Material-Conceptual Landscape Transformation in Sixteenth-Century Veracruz

The Making of the Myth in Postcolonial Development: Material-Conceptual Landscape Transformation in Sixteenth-Century Veracruz Andrew Sluyter Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University European colonialism entailed material and conceptual landscape transformations that continue to define the parameters for postcolonial development. The major conceptual landscape transformation, termed the “pristine myth” for the Americas, remains a cultural foundation for the binary categorization of the world into a rationally progressive West versus an irrationally traditional non-West, thus driving the social and environmental contradictions of postcolonial development efforts. Despite much evidence that contradicts the pristine myth—the myth in postcolonial development—it retains a pernicious grip on the Western popular imagination because attempts to falsify it have not demonstrated its emergence through a colonial process that materially and conceptually transformed landscapes while simultaneously obscuring such transformation. Study of sixteenth-century landscape transformation in the environs of the port of Veracruz demonstrates the significance of a material-conceptual, positive-feedback process in the emergence of a myth of increasingly rational land-use over the course of the colonial and postcolonial periods, when, in fact, the opposite transformation has occurred. That landscape served as the beachhead for the Spanish colonization of North America and thus influenced the initial conceptualization of New Spain, as well as undergoing some of the earliest material transformations due to disease and livestock introductions. Although this occurred early in the process of global colonization, a detailed database of land-grant documents enables reconstruction of interactions among population, vegetation, livestock, and categories of land use, cover, and tenure. Identification of such key variables in a positive-feedback process that simultaneously transformed landscape and obscured that transformation tentatively provides the basis for a more general falsification of the myth in postcolonial development. Key Words: the Americas, colonialism, development theory, environmental and cultural sustainability, landscape ecology, landscape transformation, Mexico, nature, Veracruz, wilderness. I have a feeling myths are a bit like malaria. Malaria Within half a century of establishing that initial appears as a headache, a stomachache; it festers and beachhead on the mainland and going on to spreads. Which is more or less what myths do. They colonize much of the Americas, the Spaniards die hard (Miguel Ángel Asturias1). had transformed the landscape to match Cortés’s ernando Cortés, writing his first dispatch prospectus for colonization, so muchso thatby 1580 to Charles V a few months after landing the chief magistrate of Veracruz could report the Hat Chalchicueyecan in 1519, described region inland from the port as “so fertile and full of the tropical lowland environs of his beachhead as pastures that more than 150,000 head of livestock, “beautiful bottomlands and river banks” and, between the cows and the mares, ordinarily graze with a possessive eye, judged them to be “very apt within little more than seven leagues all around, and agreeable for traveling through and for pas- even without counting the innumerable sheep turing all kinds of livestock” (Cortés 1988:20).2 that descend from the highlands to over-winter” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 89(3), 1999, p. 377–401 ©1999 by Association of American Geographers Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF,UK. 378 Sluyter (JGI, ms. xxv–8, f. 5)3. In the interim, Chal- Western cultural ecologies as alternatives rather chicueyecan had become San Juan de Ulúa, the than precursors to Westernization. deep-water anchorage for the river port of Ver- Falsifying the pristine myth requires demon- acruz, the designated destination of the Seville stration of its emergence as a myth during the fleet, and the entrepôt for the colony of New colonial period and its persistence into the post- Spain. Smallpox and typhus epidemics had re- colonial period, through a process that materially duced the native population of some half a million and conceptually transformed landscapes while by ninety percent, and vast herds and flocks simultaneously obscuring that process. Prior stud- grazed amid the deserted villages (Simpson 1952; ies of the emergence of the pristine myth have Sluyter 1996, 1997a, 1998). Yet by the mid-nine- addressed both material (Denevan 1992a) and teenth century, in the first comprehensive de- conceptual (Bowden 1992) landscape transfor- scription of the region’s vegetation, Carl mation, but without systematically investigating Christian Sartorius (1961:9) reported a “dreary material-conceptual feedbacks, which seem to wilderness, overgrown with low thorny mimosas,” have beencentral to obscuring suchtransformation. elaborating on a slightly earlier sketch by another Nonetheless, the complementary insights of those German naturalist (von Humboldt 1966:vol. 4, two research efforts do provide stimulus and direc- 154–56) and contrasting with Cortés’s descrip- tion for the present study of the sixteenth-century tion of three centuries prior. transformation of the environs of the port of Those three firsthand accounts—by a con- Veracruz(Figure 1). They facilitate identification quistador at the inception of the colonial project, of a material-conceptual, positive feedback pro- by a bureaucrat of the established colony, and by cess in the emergence of a myth that land use was an expatriate scientist-entrepreneur at the dawn increasingly rational over the course of the colo- of Mexico’s postcolonial period—signpost a dra- nial and postcolonial periods, when, in fact, the matic material transformation of the landscape. opposite was happening. As the beachhead for Its consequences have persisted even with the the Spanish colonization of North America, that waning of the sovereign power of European states, landscape thus influenced the initial conceptuali- as the legacies of colonial land-use practices, such zation of New Spain while undergoing some of the as vegetation change, have defined the material earliest material transformations due to disease parameters for postcolonial land-use options and livestock introductions. Although early in (Melville 1990). The three accounts also parallel the process of global colonization, these events a conceptual transformation, a landscape recate- left a detailed database of land-grant documents gorization that emerged over the colonial period that enables reconstruction of interactions and that has recently been termed “the pristine among native population, vegetation, livestock, myth” in relation to the Americas (Denevan and categories of land use, cover, and tenure. 1992a; Whitmore and Turner 1992) and “the Through the identification of such key variables myth of emptiness” more generally (Blaut in a positive feedback process that simultaneously 1993:15). According to that erroneous categori- transformed landscape and obscured that trans- zation, precolonial landscapes lacked dense formation, this study tentatively provides the ba- populations and productive land uses, and there- sis for a more general falsification of the colonial fore native cultures lacked the rationality to use myth in postcolonial development. their lands effectively. That transformation’s consequences have also persisted to define the conceptual parameters for postcolonial land-use options, Material-Conceptual to the degree that postcolonial development mod- els continue to promote the often-detrimental Landscape Transformation and diffusion of institutions and technologies from the the Pristine Myth West to the non-West, continue to define success according to Western measures, and continue to The firsthand accounts by Cortés, the chief devalue non-Western alternatives to modern- magistrate, and Sartorius seem to sketch out the ization. Understanding the conceptual transforma- material transformation of the Veracruz land- tion of the precolonial Americas into “the pristine scape over the colonial period. As throughout the New World,” and thereby more effectively falsi- Americas, native depopulation due to epidemics fying the myth in postcolonial development, thus and the introduction of exotic biota, technolo- remains essential to reconceptualizing non- gies, and institutions seem to have transformed The Making of the Myth 379 Veracruz and Veracruz Lowlands environs New Spain a aa a a a aa a a a a a a a aaa a a a a a a a aa a a a a a a a a a a a a a a Piedmont a a a a a aa aa a a a a a a Wetlands a a a a aa a a a a a a a a aaa a Coastal plain a a a aa a aaa a aDunes and sand sheets Figure 1. The port of Veracruz and environs: the belt of dunes fronting the Gulf of Mexico, the narrow coastal plain with its wetlands, and the piedmont dissected by the ravines of the streams draining the escarpment of the Sierra Madre Oriental to the west. the landscape on a scale and to a degree compa- European sense of uninhabited land” (Bowden rable to the last Pleistocene deglaciation, when 1992:6). Native cultures therefore lacked the ra- people first occupied the Americas (Crosby tionality to effectively use their lands; and, as the 1972). Even with the vast reduction of sovereign binary complement to that conceptual transfor- European power in the Americas during the mation of the Americas,

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