Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes rural responses to three different projects to modernize animal farming, comparing campaigns to support peasant farmers and fight diseases and pests.

Paper long abstract:

From the 1920s to the 1980s, the Mexican state sought to modernize, regulate and sanitize animal farming. This paper analyses how different sections of Mexico’s rural society responded to these efforts, comparing three key episodes: an international campaign against aftosa or foot-and-mouth disease in the 1940s and 1950s; the project to foster small-scale animal farming on ejidos (ganadería ejidal); and another international campaign in the 1960s-1980s to eradicate a pest known as the ‘screwworm.’ Drawing on original archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Europe the paper aims to complicate the conventional image of rural communities of campesinos resisting the incursions of state-backed modernization and the wealthy ranchers. It argues that the three cases provide evidence of communities’ selective and pragmatic engagement with modernizing projects, and a range of political alliances and tactics. More broadly, the paper considers how more histories of animals (livestock or otherwise) could illuminate processes of state and nation-making in modern Mexico.