Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to RepublicDuke University Press, 2006 M01 18 - 456 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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... flow of water in surface streams. In time, as I gained experience ''reading'' these landscapes, I returned to the archives with a heightened sensitivity to place. My sympathy for the proud regionalism of contemporary Sonorenses was ...
... provincial cities of Cochabamba and Tarija. These regional webs complicate the notion of an imperial center with dependent colonies. They show multiple regional centers that gave rise to di√erent directional flows 8 ∆ introduction.
... flows of wealth and power, operating at times against the centralizing objectives of Iberian metropoles and the mercantilist project of accumulating wealth for the benefit of the crown and European institutions and commercial interests ...
... flow of contraband trade, by colonization schemes— sponsored and clandestine—and by the reassertion of ethnic polities within and across national borders.≥≠ Indigenous communities of Sonora and Chiquitos challenged the tenets of ...
... flows. After traveling more than a hundred leagues (approximately 270 miles) through the zona serrana, they turned southward, skirting the eastern edge of the Sonoran Desert to cross the Yaqui and Mayo rivers upstream from their wide ...
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
Communities Missions and Colonial Markets | 55 |
Community and Conflicting Claims to Property | 89 |
Chapter 4 Ethnic Mosaics and Gendered Identities | 117 |
Political Culture Goverance and Mobilization | 162 |
Spiritual Power Ritual and Knowledge | 196 |
Transitions from Colony to Republic | 240 |
Chapter 8 Contested Landscapes in Continental Borderlands | 295 |
Notes | 327 |
Glossary | 375 |
Bibliography | 385 |
Index | 423 |