Anti-Reelectionist Engineers before and after the Mexican Revolution

Young engineers participated in the anti-reelectionist movement that immediately preceded the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). Incorporating recently-published secondary literature on the history of engineering in addition to archival, newspaper, and autobiographical resources, this presentation argues that this generation of engineers left an important and lasting influence on political and developmental policies but became jaded with “unscientific” populist leaders following the revolution. These engineers retained positivist ideas about societal development but had become interested in progressive discussions about civic engagement, democracy, and social justice. Influenced by their mentors, peers, and foreign intellectuals, these engineers pushed for a nationalist agenda that would reduce Mexican dependence on outside specialists, increase hygiene, expand communications, institute progressive municipal reforms, revise agrarian policies, and industrialize the nation. Despite possessing significant influence during the first years of the revolution, many of these engineers became disillusioned with the violence, destruction, and unscientific policy making that came in its wake. Some of them became corrupt. Some of them dropped out of government service during the 1910s-1930s. Others maintained influential positions for decades, attempting to realize their visions of a modern Mexico within governments led by political leaders often unwilling to follow their exact developmental prescriptions. By the 1940s technocratic policies, in part established by these engineers, had become more dominant in government circles, but the engineers who served in the earliest phases of the revolution found themselves increasingly replaced and less influential.