Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability

by Georgina H. Endfield

Overview

The relationship between climate and society is complex. Time and again history has shown that responses to climatic changes and extreme weather events vary greatly between different social groups. A variety of factors – demographic, social, political and economic – influence how a society perceives, responds to, and copes with extreme weather events. With its series of floods and frosts, droughts and hurricanes, few societies have had their resilience and resourcefulness tested like Mexico’s in her colonial era.

Within this historical framework, Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability provides a timely examination of the human impact of climate change and its contemporary implications. By considering three broadly differentiated case study regions – Chihuahua’s arid Conchos Basin, the lush Oaxaca Valley, and Guanajuato in the Bajío of Mexico – the text offers valuable insights into how different societies articulate knowledge about climate and the environment and how they respond to climatic variability. Capitalizing on Mexico’s rich colonial archives – many published here for the first time – the study provides a unique historical perspective into the complex interrelationships between climate and vulnerable societies. By examining the past, Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico offers valuable insights into contemporary climatic changes, environmental impacts, the vulnerability of societies, and our increasing concerns for the future of our planet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781444399332
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	07/20/2011
Series:	RGS-IBG Book Series
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Georgina H. Endfield is a Reader in Environmental History in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. She has published papers in a wide variety of journals, including the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and is winner of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She is editor of the journal Environment and History.

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Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures viii

Series Editors' Preface x

Acknowledgements xi

1 A Vulnerable Society 1

Introduction 1

Changing Vulnerabilities 3

Climate Change and the 'Double-Sided' Structure of Vulnerability 5

Exploring Climate and Society in Mexico 10

Climate History and Vulnerability in Mexico 11

Case Studies and Approach 15

2 Climate, Culture and Conquest: North, South and Central Mexico in the Pre-European and Contact Period 21

Environmental Marginality and Society in the Conchos Basin, Chihuahua 21

Guanajuato and the Chichimec Territory 28

Power and Political Growth in the Central Valley of Oaxaca 32

3 Exploring the Anatomy of Vulnerability in Colonial Mexico 38

Introduction 38

The Tools of Conquest and Colonization 38

The Emergence of Regional Colonial Political Economies 46

Climatic Variability and Vulnerability in Colonial Mexico: A Preview 70

4 Responding to Crisis: Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity in Colonial Mexico 74

Introduction 74

Moral Economic and Institutional Responses to Climate and Crisis in Colonial Mexico 75

Speculation and Scarcity: Capitalizing on Climate Knowledge 79

Trade in Grains: Providing for the 'Engines' of the Colonial Political Economy 81

Tribute, Food Aid and the Supernatural: Appealing to a Common Sense of Loss 83

'Compadrazgo', Community Engagement and Public Works 87

'Most sensitive and saddening events': Flood Risk and Social Capital Response in Colonial Guanajuato 90

'Great floods' and 'Strong winds': Damaging Events, Adaptation and 'Non-Adaptation' in Colonial Oaxaca 97

Responding Strategically: Climate, Consciousness and Experimentation 101

5 Dearth,Deluge and Disputes: Negotiating and Litigating Water and Climate in Colonial Mexico 105

Introduction 105

Water and Local 'Everyday Conflicts' in the Country and City 107

Regional Resistance: Drought, Disease and Rebellion in Northern Mexico 126

Vulnerability, Riots and Rebellions: Rare Events or 'Tipping Points'? 133

6 Illusory Prosperity: Economic Growth and Subsistence Crisis in the Disastrous Eighteenth Century 136

Introduction 136

Decline and Depression in Seventeenth-Century Mexico 138

Economic Boom and Bust: Absolutism and Globalization in Late Colonial Mexico 140

'A time of calamity': A Synthesis of Climate and Crises in Late Colonial Mexico 143

From Crisis to Insurrection: Vulnerability and Popular Unrest in the Early Nineteenth Century 164

7 Regional, National and Global Dimensions of Vulnerability and Crisis in Colonial Mexico 170

Introduction 170

Prolonged Drought and the Conditions of Crisis in Late Colonial Chihuahua 170

Drought, Risk and the Social Construction of Flooding in the Bajio 172

Resilience and the Rare Event: Climate, Society and Human Choice in the Indigenous South 174

Crises in Context and Historical 'Double Exposure' 177

Closing Comments 181

Notes 183

Bibliography 202

Index 227

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book provides a fascinating and empirically rich account of how vulnerabilities to variations in climate, especially to drought and flood, were created and experienced over several centuries. Based on meticulous work in the historical archives, Georgina H. Endfield gives a distinctive long term perspective on the interactions between nature and political economy that produced food crises, water conflicts and devastating flood losses in colonial Mexico, and which echo down the years to illuminate our understanding of the new crises of vulnerability and adaptation in a warming world."
–Diana Liverman, University of Oxford

"With a deft and informed pen, Endfield carries the reader rapidly through the escalating crises of colonial Mexico. Based on rich documentation Endfield sketches environmental disasters and epidemics, the looming problem of population growth and subsistence shortfalls, and the illusion of economic growth. She illustrates, in a responsible and fascinating way, how vulnerability and human response can serve as an empirical and conceptual approach to study causality."
–Karl Butzer, The University of Texas at Austin

Editorial Reviews

Mexico is well known for its vulnerability to a variety of disasters, ranging from droughts and floods to devastating epidemics. Using extensive archival resources in Mexico and Spain, environmental historian Endfield (Univ. of Nottingham) focuses on three regions with their diverse environments—the Rio Conchos Basin in the state of Chihuahua, Guanajuato and the Chichimec territory, and the Valley of Oaxaca—to compare and contrast the impact of climate crises on the economic and social-political systems of the agrarian Indian and Spanish societies of colonial Mexico from 1521 to 1820. The author discusses climate disasters of the late pre-Hispanic period, as well as the prehistory of the three study regions. Repeated climate events resulted in societal disruption, demographic changes, and conflict. Endfield shows how the societies in these three regions coped with and adapted to the risks and hazards of extreme weather over the centuries. This impressive archival study on Mexico provides a historical perspective on environmental change and the cultural response in such detail and depth that it will be used by many disciplines as global warming produces more frequent and devastating climate events in Mesoamerica and elsewhere. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. — J. B. Richardson III, University of Pittsburgh (Choice, February 2009)

From the Publisher