Failed Migrants in the Colonies: European Military Engineers in the Desiccation of the Basin of Mexico

Vera Candiani

European military engineers transplanted by the Spanish monarchy to the colonies were migrants whose constant geographical mobility, poor pay, and family obligations in their mother countries militated against their social assimilation at their destinations. Through their participation in the desiccation works of the basin of Mexico, they became potential vehicles for the transfer of European scientific and technological knowledge. Although they tried to inject this knowledge into the project, their outsider status undermined their ability or willingness to compromise with local methods of recruitment and organization of labor for the works, as well as with technological practices that they dismissed as inefficient, if not inhuman. In their drive to protect these practices, which shifted the costs of the project onto rural populations, urban desiccation officials rarely implemented the engineers’ recommendations. The failure of military engineers as migrants and vectors of knowledge was not total, however, as their culture was avidly emulated.

[WP# 04CR017]