Five Suns. A Fire History of Mexico

Authored by Dr Stephen J. Pyne. 2024. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, AZ, USA. 417 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-5339-6.

After Mexico’s historic fire season in 1998, I accompanied Dr. Stephen J. Pyne to tour the central part of the country. In the Park Desierto de los Leones, he found a log in which his three types of fires combined: (1) natural (scarred by lightening), (2) human (log and park affected), and (3) industrial, with the pollution (that had killed the tree) and global warming that facilitated the fire. Possibly, it was there that he began to conceive a book for Mexico, promising it to the Comisión Nacional Forestal in 2010. The book, the first he fully dedicates to a Latin American country, was published in 2024. It is divided into five chapters, each corresponding to the eras or suns of Aztec mythology.

First sun: fire and land

The gigantic meteor that impacted what is now Chicxulub, Yucatán, 65,000,000 years ago unleased diverse mega catastrophes, including global wildfires, followed by massive extinctions that changed the course of life. Dr. Pyne reminds us that in Mexico, and all over the planet, fires of natural origin have happened for millions of years. He establishes that pyro-diversity contributes to mega-biodiversity.

Second sun: fire and water

In his analysis of the pre-Columbian world, the author underlines the perpetual presence of fire in ceremonies, temples and fields, and how daily survival was based on water (search for it) and fire (gathering firewood). He highlights an agriculture of water and fire. We can look at two examples: fire helped to emulate land where cultivars originated, such as teozintle, the original corn, during crop domestication, and the slash-and-burn system, polemic, but sustainable if done correctly.

Third sun: fire and sword

Dr. Pyne adds that during the Conquest and the Colony, the translocation of plants, animals, diseases and people reorganized the fire regimes of New Spain. The religious missions saw the native fire use practices to cultivate the land as contrary to civilization. Also the mines demanded large amounts of firewood and charcoal.

The conquistadors brought more fire to Mexico, reconfiguring the fires of the pre-Hispanic cultures when they introduced livestock. Native fires for hunting could harm those used for pastures and vice versa: fires that were contrary, but miscegenated. Reports of expeditions also brought some knowledge about fire in this era. However, characters from the Illustration, such as the great naturalist and expeditioner Alexander Von Humboldt, did not recognized fires as an ecological process. This criticism reminded me of an international conference where David Bowman rebuked Darwin himself for a similar reason.

Fourth sun: fire and iron

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author places the beginning of this period at the world’s worst oil disaster in Dos Bocas, Veracruz, 1908, which approximately marks industrialization and industrial fire in Mexico. The authorities of the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship did not understand nor were they able to eradicate the traditional use of fire and firewood gathering, which they considered primitive. After the Revolution, communal property took the form of ejidos (displacement of people to new environments and loss of traditional knowledge) or communal lands (people stayed where they were and preserved their traditional knowledge, including knowledge of fire). From Porfirio Díaz to Cárdenas, the titanic figure of Miguel Ángel de Quevedo stands out. De Quevedo proposed, promoted and directed forest organizations and forest activity, including forest protection. Besides highlighting the historically repetitive misunderstanding of traditional burning and their prohibition, the author reveals the origin of the model of fire exclusion. In Europe, traditional burning was considered primitive and insurrectional in their colonies (because they did not want their forests to be seen as marketable goods) and were prohibited without success and fires were fought in their forests. Mexico remained under this influence and, with no methodology to differentiate positive from negative fires, the model of exclusion failed.

The author also reveals that, although Mexico has looked for inspiration and guidance in the United States, the latter has set Mexico up as a model also. In the 1960s, Starker Leopold recognized fire as an ecological benefactor in the United States, inspired by the forests of the Sierra de Chihuahua he visited with his father, Aldo Leopold, the prophet of environmentalism. On the American side there was overgrazing, exclusion of natural and traditional fire, dense forests, much fuel and danger of conflagration. On the Mexican side, none of this occurred. At the height of the Mexican Miracle and Green Revolution, Mexico looked to the United States for guidance, but at the end of the twentieth century, the United States sought to reintroduce more positive fire, such as the natural fire that prevailed in Baja California.

Dr. Pyne poses and describes a pyric transition in Mexico, which considered to have shaped modern Mexico. He also manifests that the country embraced modernity and science, but it was not able to abolish ancestral practices and explains why Mexico has not exploded in mega-fires.

Fifth sun: fire and air

Beginning with the catastrophic 1998 season and the worst drought since 1508, the Era of Fire makes its entrance in the country in the context of climate change (the Pyrocene, Pyne proposes). The North American Forestry Commission provided Mexico with advice and technology, and around 1983 with USDA FS and US AID, the legendary advanced yearly international courses on prevention and combat in Spanish began. Many authorities and Mexican technicians participated in them as students and instructors. The twin fires in Coahuila 2011, facilitated by very dry and hot conditions with strong winds and accumulation of fuel in remote areas, affected 317,000 ha. In this fire there were no fatalities nor severe accidents, in great part thanks to the preparation of the official personnel in the mentioned or derived courses.

The author states that a Red Revolution is in process in Mexico, a revolution in fire management. During this revolution technology, resources and skills for prevention and fire-fighting have been enriched. There are programs of scientific research and university institutions that offer courses on fires, books that systemize and formalize knowledge of fire in Mexico, and model demonstration areas. There are contributions to fire management and to or that include the fire as an ecological and traditional factor in academics, normativity, legislation and public policy. He mentions and includes profiles of six researchers or ex fire-management directors he calls ‘fathers’ of the revolution, institutions involved, and natural scenarios where it occurs.

At the end of his book, Dr. Pyne offers a series of final thoughts, one of which is that the triangle of Mexican fire is made up of biodiversity, cultural diversity and pyro-diversity.

Further comments

It is not possible to speak of the author or of any of his works without considering his global legacy. It took him several years to finish ‘Five Suns’. This gave him the opportunity to enrich it further with some of his other books, which give evidence of the inspiration of Leopold in Mexico (‘Between Two Fires’), Conquest and Colony (‘Vestal Fire’), climate change (‘The Pyrocene’) and the profiles of the ‘fathers’ (‘Vidas en Fuego’, which he coedited). This type of connections is not only use for information; it allows better understanding of the relationship between humanity and fire and among humans through fire, connecting countries over history and facilitating the detection of similarities and differences, for example, in the use of fire among the original cultures of the planet or influences, when native fire clashes or fuses with that of the colonizer countries. These similarities, differences and influences between countries, taken to the present, could help to form a common world front to face the challenges of fire management brought about by climate change.

The book takes the reader on a trip through the nation’s forestry, agricultural, and environmental history, with fire as the vehicle. Although the author declares to have covered up to 2011, it is actually more current since he points out some later events. Agile, enjoyable, objective, analytical, respectful and robust, ‘Five Suns’ is a powerful narrative told in rich language and ingenious analogies, connecting deductively or inductively the different historical stages of Mexico, the influence of Europe and North America and world and national events with the institutions, their policies, people and landscapes. He reflects on varied aspects of fire, such as the viewpoints toward fire, how it has transformed environment and society, and how these have also changed fire, the country’s fire regimes over history, with the influence of climate change.

The potential audience are students, professors, researchers, fire managers, technicians and others with an interest in fire management in Mexico, Latin America and the world. ‘Five Suns’ is another contribution of Dr. Pyne to world knowledge of fire that ratifies him as one of the most important authorities on the topic in the planet.