The Ecological Origins and Consequences of Cattle Ranching in Sixteenth-Century New Spain Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, Asluyter@Lsu.Edu

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1996 The ecological origins and consequences of cattle ranching in sixteenth-century New Spain Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Sluyter, Andrew, "The ce ological origins and consequences of cattle ar nching in sixteenth-century New Spain" (1996). Faculty Publications. 61. http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/geoanth_pubs/61

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geography & Anthropology at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The GeographicalReview

VOLUME 86 April1996 NUMBER 2

THE ECOLOGICALORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CATTLERANCHING IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY NEW SPAIN*

ANDREW SLUYTER

ABSTRACT. Despite the dramatic landscape changes Mexico has undergone due to the introduction of cattle ranchingby the Spaniardsin the earlysixteenth century,the ecological origins of that pastroecosystemhave remained obscure. About 1521,Gregorio de Villalobos implanted an Andalusian-derivedherding ecology in the Gulf Coast lowlands that involved seasonal movement of cattle between wetlands and hill lands. Land-grantrecords demon- stratethat as the colonial economy expanded,the transhumantmodel proliferatedand came into conflict with those native settlements that had survived the pandemics of the early sixteenth century. In circumventing viceregal laws meant to protect native cultures and ecologies, ranchersprevented their recovery;the consequences persist to the present. Key- words:cattle, landscape ecology, native depopulation, New Spain, Veracruz.

The two most importantthings to knowabout Mexico still are thepatterns of life that existedbefore the comingof the white men and the changesthat were introducedduring thefirstgeneration or two of the Spanishperiod.

-Carl 0. Sauer,"The Personality of Mexico,"1941

Livestock have occupied the Mexican scene since the sixteenth-centurybirth of New Spain, early and pervasivelycontributing to the ecological upheaval of "the Columbianexchange" (Crosby 1972; Butzer 1992; Turner and others 1995).The Span- iardsbrought livestockboth largeand small.Along with those cattle,horses, mules, donkeys,sheep, goats, and pigs arriveda suite of ecologicalinstitutions that haveleft decisive imprints on the landscape.The landscape,reciprocally, has left its imprint on institutions.An associationof herdersorganized the transhumantroutes bywhich

* WilliamE. Doolittleand Alfred H. Siemenshave long and generously shared their enthusiasm for the Mexican landscapeand given freely of theirknowledge and interpretive skills. The staffs of theArchivo General de la Naci6n andthe Benson Latin American Collection of theUniversity of Texasat Austin as well as the people of Veracruzhave made researchin archiveand field as pleasantas it is intellectuallyrewarding. Funding from the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration and the Universityof Texasat Austinmade this research possible.

0fi DR. SLUYTERis an assistantprofessor of geographyat the PennsylvaniaState University, University Park,Pennsylvania 16802.

The GeographicalReview 86 (2): 161-177, April 1996 Copyright ? 1996 by the American Geographical Society of New York

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 162 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW sheep moved between seasonal pastures along hundreds of kilometers of stone- walled trails,or caniadas.The estancias,or land grants,gridded the landscapeleague by league,accumulating space for Spaniardsand marginalizingnatives. The pastures burned each long, dry winter,incrementally altering the vegetation. Yetdespite a deep and broadimprint on the Mexicanlandscape, cattle ranching's sixteenth-centuryecological origins have remainedobscure. An orthodox literature long emphasizedSpain's semiarid plateau-often, specifically,Estremadura-as the Old Worldhearth of New Spain'sranching ecology (Bishko1952; Brand 1961; Rouse 1977).Supposedly,a fullydeveloped ecologyand economy involvingmounted herders and transhumancediffused southward with the Reconquistainto Andalusiaand, ul- timately,throughSeville and across the AtlantictoNew Spain.More recently, revision- ists have combined archivaland field researchto hypothesize that cattle ranching involvingmounted herdersreached its Old Worldapogee along the lower Rio Gua- dalquivirof Andalusia,in the seasonallyinundated marshes known as LasMarismas, and from therediffused to New Spain (Doolittle 1987;Butzer 1988; Jordan 1993). To date, contrasts between the sixteenth-centurylivestock ecologies of Estre- madura and Andalusia provide the main support for the revisionist hypothesis. Sheep predominated on the semiarid plateau, and the image of mounted Estre- maduransherding cattle across sparse, semiarid grasslands is as much myth as icon. In contrast, cattle predominatedin Andalusia,and as the floodwaters of the Rio Guadalquivirreceded each spring,herders drove their stock into LasMarismas (Fig- ure 1). Largelyuntended during the long dry season, isolated among a labyrinthof sloughs, the animals became semiferal.Solanos blowing out of Africa parched the oak-pine savannasof the surroundinghills, which the ranchersset ablaze in late summer (FernandezAls, Martin,and Merino 1995,366).As the rainsreturned each October,herders required horses to round up the semiferalstock before the Gua- dalquivirflooded and drivethem up to the fresh regrowthof the hill pastures. The Andalusianprovenance of the originalconquistadores, the four hundredor so who sailedwith Cortes,further supports the revisionisthypothesis. Nearly a third of the conquistadoreshailed from the provinces borderingLas Marismas-Seville, Huelva,Cadiz-and knew its transhumantpulse (Boyd-Bowman1964, xli). Having witnessed the fecundity of the cattle Columbus had introducedinto Hispaniolain 1493,those Andalusiansextended the diffusion to New Spain during the sixteenth century (Sauer1966; Watts 1987). In a few decades,the lowlandplains along the Gulf of Mexico, an environmentalhomologue to coastalAndalusia, had become the do- main of vast cattleherds (Simpson1952; Butzer and Butzer1995). By 1580the viceroys had grantedsixty-two cattle estancias in the lowlandenvirons of the port of Veracruz alone, and the reportof the alcaldeclaims 150,000cows and mares (JGI, xxv-8, f. 5; Sluyter1995). Understandingof the ecological processes and consequences involved in that cataclysmiclandscape change, particularlyits initial stage, remains as incipient for Veracruzas for Mexicoas a whole (Butzerand Butzer1995). Yet the Veracruzlowlands hold particularrelevance for understandingthe ecologicalchanges that ensued from

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...... 1...... 96?00SS------. 1- - ,_------1- ZL't

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FIG.i-The lowlandsof Veracruzand Andalusia, with relevant settlements of circa1525. Sources: Gran atlasde Espafla 1989; Jordan1993.

thecolonization of Mesoamerica.The region formed the beachhead for the invasion and becamethe entrepotfor the subsequentcolony, bearing the firstbrunt of the war,the disease,and the livestock.That prominence makes the brevityof thelitera- tureon sixteenth-centurylandscape changes in thoselowlands all the more inexpli- cable(Melgarejo Vivanco 1943, 1975; Kellyand Palerm1952; Gonz6lezJacome 1988; Siemens 1995; Sluyter1995). Despitethe relativepaucity of previousresearch, the revisionist hypothesis of an Andalusianrather than an Estremaduranhearth suggests that the first herds of New Spainwould have followed a seasonalrhythm analogous to thetranshumance of Las Marismas,ranging between the marshesand hills of the GulfCoast lowlands. Al- thoughthose first cattle have left no morethan a fewarchival tracks, some data do supportthat hypothesis by confirmingdiffusion of open-rangeranching from the Guadalquivirlowlandto the environs of theportof Veracruz.More specifically, those datareveal how a Spaniardnamed Gregorio de Villalobosfirst adapted the transhu- mantecology of LasMarismas to the GulfCoast lowlands as well as its relationship to nativesettlement and ecology.

THEFIRST CATTLE

Sometimeand somewhere during the anarchistic1520S, well before the firstviceroy beganto quellthe unrulyconquistadores with landgrants during the 1540S,cattle

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 164 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW ranchingbegan in New Spain.Yet the provenanceof those firstherds remains vague. A brief,anonymous testimonial of 22 October1554, preserved in the ArchivoGeneral de Indias in Seville,posthumously recounts the biographyof one Gregoriode Vil- lalobos and yields a solitary,equivocal reference to the first cattle to reach New Spain-a long-recognizedbut previously uninvestigatedclue (Brand 1961).Some- time during or soon after1521, Villalobos shipped calvesfrom the Antilles to some- whereon the GulfCoast: " [A]fter the pacificationof the Cityof Mexico [on 13August 1521]and the otherprovinces of this New Spain,the said Gregoriode Villalobos,with the intention of remaining in it permanently,at the time that he came from the islandsof SantoDomingo broughta number of calves,so that there might be cattle, he being the first to bring them to New Spain" (Hackett 1923, 1: 40-41). Given the success of Antillean ranchersin preventingfurther livestock exports to New Spain, including solicitation of an embargoenforced with a death penalty and only over- turned by royaldecree in 1526,those calveswould have been the progenitorsof the earliest herds of New Spain (Matesanz 1965; Cort6s 1988, 204-205). Unlike some of the conquistadores,Villalobos has left a meager record of his deeds-at least in the archivesif not on the landscape.He wrote no chronicles,con- ducted no voluminous correspondence.The few known biographicalfacts derivein the main from posthumous memorials,similar to so many testamentslauding the past services of conquistadoresin order to secure lasting privilegefor their scions (Hackett 1923, 1: 40; Icaza 1923, 1: 223). The extant biographicalfragments neither contradictnor confirm that Villalo- bos brought the first cattle to New Spain.Villalobos hailed from Almonte, on the northern margin of LasMarismas. His parentshad come from Jerezde la Frontera, to the south. The shipping lists of Seville recordVillalobos's passage to the Antilles in 1516,when he was just twenty-two years old (Boyd-Bowman1964, 59). On the island of Cuba two years later,he heard of Grijalva'sencounter with Montezuma's emissariesat San Juande Ulua. In 1521,two yearsafter Corteshad left Cuba and six months before the fall of Tenochtitlan,Villalobos went to Mexico to ride with the conquistadores,arriving at Villa Ricade la VeraCruz aboard a ship of reinforcements (Boyd-Bowman 1968,150; Diaz del Castillo 1986, 310).1Cortes ordered the latecomer to remain as part of the garrisonat Villa Rica,and he became one of its citizensand servedas aldermanand mayor.By 1526Villalobos was living at Medellin (Figure1), a town Cort6shad founded along the lower Rio Jamapain the early1520s, and serving as "mayordomo de Cortes" (Diaz del Castillo 1986,505; Cortes 1988, 199). Eventually, the exact year being uncertain,he relocated from the Gulf Coast lowlands to the highlands,moving to Puebla de los Angeles and again serving as aldermanand al- calde (Dorantes de Carranza 1987, 173). His primary reward for helping to conquer Mexico was the encomiendaof IxhuatlAn,a grant of native tribute midwaybetween Pueblaand Veracruz,with the nativesthereby commended to his chargeproviding him with a tribute of ioo pesos a year (Scholesand Adams 1955,33). He and Beatriz Garciade la Fuentemarried sometime after1527, that being the yearher firsthusband died, and they raiseda daughterand two sons. Villalobosdied sometime before1547,

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CATTLE RANCHING IN NEW SPAIN 165 the encomienda going to a son. By 1565that successor had also died, and the encomienda reverted to the Crown (Himmerich y Valencia 1991, 261). That brief biography contains no direct referencesto New Spain'sprototypic estancia-to the place Villalobosgrazed, raised, and increasedthose original calves, to the environmentsinvolved, or to the herdingecology and its relationshipto native settlement and ecology. Because the viceregalscribes did not begin to recordland grantsuntil 1542,no entry for a cattleestancia in the name of Gregoriode Villalobos appearsin the volumes of mercedes,or land grants,preserved in the ArchivoGeneral de la Nacion in Mexico City (Chevalier1952). Yet some of those land-grant docu- ments do contain pertinent data, albeit long unappreciatedand ignored,which do confirm that Villalobosimported the first cattle and adaptedthe Andalusiantrans- humant ecology to the Veracruzlowlands.

THE FIRST ESTANCIA

A grant of 1583for a cattle estancia along the lower Rio Jamaparefers to previous occupanceby a Gabrielde Villalobos,one of Gregorio'stwo sons,2and identifiesthe general location of the Villalobos estancia:"[G] rant to Juande la Parragafor one cattle estancia in the district of the city of VeraCruz amid the estancia of Gonzalo de Alegriaand Franciscode Cocas that was wont to belong to Gabrielde Villalobos on the other side of the Rio Jamapa"(AGN, Mercedes,vol. 13, f. 20).3 The Mercedes volumes do not record a grant to Franciscode Cocas for the Veracruzanlowlands. But, in 1573,Gonzalo de Alegria did receive a cattle estancia, although the actual merced has not survived. Only the writ ordering an inspection of the requested estancia remains.And even that writ, as if nested in a maze of folios, appearsonly within the context of yet anotherdocument: an inspection reportprompted by Juan Rodriguezde Villegas's1575 request for an estancia (AGN, Tierras,vol. 2764, exp. 18, ff. 225-260). Although the viceroyapparently never grantedVillegas his request,due to opposition by one PedroNuniez de Montalvan,both the map accompanyingthe Villegas report and the Parragamerced itself confirm the existence of the Alegria estancia. Thus the estancia "thatwas wont to belong to Gabrielde Villalobos"lay between the Rio Jamapaand the Rio Atoyac,named "ElRio Grandede Medellin" on the 1575map (Figure2), somewhat upstreamfrom their confluence and on the inner margin of the coastal plain. A 16o6 grant of an inn to FranciscoPArraga, presumably a son of Juan de la Pdrraga,confirms and more closely specifiesthe location: [B]ecauseLicenciado Francisco Parraga citizen of the new city of VeraCruz [transferredfrom the left bankof the Rio de la Antiguato SanJuan de Ulhacirca 1600]... has his stockedcattle estancias in the districtof the old cityof VeraCruz nearthe river called Jamapa along the royal highway that goes from the said new city to Mexicoand many persons of thosewho cart goods and travel on thesaid highway duringthe rainy season in respectof theriver rising are not able to crossand continue thereand in orderto preventthat damage ... he endeavoredto buildand found an inn and a boat or canoesfor peopleto crossand proceed... thatwell withinthe

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limitsand boundsof the saidestancias, next to the riverthat they call Jamapa, he canestablish, build, and found an inn. (AGN, Mercedes,vol. 25, f. 143) In the toponymic confusion that characterizesthese lowlands,the route of the highway changed after Parragaestablished his venta, or inn, and called it the Venta de Jamapa.The establishmentof a second Ventade Jamapa,at the riverford on the new highway,muddied the location of Parraga'soriginal inn. Severaleighteenth-century maps, however,help to unravelthe shifting toponyms (AGN,RiOS y Acequias,vol. 2, fc. 286-287; AGN, Fomento Caminos, vol. 1, fc. 91; AGN, Indiferente de Guerra, vol. 452A, f. last). The second Ventade Jamapawas at the present-daytown of Jamapa. Parraga'sVenta de Jamapawas 8 kilometersupstream. That location, now a small village,still retainsthe toponym if not the inn: LaVenta. The Jamapamarked on the 1575map refersto the native settlement of that name; it lies fartherupstream than either of the ventas, among the hills fringing the piedmont, and lay abandonedby 1584 (AGN, Mercedes, vol. 13, ff. 81v-82). During the firstdecade or two of the colonialperiod, then, Gregoriode Villalobos grazed cattle along the banks of the Rio Jamapanear the place that was to become the present-dayvillage of La Venta.Even without formal title, a son took over op- eration of the estanciaupon Gregorio'sdeath, sometime before 1547.By 1565,just as Viceroy Luis de Velasco was beginning to formally grant estancias along the Rio Jamapa,the son, perhapshaving died, had abandonedthe estancia.

TRANSHUMANT ECOLOGY

To Gregoriode Villalobos,majordomo to Cortes at Medellin during the 1520S, the country along the lower reaches of the Rio Jamapamust have seemed strangely reminiscent of Las Marismas.Like the Arenas Gordasof Andalusia,dunes cut the coastalplain off from the sea. Likethe SierraMorena north of Almonte, mountains rose inland. And, like Las Marismas,the wetlands of Veracruzflooded every year. The seasons were reversed,with the rains coming in spring ratherthan fall, but the terrainand the rhythm of the floods would have inspireda paisano of Almonte. In scale, Las Marismas dwarfs the Veracruzanwetlands; in 1521, though, the lower Guadalquivirswarmed with cattle,whereas Veracruz had neverbeen grazed.Villalo- bos wasted no time importing calves,beating the Antillean livestock embargo and founding the cattle-herdingecology of New Spain. Villalobos chose an estancia that straddledthe wet and the dry,just where the Rio Jamapaemerged from the hilly fringeof the piedmont and brokeonto the coastal plain. From La Venta,the piedmont slopes upward toward the SierraMadre (Fig- ure 3). The only respite from its dry savannaand patches of deciduous woodland and shrublandcomes when leavingthe plains and plunging into the verdantravines of the streamsthat drain the escarpmentand have dissected the Tertiaryconglom- erates into a raggedapron abuttingthe coastalplain. Those streams,before cutting through the cordon of sand dunes, form a belt of backswampsthat harborwet savanna studdedwith palm treesand fringedby evergreenwoodlands. The coast itself is a jumble of longitudinaldunes, some crestingat more than ioo metersand trend-

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 168 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW ing north-south for severalkilometers, interspersed with the stagnantponds that during the nineteenth century harboredthe mosquito vectors of yellow fever (Ar- reola 1982;Siemens 199o). CarlChristian Sartorius, a nineteenth-centuryGermaninhabitant of the district, observedthe ecological flux between the dry savannaof the piedmont and the wet

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FIG.3-A generalizedtransect across the Veracruzan lowland landscape illustrates the regional-scale ecologicalrelationships of transhumance.Compare Figures i and2. savanna of the coastal plain. His provocativedescription of local transhumance evokes a sense of how Villalobos,three hundredyears earlier,had adaptedAndalu- sian herdingpractices to the ecology of coastalVeracruz (Sartorius 1961, 4-10). Dur- ing the summer wet season, Sartorius describes the cattle grazing up on the piedmont. But with "the cessation of the rains, the prairiesfade, the soil dries up, the treeslose theirfoliage, the herdsseek the forestsand chasms,and in the cloudless skies, the sun scorchesup the unshelteredplains" (Sartorius 1961, 9). As the winter dry season progressedand the floodwatersreceded from the backswamps,ranchers would drivetheir cattle downslope to grazethe wet savanna(Figure 4). The vaqueros would wait until the piedmont pastureshad become tinder dry and set them alight, "partlyto destroythe clouds of tormenting ticks and tarantulas,partly to call forth a new crop from beneath the ashes"(Sartorius 1961, 9). In spring,as the floods once again inundatedthe backswamps,mounted vaquerosrounded up the semiferalcattle and drovethem upslope (Figure5). As the priest of Veracruzhinted in 1571,fires blazedalso acrossthe coloniallandscape, opening and maintainingpastures: "plains, all made into meadows,. . . [are] wont to be burned around Christmastime" (Paso y Troncoso1905, 5: 194-195).Radiocarbon-dated remains of charredvegetation ex- humed from the sedimentsof the wetlandsconfirm extensive and persistentburning during the colonial period (Sluyter1997). The priest also portraysthe majority of the cattle as semiferal:'many cows and many wild ones, and many bulls and very fierce"(Paso y Troncoso1905, 5: 199).

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FIG. 4-Cows grazethe wet savannaof the coastalplain duringthe dry season,janUary 1992. Standingwater is mnthe foreground; higher and drier terrain is in thebackground. (Photograph by the author)

FIG.5-An engravingof a sketchby JohannMoritz Rugendas illustrates an eighteenth-century roundupin a wetlandnear the portof Veracruz.Source: Sa.torius 1961.

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r~~~~~~~~~~

FIG.&6-Cowsgraze on the coastalplain amid palms and vestigesof pre-Hispanicwetland fields, May 1989.Near the end of the dry season, the darkervegetation accentuatesformer canals. (Photographby the author)

NATi vECOLOGY AND SETTLEMENT AsVillalobos drove his stockdown into the wetlands, he probablydid not recognize the vestigesof an earliernative ecology. The Spaniardsgenerally seemed unaware thatnatives had once reconfigured the wetland hydrology by excavatinga labyrinth of ditches,now filled with sedimnent and visible only as vegetational patterning (Fig- ure6). At the beginningof the rainyseason Of 1590, with the fortressof SanJuan de Ulia in sight to the northeast,Henando de Sarriasat astridehis horse atop a dune and surveyeda requestfor an estanciaon the coastalplain below. He notedbut did not recognizethe significanceof relict field patterns:"a small lake which appearsi therainy season.. andmarshes ditched straight southward" (AGN, Mercedes, vol. i5, if. 191-192). More than 2,000 hectaresof such vestigespatter the belt of wetlands (Siemens 1983a,1983b). Natives dug ditches and heaped the spoilonto the plantingplatforms betweenthem. That agroecosystem regulated soil moisturein the root zone of the platformsand maintained a nutrientsump in theditches, a sourceof fertilzingmuck (Sluyteri994). Theditches accelerated drainage as thewater table fell with the onset of the dryseason but retainedwater for splashand subirrigation as the dryseason progressed.While the rain-fed fields of thepiedmont lay idle during the dryseason, the wetlandfields produced a secondcrop (Sluyter and Siemens1992).

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Hernando de Sarria'sbrief description does not clarifythe condition of those wetland fields in 1590,but that they were by then largely derelict seems probable. The north-south ditches that he observed reflect the predominant orientation of such vestiges in the Veracruzlowlands: 150 east of north (Siemens 1983a).The main avenue at Teotihuacan,the highland city that dominated much of Mesoamerica during the first nine centuriesA.D., sharesthat orientation,suggesting that the wetland fields likely date to considerablybefore the Spaniardsarrived. Excavations of plantingplatforms and coring of wetlandsconfirms the chronology:The majorpe- riod of wetland maize cultivation began during the last several centuries B.C. and ended circaA.D. 500, well beforeVillalobos grazed his cattleamong the vestiges (Sie- mens and others 1988;Sluyter 1997). Although of more recent vintage, the agricultural systems of the Nahuatl speakerswho inhabited the lower Rio Jamapaduring the Spanishinvasion remainless studied regardingform and function. They might well have cultivatedwetland fields during the winter and piedmont terracesduring the summer, but to what degree and in what manner form the topic of ongoing investigation(Siemens 1983a; Sluyter and Siemens1992; Siemens 1995; Sluyter 1995). Regardless,Nahua settlements sprawled across the coastal plain south of San Juande Uluia.Depopulation and time have obscured the precise locations, but the Nahua-derivedtoponyms persistin the archives:Alcocahua, Espiche, Jamapa, Mict- lanquautla (JGI, xxv-8; AGN, Tierras, vol. 32, exp. 4; vol. 2672, exp. 8; vol. 2678, exp. 12;vol. 2782, exp. 16; vol. 2680, exp. 20; vol. 2764, exp. 17;vol. 2764, exp. 18). Cotaxtla, an Aztecgarrison and the only toponym that survivesin its originallocation, guarded a major route to the highlands along the Rio Atoyac (JGI, xxv-8, f. 6). In 1519,ac- cordingto conquistadorFrancisco de Aguilar,the population of the entireprovince, stretchingfrom the Rio de la Antiguain the north to Cotaxtlain the south, comprised 40,000 families, possibly nearly a quarter of a million people (Aguilar 1938,38; Sluyter 1995). According to Charles V's chronicler, 500 families lived at Cotaxtla alone, some two to three thousand people (Martir de Angleri a 1964, 1: 421-422). With the coming of the Spaniards,war and disease rapidly depopulatedthose thriving lowlands. The smallpox epidemic of 1520-1521precipitated most of that demographic apocalypse, possibly as much as three-quarters (Sluyter 1995,153-167). By 1570Cotaxtla, Alcocahua, Espiche, Jamapa, Medellin, and Mictlanquautlashared 160 native tributepayers, typically heads of households,representing only some 500 nativesliving in the majortowns of the formerprovince of Cotaxtla(Paso y Troncoso 1939-1940, 14: 82). The Great Cocolixtle, probably a typhus epidemic, had entirely depopulatedAlcocahua and Jamapawithin another decade (AGN, Tierras,vol. 2678, exp. 12, ff. 5-7).

ECOLOGICAL COLONIALISM Thus far, only circumstantialdata suggest that the Villalobos estancia might have had a direct impact on native ecology and settlement. Fewer than 70 kilometers separated the Villalobos estancia and encomienda of Ixhuatln, perched at an elevation of 1,200 meters on the escarpmentof the SierraMadre Oriental. By the 1540S

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 172 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW the Lawsof the Indiesprohibited encomenderos from runninglivestock within their encomiendas;but Villalobos and his ranching initiativespreceded that legislation, and earlierpractice might have requiredthe natives of IxhuatlAnto work his herds (Recopilaci6n... 1987,libro 6, titulo 9, leyes 10-14, 17-20). Delineatingthose earliest spatialinteractions among Spanishand nativeland uses, control of territory,settlement patterns,and ecologies remains centralto understandingthe roots of native depopulationand will requirefurther study. Regardlessof whether archival or field researcheventually reveals any direct effects that Villalobos might have had on native settlement and ecology, the ecological model for herding cattle that he diffused and adaptedfrom Andalusiapro- liferated and profoundly altered the native landscape.With the new silver strikes and refiningtechnologies that arrivedafter 1560, the colonial economy and demand for cattle boomed. In step with increasingimmigration from Spain,the urbanized, flesh-eating populations of Mexico City and Puebla grew exponentially,and the mines and their towns demanded tallow and hides. ViceroyLuis de Velascobegan to awardland grants in the Jamaparegion in April 1563;within two decades, cattle estancias had engulfed most of the coastal plain and lower piedmont (AGN, Mer- cedes, passim; Sluyter 1995).The locations of multiple grants to single ranchers revealthe successof the Villalobosmodel. Forexample, Gonzalo de Alegriaoperated two estancias:the first (Figure2), down on the coastal plain;the second, up on the piedmont, nearly 20 kilometers to the northwest and the ecological complement of the first (AGN, Mercedes,vol. 13, ff. 73-74). On a grander scale, the Nunfiezde Montalvan brothers,Juan and Pedro, became the first land barons of the Jamapa region by acquiringa string of six estanciasbetween 1564and 1567(AGN, Mercedes, vol. 7, ff. 272-273;vol. 8, f. 189;vol. 9, f. 107;vol. 9, ff. 115-116;AGN, Tierras,vol. 32, exp. 4, f. 102). They stretched from the wetlands up onto the lower fringes of the piedmont, spanning the former Nahua province of Cotaxtla (Sluyter1995). By the 1560SGabriel de Villaloboshad himself acquiredan estanciaon the upperpiedmont, around 700 meters elevation and 55 kilometers up the Rio Jamapafrom La Venta (AGN, Tierras,vol. 2719,exp. 33,ff. 386-392). Viceregallegislation endeavored to protect native cultureand ecology from the implanted and expanding pastroecosystem.An ordinance of 1567proclaimed that nativesettlements were to encompassa minimum areaof one squareleague, including the surroundingejido, or commonage (McBride1923,123-124). Subsequent legislation confirmedthat no cattleestancia was to locate within one and a half leagues of any native settlement(Recopilaci6n . .1. 987,libro 6, titulo 3, ley 20). In an attempt to ensure compliance,the merced was merely the final document in a legal process that first requiredinspection by a Crown officer (Chevalier1952). An alcaldewas to ensure that the grant under considerationwould not prejudicethe interestsof the Crown, the native communities, or the existing grantees by inspecting the actual location of the requestedestancia and interviewinglocal natives.The ensuing re- ports-in effect,recommendations to the viceroyfor or againstthe grant,sometimes accompaniedby maps-at firstglance confirmthe successfulimplementation of the

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CATTLE RANCHING IN NEW SPAIN 173 protectivelegislation (AGN, Tierras,passim). More carefulscrutiny, however, reveals otherwise. Despite legislation, the native settlements that had survived the smallpox epidemic of 1520-1521came into conflict with the expanding estancia frontier of the Jamapa region during the 1560S and early 1570s. In 1574Juan de Oc6n and Isabel de Vergarareceived two sheep estanciasalong the Rio Atoyac,harbingers of the immi- nent land rush for lowlandagostadero, or winter pasture,as the flocksof the Mexican plateau began to press the limits of the highland carryingcapacity (Melville1990). In a classicdispute between cattle and sheepherders, the Nuifiezde Montalvanbroth- ers claimed that the Oc6n and Vergaragrants conflicted with their own, preexisting estancias(AGN, Tierras,vol. 32,exp. 4). Forgood measure,Pedro Nuniiez revealed that Oc6n and the Crownofficer recommending the granthad conspiredto coercenative acquiescence:"Juan de Oc6n bribed the natives and made them drunk so that ... they would not protest"(AGN, Tierras,vol. 32, exp. 4). Equallypithy, the natives of Espiche claimed that cattle had long posed a threat to their crops and livelihood: "[T]here are some cattle estancias three or four leagues from this town which do great damage eating the crops and destroyingthe fruit trees"(AGN, Tierras,vol. 32, exp.4). At the scale of New Spain in its entirety,viceregal protection of nativesmight be assessedas having been in some measure successful(Butzer and Butzer1995). Leg- islation promulgatedduring the IberianReconquista and meant to protect agricul- turists from livestock herdersand their animals diffused to New Spain along with the cattle.Yet in the environs of the port of Veracruz,and likely elsewherealong the Gulf Coast, the ecology of cattle ranching that Villalobos implanted in the 1520S preventedthe recoveryof native communities alreadydevastated by diseasesintro- duced in the early sixteenth century.Individual Spaniards efficiently circumvented viceregalefforts to protect surviving native culture and ecology with bribery and alcohol. Semiferalcattle moving between coastalplain and piedmont estanciasde- stroyed the surviving native agroecosystems.Weakened by the depredationsof the cattle herders,most native communities of the lower Rio Jamapadid not withstand the GreatCocolixtle of 1576-1582and disappearedentirely. By the late sixteenthcentury, all protectivelegislation was redundant;laws were "on the books,"but there were few nativesleft to protect.

PERSISTENT CONSEQUENCES Drive inland from the old fortress at San Juan de Uluia,crest the dune field, look westward,and a sixteenth-centurylandscape seems to havepersisted. The piedmont stretches up toward the glacial cap of Citlalt6petl,and the grass and low thickets sprawlparched and leafless and brown under the cloudless sky of the dry season. The verdant belt of wetlands divides the piedmont and the dunes, its uniqueness and ecological significancestill as clear today as it would have been to generations of native peoples and to Gregoriode Villalobos.

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Yetnearly five centuriesand many changesdo intervene (SaucedoMontemayor 1984;Bermuidez Gorrochotegui 1987;Skerritt Gardner 1989;Siemens 1992, 1995; Sluyter1995,1996). By the seventeenthcentury, capitalizing on Villalobos'sinitiative, a few familieshad come to control the vast cattleherds that rangedbetween coastal plain and piedmont. Emergingout of the ferment of the war for independencetwo centurieslater, General Antonio L6pezde SantaAnna came to dominate these lowlands as thoroughlyas he did Mexicanpolitics. SantaAnna's cattle moved between the poles of his hacienda:Manga de Clavo,on the coastalplain, and El Lencero,1,000 metersupslope. On the eve of Mexico'sagrarian revolution, twentieth-century cattle barons still prosperedand shippedbeef to foreignand domestic urbanmarkets. The major adjustmentsince the colonial period had been the introduction of more nu- tritive African grasses and specializedbreeds of cattle (La ganaderia. ..965, 13; Parsons1972; Rouse 1977). After the fall of PorfirioDiaz and the ensuingland reform, rural population density began to rise appreciablyfrom its colonial nadir (INEGI 9ggo).Mestizo immigrantsfrom the highlands took up ejido lands-expropriated from the haciendas,held in usufructas communalproperty, and inalienable.Public funds built the networksof irrigationcanals that allowedejido sugarcaneto compete with haciendacattle, elaborating the connectionsinto the circuitsof the globalecon- omy. By the passageof the North AmericanFree TradeAgreement and the consti- tutional amendment that would permit alienation of ejido lands, the ranchersand those ejidalcommunities tied to the sugarmills had dividedthe landscapein roughly equal portions (INEGI 1984,1991). Maize,the dominant crop of a densely populated landscapebefore the Spanishcolonization, now occupiesmere interstices-the mar- gins of cane fields and those earthenmounds of pre-Hispanicsettlements that have as yet escaped leveling. The seasonal rhythm of the floods that has been such a vital theme in the lives of the inhabitantsof the region persists in some degree,at least for now (Siemens 1995).That seasonal rhythm'sspatial corollary-a complementaryrelationship between piedmont and coastalplain-facilitated the diffusionfrom Old Worldto New of the Andalusianranching ecology and consequentlyprevented the demographic recoveryof the nativepopulation. Ranching effectively supplanted native agriculture in the sixteenth century and erased a wealth of agroecologicalknowledge. By the time farmersbegan to repossesssome of the pasturesin the twentiethcentury, drainage of wetlands, irrigation of drylands,and market integration had become the hopeful watchwordsof the prevailingdevelopment discourse. Subsistence agriculture was passe. As evidenced in archiveand landscape,that outcome involvedpro- cessesthat cut acrossscales, from globalto local and from institutionalto individual. So will the possibilitiesfor the future.

NOTES

1. The location of Veracruzshifted four times duringthe sixteenth century (Sluyter1995, 412). In 1519,the Spaniardsfirst founded LaVilla Rica de la VeraCruz, albeit in name alone, on the mainland opposite San Juan de Uluia.Soon thereafter,they refounded and built the town 58 kilometersto the north, at present-dayVilla Rica.Circa 1525, the Spaniardsdropped "LaVilla Rica"from the toponym

This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Sat, 6 Sep 2014 20:42:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CATTLE RANCHING IN NEW SPAIN 175 and moved the port to the left bank of the Rio de la Antigua,where the present-daytown of LaAntigua survives.San Juande Ulua servedas the deepwaterport and launchesferried goods from its anchorage along the coast and across the bar of the Rio de la Antigua to Vera Cruz. Beginning with a viceregal order of 1597 and progressingover a transitionalperiod of severalyears, Vera Cruz began the move back to its first location, the mainland opposite the fortressof San Juande Ulu'aand the present-day city of Veracruz. 2. The sources remain equivocal as to the names of the children of Gregoriode Villalobos and Garciade la Fuente. A document of 1591 names the daughteras Luisade Villalobos and the son who inherited the encomienda of Ixhuatln as Baltasarde Padilla (O'Gorman1941, 214). That son, then, apparentlytook his paternalgrandfather's name, Gregoriode Villaloboshaving been the son of Diego de Padilla and Teresade Villalobos of Jerezde la Frontera(Icaza 1923, 1: 223). No document clearly refers to Gabriel de Villalobos as the other son, the one who took over the family estancia. The connection, therefore,remains somewhat conjectural,but it seems sound given the rarityof families named Villalobos in New Spain during the early sixteenth century,although not in the New World (Icaza1923; O'Gorman1941; Boyd-Bowman1964, 1968; Himmerichy Valencia1991). In fact, only one other Villalobos is associatedwith the Veracruzlowlands-namely, Pedro de Villalobos-but he was involved in gold mining and returned to Spain a rich man without having married (Millares and Mantec6n 1945, 1: 28-29, 333;Boyd-Bowman 1964, 162). Unlike Luisa,both Baltasarand Gabrielseem to have died without heirs (O'Gorman1941, 214). 3. This and all subsequenttranslations of quotationsfrom works in languagesother than English are by the author.

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