Saltillo, 1770-1810: Town and Region in the Mexican North. (Reviews).

Saltillo, 1770-1810: Town and Region in the Mexican North. By Leslie Offutt (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. 290 pp., 2 maps, tables, notes, bibliography. ISBN: 0-8165-2164-6, $50.00 [cloth]).

The headline on the press release for the book reviewed here proclaims "Saltillo, 1770-1810 Offers a Substantial Revision of Mexican Regional History." I strongly disagree with this assessment, and believe the book falls short of the stated objective. The study does not place the findings for the region examined into a larger historical context, is written from a top-down elite perspective, and largely fails to explain why Saltillo is an important topic for study or why other scholars should be interested in reading the book. Some of the most interesting interpretations of the development of Saltillo that appear in the study actually come from the writings of Jose Cuello, who wrote a dissertation on Saltillo completed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1981.

In the introduction, Offutt argues that this study is significant, because it represents a new trend in the historiography of the northern frontier region of colonial Mexico. However, the author does so in an anemic and outdated historiographic presentation. Offutt creates the proverbial straw man as the base line from which to measure her book, but in this case the straw man is dated. She refers to the works of H.E. Bolton, and several generations "Boltonians" who wrote history from the top down, focused on the activities of great men, men of European ancestry, and the role of institutions. Offutt also takes on the 1950s vintage study of Haciendas written by Francois Chevalier, a horse that was beaten dead several decades ago by new studies of estates. It is not clearly stated in the introduction, but Offutt implies that she will focus more on social history. Offutt also argues the need to write more about civil settlements, as versus missions and military garrisons. To bolster the creation of the straw man, Offutt relies on an essay written in 1988 ["Turner, the "Boltonians," and the Borderlands"] to strengthen this historiographic critique. The problem is that Offutt's straw man died and was buried long ago, and a new breed of scholars of the Mexican colonial north emerged and redefined the study of the region. Much of the more recent and innovative literature that appeared particularly in the 1990s is not cited in the introduction or bibliography, suggesting to this reviewer that she is not current with the historiography of the region published both in Mexico and the United States. Moreover, the author does not cite older studies that were not written in the "Boltonian" mold. This apparent unfamiliarity with the literature would perhaps explain the outdated historiographic thrust of the introduction.

The discussion of the literature on the frontier is just the first example of how this book came to fruition in a time warp. Many of the most recent titles, particularly titles directly related to social history and particularly the experiences of common people, do not appear in the author's bibliography. This is consistent with the author's top-down approach to the history of Saltillo, which is not much different from the focus of the Boltonians whom Offutt criticized in her introduction. Let me cite three examples of this social history literature. They are Peter Stern and Robert H. Jackson, "Vagabundaje and settlement patterns in colonial northern Sonora," The Americas 44:4 (April 1988), 461-481; Peter Stern, "White Indians of the Borderlands," Journal of the Southwest 33:3 (Autumn, 1991), 262-281; Peter Stern, "Marginals and Acculturation in Frontier Society," in Robert H. Jackson, ed., New Views of Borderlands History (Albuquerque, 1998), 157-188, and these by no means exhaust the list of truly innovativ e studies written by the current generation of specialists in the history of northern of New Spain that don't fit into Offutt's myopic view of the historiography of the region.

Offutt also tries to use the study of a region dominated by an urban center and a unique period in time as a justification for the study. Here again the author falls well short. Offutt provides a weak and ill-defined concept of region as the basis for her placement of Saltillo. I would liked to have seen a somewhat more detailed analysis of the social, economic, and institutional links between Saltillo and surrounding areas such as Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Nuevo Santander, and Texas. Offutt argues the need to link the Mexican north more closely to the history of the rest of Mexico, but this is not a new intellectual imperative. The author also states that the time period examined, 1770-1810, provides a snap shot of a region in the Mexican north on the eve of the outbreak of the Mexican independence movement in 1810. What is the significance here? One could argue that the entire 300 years of Spanish domination of Mexico is important because it came before the failed 1810 golpe de estado that escalated into a cas te war. Did anything important happen during the last decades of the Spanish colony to entice the reader to want to learn more about Saltillo?

Did significant changes occur? The introduction gives no hint of possible changes in Saltillo during the period the author has chosen to study. Offutt notes demographic growth, simplistically linked to economic expansion, and the establishment in the city of important royal bureaucracies. Did these changes have any relationship to other events in Mexico? While Offutt claims that her study draws an important region in northern Mexico into the mainstream of Mexican history, her introduction misses from the get go. The "B" word, the Bourbon reforms, does not appear in the introduction. Scholars of the Mexican north, scholars not cited in the author's bibliography or introduction, have pointed to the importance of the drive for reform in the transformation of the Mexican north, and it should be noted that Jose de Galvez and a generation of reforming royal bureaucrats who followed him spent considerable time, effort, and money trying to bring the northern region of New Spain in line with the rest of the colony. Th is major reform program, that explains the creation of new bureaucracies in Saltillo and social transformations such as the arrival of large numbers of Spaniards from Iberia including merchants to the northern reaches of the colony, glaringly does not appear in Offutt's introduction as a theme in the period she has chosen to study.

The introduction sets the tone for the rest of the book. Offutt provides data on the merchants of Saltillo, land ownership, and some clues to economic patterns in the region at the end of the colonial period. While the specific information may be interesting in its own right, there is little effort to illustrate the bigger picture of what occurred in the broader region, and what insights scholars would receive from reading this study. The conclusion fails to bring the data presented together in anything resembling a synthesis. In the end Offutt's study does little to improve our understanding of the social and economic dynamics in northern Mexico at the end of the colonial period.