Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to RepublicDuke University Press, 2005 - 431 pages Landscapes of Power and Identity is a groundbreaking comparative history of two colonies on the frontiers of the Spanish empire—the Sonora region of northwestern Mexico and the Chiquitos region of eastern Bolivia’s lowlands—from the late colonial period through the middle of the nineteenth century. An innovative combination of environmental and cultural history, this book reflects Cynthia Radding’s more than two decades of research on Mexico and Bolivia and her consideration of the relationships between human societies and the geographic landscapes they inhabit and create. At first glance, Sonora and Chiquitos are quite different: one a scrub-covered desert, the other a tropical rainforest of the greater Amazonian and Paraguayan river basins. Yet the regions are similar in many ways. Both were located far from the centers of colonial authority, organized into Jesuit missions and linked to the principal mining centers of New Spain and the Andes, and then absorbed into nation-states in the nineteenth century. In each area, the indigenous communities encountered European governors, missionaries, slave hunters, merchants, miners, and ranchers. Radding’s comparative approach illuminates what happened when similar institutions of imperial governance, commerce, and religion were planted in different physical and cultural environments. She draws on archival documents, published reports by missionaries and travelers, and previous histories as well as ecological studies and ethnographies. She also considers cultural artifacts, including archaeological remains, architecture, liturgical music, and religious dances. Radding demonstrates how colonial encounters were conditioned by both the local landscape and cultural expectations; how the colonizers and colonized understood notions of territory and property; how religion formed the cultural practices and historical memories of the Sonoran and Chiquitano peoples; and how the conflict between the indigenous communities and the surrounding creole societies developed in new directions well into the nineteenth century. |
From inside the book
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... families . The places in which chacos were cleared and planted , and then left to fallow , in the forests and savannas of Chiquitos ; in which the fruit of the saguaro cactus was gathered in the Sonoran Desert just before the onset of ...
... families represented by sets of brothers denounced and bid successfully on a ranch called Las Animas that measured 1.5 sitios and 1 caballería ( 2,663.5 hectares or 6,579 acres ) , including both cropland and pas- tures . Two Indian ...
... Families Widows Widowers Boys Girls Souls San Xavier 1767 720 31 51 890 789 3,201 Concepción 1767 713 20 41 998 793 3,278 San Miguel 1767 245 8 20 419 436 1,473 San Ignacio 1767 731 4 34 797 837 2,734 San Rafael 1767 562 20 26 798 778 ...
Contents
Two Histories of Cultural | 1 |
Ecological and Cultural Frontiers in Sonora and Chiquitos | 19 |
Chapter 3 | 74 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown