Making data, making objectivity: infrastructures and statistical knowledge in post-revolutionary Mexico (1921–1933)

This article examines how, in post-revolutionary Mexico, the technical infrastructure and administrative procedures of the National Statistics Department made it possible to transform scattered records into standardized, legitimate data. Drawing on documentary sources from 1921 to 1933, the process of “data concentration” is analyzed as a key operation in which Powers electromechanical devices, official nomenclatures, and coordinated workflows produced statistical objectivity. It is argued that this objectivity results from historically situated socio-technical assemblages. This study contributes to social and historical studies of quantification by showing how technical standardization was part of the construction of a modern state capable of governing by numbers.