1. The Commodification of Nature, 1880– 1910

When General Porfi rio Díaz seized the presidency from his weakened and unpopular predecessor in 1876, it seemed as if Mexico might fall back into the cycle of instability that had characterized its fi rst decades as an independent nation.Instead, Díaz remained in power for thirty-fi ve years (punctuated by only one hiatus, from 1880 to 1884), until revolutionaries forced him from offi ce, in 1911.His autocratic regime brought fractious regional leaders to heel and cracked down on bandits who thrived on political turmoil.Hacienda owners enjoyed strengthening markets and a political atmosphere that encouraged the expansion of their domains, while foreign investors attracted by unprecedented stability and business-friendly policies rushed to build railroads, mines, oil fi elds, and other industries great and small.By 1900, American and Canadian companies started to turn their attention to timber as well. Th e economic development and intellectual ferment of the Díaz years, which are known as the Porfi riato, brought some parts of the nation more closely in step with the developed world in the span of a single generation.Yet the wrenching advent of Porfi rian order and progress had ominous implications for a rural society that still retained many of its colonial traits.Laws ostensibly intended to modernize the market in rural property forced most indigenous communities (including acculturated ones) to privatize their collectively owned lands, or at least to incorporate themselves into holding companies.In either case, most communal property slipped into the hands of outsiders or wealthy villagers, leaving increasing numbers of rural people destitute.Some joined the ranks wage labor.At the same time, the land, water, and forests owned by the federal government or formerly held as village commons were fashioned into commodities that could be bought by investors or savvy residents who understood how to manipulate the expanding state bureaucracy.Th e Porfi rian order adhered to a peculiarly nineteenth-century variant of political liberalism, whose core tenets included secularism, equal rights for all, the capability of trade to grow the wealth of nations, and the virtues

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