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
Results 1-5 of 77
... mining centers of Spanish America . My first acquaintance with the Andean cordillera and the savannas and forests of Chiquitos proved as daunting as it did exhilarating , but I soon learned that the contrasting natural environments and ...
... miners , and ranchers in two distinct provinces : Sonora ( Mexico ) and Chiquitos ( Bolivia ) . The intersection of the human dramas of Sonora and Chiquitos on the edges of the Spanish American empire illustrates different kinds of ...
... mines , and shifting foraging grounds in deserts and forests gave rise to distinctive material cultures and contested values that cast their descriptive imprint on the regions of Sonora and Chiquitos.19 Western notions of landscape ...
... mining center of Potosí , and the provincial cities of Cochabamba and Tarija . These regional webs com- plicate the notion of an imperial center with dependent colonies . They show multiple regional centers that gave rise to different ...
... mines Jesuit mission enterprise 1560-1750 1650-1740 1591-1767 1691-1767 Bourbon administration following Jesuit expulsion ... mining proletariat largely indistinguishable from the mestizo population Yaquis , Mayos , and rural mestizos ...
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 |