Soto Laveaga, Gabriela. Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill.

Hall, Michael R.

Soto Laveaga, Gabriela. Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.

The oral contraceptive pill, commonly known as "the Pill," was developed in 1951 by Syntex, a small American-owned company in Mexico City. The Pill, which became a popular form of contraception during the 1960s, altered the lives of millions of people and changed the role of medicine in reproduction. It was the first mass-produced drug to control a normal body function rather than an illness. American biochemist Russell Marker discovered the process by which a substance known as diosgenin, an excellent raw material for making synthetic steroids, was extracted from Mexican wild yams known as barbasco. Gabriela Soto Laveaga's Jungle Laboratories: Mexican Peasants, National Projects, and the Making of the Pill, however, is more than a study of Mexican yams and the subsequent impact on the global pharmaceutical industry. Significantly, it is "an exploration of the local and social consequences of the global search for medicinal plants." (p. 2) Soto Laveaga, an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explores nearly a half century of Mexican history [from 1941 to 1989], and reflects on how global affairs, "through the influence of barbasco, left a particular imprint on the [Mexican] countryside." (p. 13)

At the height of the barbasco trade, thousands of Mexican peasants harvested "more than ten tons of wild yams" from "the tropical humid areas of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas on a weekly basis." (p. 4) Placing her work within the context of histories of Latin American commodities exploitation, the author posits that the history of barbasco is "significantly different." (p. 9) Unlike commodities such as sugarcane, which can be grown successfully in a variety of countries with similar climates, barbasco resisted transplantation. Soto Laveaga notes a similarity between barbasco and Andean coca leaves, "which must also undergo a chemical process before acquiring its street value as cocaine and whose demand drove the development of strong local and transnational networks." (p. 9) In keeping with recent trends in Latin American commodities exploitation studies, which attempt to provide more than an economic history of a particular commodity, the author strives to reveal the political and social consequences of commodity extraction on the local community.

In 1975, President Luis Echeverria, as part of his populist political agenda, attempted to seize control of the "highly lucrative steroid hormone industry and create a domestic pharmaceutical industry." (p. 4) With the creation of the state-owned Productos Quimicos Vegetales Mexicanos S.A. (Proquivemex)/Mexican Chemical Vegetable Products, Echeverria hoped to "displace the middlemen and become the link between barbasco pickers and transnational corporations." (p. 135) In keeping with his populist agenda, Echeverria argued that government control of the barbasco trade would enable the yam pickers to organize and reap the profits of the wild yam trade. Thus, although "profit was a goal of the company, the social agenda regarding peasants illustrates that Proquivemex was a product of the populist era." (p. 21) The Mexican president's plans, however, were stymied. By 1975, "barbasco was losing ground to alternative synthetic materials in the world market." (p. 134) Whereas a few Mexicans acquired great wealth as a result of the yam trade, the overwhelming majority of the yam pickers never reaped the "financial rewards associated with the steroid industry." (p. 21) Nevertheless, many Mexican yam pickers experienced a new sense of political power. As part of his neoliberal economic reform agenda, President Carlos Salinas, who viewed the state-run enterprise as a failure, disbanded Proquivemex in 1989.

Soto Laveaga's engaging study is enhanced by numerous interviews of former yam pickers and period photographs. Her detailed portrayal of peasants such as Isidro Apolinar offer an insight into "how the barbasco trade changed the lives of southern Mexican peasants." (p. 23) Jungle Laboratories is a welcome addition to the growing body of historical research focusing on medicine in Latin America.

Michael R. Hall

Armstrong Atlantic State University