focused on conquering nature and the other focused on bars and brothels.

One element that Santiago does not focus on, and which she said she is trying to remedy in an article later this year in the Journal of Women's History, is the role that women played in the communities. Unlike other women in Mexico and America at the time, women in Veracruz were upset that they had to go to work instead of being housewives, their mentality supported the patriarchal systems, defining their roles within the communities.

The book is available in hardcover at the library.

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