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Socioeconomic Development of Tampico, Mexico (1870-1910)
My current research for my book manuscript focuses on the question of how the Mexican port of Tampico made the transition from a "town" to a "city" during the second half of the 19th Century. In answering this central question, I utilize spatial theory derived from urban geography. While I take from both traditional Marxist geography and post-modern geography, the core analytical frame for the monograph takes from David Harvey's The Urban Experience and Paris: The Capital of Modernity. His Marxist approach places emphasis on circulation of capital in the formation, reproduction, and transformation of urban space. My monograph establishes how the circulation of capital is key for understanding Tampico's urban transition from "town" to "city." While this may appear overly materialistic in conceptualization, several of the book chapters venture into production and reproduction of social, political, and cultural spaces as framed by the circulation of capital. In analysis of circulation of capital, one of the monograph's chapters examines the property ownership by using GIS (Geographical Information System) to analyze a set of Tampico's tax records. These records range from 1876 to 1898. The chapter intends to illustrate both the physical construction of space in the form of fixed property as well as the social and economic distribution of wealth. The tax records allow me to map several variables: year, name of property owner, gender of property owner, street, lot number, property value, type of structure, and "other" information. GIS allows correlation and comparison of any combination of these input variables in producing very pretty maps as well as some sophisticated statistical analysis.

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Project Description

x The core question I hope GIS will help me to understand is how the arrival of the railroad in 1890 acted as the "tipping point" for Tampico's transition to modernity. As suggested by the use of the term "tipping point," complex adaptive system theory is important to my understanding of circulation of capital. I am attempting to understand factors, such as the physical circulation of capital, as key building blocks to Tampico's becoming a complex adaptive urban space, aka a modern city. GIS, I hope, will allow me to illustrate the "great transformation" stimulated by railroad development through analysis of the property records before and after 1890.

Impact of the Project

I hope to illustrate the value of using GIS in historical research.

Production Details

An 1887 Tampico map, provided by Dr. Kuecker, was scanned in pieces and digitally stitched back together to generate an electronic image of the original map. While in Tampico, using modern GPS technology, Dr. Kuecker obtained the spatial locations of features on the 1887 map that still exist today. These GPS locations were used to spatially reference the scanned map in the GIS. Using ArcGIS™, features on the map were manually digitized to create the “Blocks” and “Lots” data layers (including block number and lot number attribute values) used in the Tampico GIS. During his sabbatical and on other occasions, Dr. Kuecker traveled to Tampico, Mexico, and spent countless hours pouring over tax records that spanned various years in the late 19th Century. These data are entered into spreadsheets for each year. As the spreadsheet for each year is completed, the data are joined (after much massaging in both the spreadsheet and GIS) as attribute data with the corresponding Tampico GIS data layer.

Glen Kuecker

Team Members Include:

Beth Wilkerson and Glen Kuecker




Contact Information:


Glen Kuecker
Associate Professor of History
gkuecker@depauw.edu

Beth Wilkerson
FITS GIS Specialist
bwilkerson@depauw.edu
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