Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs

Rocio Gomez is Dr. and Mrs. Harold Greer Jr. Assistant Professor in Latin American History at Virginia Commonwealth University. She won the 2019 Edwin Lieuwen Award for promotion of excellence in the teaching of Latin American studies from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies.

“Tracing the ‘ecology of extraction,’ Gomez brilliantly connects the ecosystems of city, mountain, body, and microbe into a comprehensive and compelling story. . . . In doing so, Gomez reminds us that silver mining haunts the past and the present of Zacatecas and that reckoning with those legacies greatly enhances our understandings of Mexican history and our capacity to imagine a more just and sustainable future.”-Emily Wakild, author of Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940 “What Gomez uncovered is not pretty, but it is important not only for environmental history but for all mining communities today.”-Myrna Santiago, author of The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938 “This book traces a previously unexplored aspect of the storied silver mines of Zacatecas. Long after the colonial bonanza had faded, the mines found new life thanks to new technology and foreign capital. Rocio Gomez shows how the mining renaissance created toxic environments that permeated the bodies of those who lived and worked above ground and below, even as it poisoned the waters on the people of arid Zacatecas depended. Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs is a major contribution to Mexican environmental history, to history of public health, and-most important-to our understanding of the relationship between the two.”-Chris Boyer, author of Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico “Well researched. . . . Focusing on the emblematic case of Zacatecas, [this book] expands our understanding of, and should appeal to a broad set of readers interested in, this important topic.”-Mikael D. Wolfe, author of Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico

• List of Illustrations    Acknowledgments    A Note about Mine Names    Introduction    1. Underground Bodies: Extraction, Exposure, and Dissection    2. The Home: Drought, Wells, and Bodies of Water    3. The City: The Mine and the Body    4. The Body as Land: Water, Mining, and the Revolution    5. The Body as Nation: Silicosis-Tuberculosis, Unions, and Revolutionary Death    Conclusion: Toxic Legacies    Notes    Bibliography    Index