Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons Faculty Publications Department of Geography & Anthropology 1996 The ecological origins and consequences of cattle ranching in sixteenth-century New Spain Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/geoanth_pubs 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 (Simpson 1952; 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 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 163 . .. .. .. ... ... ... ..........................................1..............96?00SS------. 1- - ,_- --- - - - -1- ZL't Jerezde la Frontera E] active/paleodunes |5_ 0|ioees2 | j coastal plain L f 1 1 o leagues 4 l 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