That the Indigenous people of Mexico have a historically close relationship with their ecosystems is heartily accepted by academics and the general public, but what exactly does this connection entail? What can we learn from this relationship to help us understand our world? Did contact with Spaniards alter this connection? Over her career, Cynthia Radding has consistently set the standard for answering these questions, and her new work will not leave her readers disappointed.
With a focus on northern New Spain, the monograph explores three interrelated themes: 1) relationships between people, plants, and animals, 2) differences between nomadic and sedentary peoples, and 3) how Indigenous knowledge is rooted in survival skills and botanical wisdom. Other scholars might shy away from such ambitious goals—especially in the colonial era where sources are scarce—but Radding masterfully locates materials that unlock marginalized voices. In this case, she elevates not only marginalized Indigenous voices but also the voices of powerful stakeholders—such as colonial authorities and church officials—by using church records and municipal, state, and national archives that hold maps, census data, land measurements, judicial hearings, and correspondence.
The manuscript is divided into two parts, with the first half focusing on “indigenous cultural resilience through the production of landscapes” (13)—how Indigenous people used knowledge of the flora and fauna to hold off the Spanish while holding onto their culture. Chapter 1 traces the use of plant species such as acacia, amaranth, and agave by preconquest Indigenous groups for material survival and spiritual power. Radding weaves Indigenous corn origin stories into this chapter to show how Mayo and Yaqui culture arose from understandings of their ecosystems. As Spanish publications of the early colonial period reveal, Indigenous knowledge was so deep and complete that Iberians in northern New Spain begrudgingly relied on it for survival.
Chapter 2 explains Mayo and Yaqui concepts of Huya Ania (forest world) and Itom Ania (Indigenous world), which are key to understanding differences in how Indigenous and Spanish people approached the natural landscape. Radding also relates in later chapters the conflicts that arose from these understandings. Chapter 3, which relies more heavily on secondary sources than the others, follows nine sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions into the north and how the southern Indigenous people who accompanied them exchanged information with northern Indigenous groups, allowing both to expand their knowledge along the way.
If the first half of the work demonstrates the impressive building-up of Indigenous knowledge, the second shows how that knowledge transformed under conflict. Chapter 4 describes how increased labor demands in mining areas led to Indigenous migrations that spurred new ethnic identities and alterations in ecosystems. When Indigenous groups came into closer contact with one another, the result was not just cultural fusions but, along with those, the deep integration of their respective ecological knowledge and practices. Chapter 5 uses court records to show the creative ways that Indigenous villages, in attempts to protect their natural landscapes, marked their boundary lines. While non-Indigenous landowners saw acquiring property as a means to greater wealth—increasing harvests, expanding their herds, or extracting more resources—Indigenous villagers viewed this territory, especially the thorn scrub forests they used communally, as the basis of their identity. Chapter 6 goes deep into a rebellion of 1739–41 to show how armed resistance played an integral role in Indigenous strategies to respond to ecological crisis, replace bad government, and assert political and cultural autonomy.
Few environmental and ethnohistories of colonial Latin America provide equal coverage to both Indigenous voices and non-human factors, and fewer still do so with as much depth and nuance as this work exhibits. Along with Vera Candiani's Dreaming of Dry Land, Tomás Jalpa Flores's Tierra y Sociedad, and Nicholas Robins's Mercury, Mining, and Empire, Radding's work encourages us to confront alternative historical environmental beliefs and practices and inspires the hope that they might influence us today.
