The environmental dynamics of a colonial fuel-rush: Silver mining and deforestation in new Spain, 1522 to 1810

Environmental History

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 94-119

  Studnicki Gizbert, Daviken ^a   Schecter, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL PERFORMANCE; CHARCOAL; COLONIALISM; DEFORESTATION; ECONOMIC GROWTH; ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT; ETHNICITY; FUEL CONSUMPTION; FUELWOOD; MINING; PASTORALISM; POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT; SILVER; SMELTING; SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT;

CHIHUAHUA; GUERRERO; MEXICO [NORTH AMERICA]; TAXCO;

EID: 77957790942     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: 19308892     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emq007     Document Type: Review

References (122)

1. Informe de Antonio de Mendoza a Luis de Velasco, n.d., in Colección de documentos ineditos para la historia de España, vol. 26, ed. Martín Fernández de Navarrete (1842-1895; reprint, Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1965), 288.
2. See discussion in Robert C. West, "Early Silver Mining in New Spain, 1531-1555," in In Quest of Mineral Wealth: Aboriginal and Colonial Mining and Metallurgy in Spanish America, ed. Alan K. Craig and Robert C. West (Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, 1994), 124-25.
3. Cited in Chantal Cramaussel, "Sociedad colonial y depredación ecológica: Parral en el siglo XVII," in Estudios sobre historia y ambiente en América I: Argentina, Bolivia, Mexco, Paraguay, ed. Bernardo García Martínez and Alba González Jácome (México DF.: Colegio de México-Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, 1999), 98.
4. For Ixmiquilpan, see Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 11
5. Peter Gerhard, Guide to Historical Geography of New Spain, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 3
6. Michael M. Swann, Tierra Adentro: Settlement and Society in Colonial Durango (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 24.
7. For Coahuila, see Philip L. Wagner, "Natural Vegetation of Middle America," in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume One: Natural Environment and Early Cultures, ed. Robert C. West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 257.
8. Two excellent case studies on the mining district of Parral delve into the issue of fuel wood consumption: Cramaussel's "Sociedad colonial y deprecación ecológica," and Robert C. West, The Mining Community in Northern New Spain: The Parral Mining District (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949), 39-44.
9. John F. Richards sketches out a quick but very suggestive portrait of the environmental history of colonial mining in Mexico in The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 366-72. His conclusions about fuel wood consumption differ from ours (he argues that mercury reduced charcoal consumption).
10. Tetsuya Ogura et al. "Zacatecas (Mexico) Companies Extract Hg from Surface Soil Contaminated by Ancient Mining Industries," Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 148 (2003): 167-77;
11. Jerome O. Nriagu, "Mercury Pollution from the Past Mining of Gold and Silver in the Americas," The Science of the Total Environment 149 (1994): 167-81
12. Richards, The Unending Frontier, 372.
13. Ward Barrett, "World Bullion Flows, 1450-1800," in The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750, ed. James D. Tracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 225.
14. Sherburne F. Cook, The Historical Demography and Ecology of the Teotlalpán (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949), 32.
15. 2.
16. Michael Williams, "Forests," in The Earth as Transformed by Human Action; Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years, ed. B. L. Turner, II et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 180-81
17. George Hammersley,"The Charcoal Iron Industry and Its Fuel, 1540-1750," The Economic History Review 26 (1973): 605.
18. Charles Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750: Growing Pains of a Colonial Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), 37
19. Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 91-98.
20. Alan K. Craig, "Spanish Colonial Silver Beneficiation at Potosí," in Quest of Mineral Wealth, Craig and West, 272, 282 n. 5
21. Alvaro Alonso Barba, Arte de los metales, trans. Ross E. Douglass and E. P. Mathewson (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1923), 173
22. Daniel W. Gade, "Deforestation and Reforestation of the Central Andean Highlands," in Nature and Culture in the Andes, Daniel W. Gade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 42-74.
23. Gary Paul Nabhan, Gathering the Desert (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1985), 65.
24. Conrad Joseph Bahre, A Legacy of Change: Historic Human Impact on Vegetation in the Arizona Borderlands (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1991), 151.
25. William M. Denevan, "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492," The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (1992): 426-43
26. Thomas M. Whitmore and B. L. Turner II, Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the Eve of the Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001): 228-50.
27. Karl W. Butzer, "Ecology in the Long View: Settlement Histories, Agrosystemic Strategies and Ecological Performance," Journal of Field Ecology 23 (Summer 1996): 144-48.
28. See also his complementary work, "Spanish Conquest Society in the New World: Ecological Readaptation and Cultural Transformation," in Person, Place and Thing: Interpretive and Empirical Essays in Cultural Geography, ed. Shue Tuck Wong (Baton Rouge: Geoscience and Man, 1992), 211-42
29. "Biological Transfer, Agricultural Change, and Environmental Implications of 1492," in International Germplasm Transfer: Past and Present, ed. R. R. Duncan (Madison, WI: Crop Science Society of America, 1995), 3-29.
30. It should be noted that Butzer's work, along with parallel research undertaken by Andrew Sluyter, Georgina Endfield, Sarah O'Hara, and others, seeks to contain and minimize the late Elinor Melville's vision of environmental degradation, particularly vegetation loss and soil degradation, engendered by the spread of sheep herding.
31. Georgina H. Endfield and Sarah L. O'Hara, "Degradation, Drought, and Dissent: An Environmental History of Colonial Michoacan, West Central Mexico," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89 (1999): 402-19
32. Georgina H. Endfield, Isabel Fernández Tejedo, and Sarah L. O'Hara, "Conflict and Cooperation: Water, Floods, and Social Response in Colonial Guanajuato, Mexico," Environmental History 9 (April 2004): 221-47
33. Andrew Sluyter, "The Ecological Origins and Consequences of Cattle Ranching in Sixteenth-Century New Spain," Geographical Review 86 (1996): 161-77.
34. Endfield and O'Hara, "Degradation, Drought, and Dissent," 410-11.
35. Alvaro Sanchez-Crispín, "The Territorial Organization of Metallic Mining in New Spain," in Quest of Mineral Wealth, ed. Craig and West, 155-70.
36. Ricardo Mata-González, Rex D. Pieper, and Manuel M. Cárdenas, "Vegetation Patterns as Affected by Aspect and Elevation in Small Desert Mountains," The Southwestern Naturalist 47 (September 2002): 441.
37. Elizabeth K. Butzer and Karl W. Butzer, "The Sixteenth-Century Environment of the Central Mexican Bajío: Archival Reconstruction from Colonial Land Grants and the Question of Spanish Ecological Impact," in Culture, Form and Place: Essays in Cultural and Historical Geography, ed. Kent Mathewson (Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, 1993), 105.
38. Wagner, "Natural Vegetation of Middle America," 232-45
39. West, Parral Mining District, 41.
40. Bahre, Legacy of Change, 147.
41. Diana Birrichaga Gardida, "El dominio de las 'aguas ocultas y descubiertas': Hidráulica colonial en el centro de México, siglos XVI-XVII," in Mestizajes tecnologicos y cambios culturales en Mexico, ed. Enrique Florescano and Virginia García Acosta, (Mexico: CIESAS, 2004), 120
42. West, Parral Mining District, 42.
43. Sebastian de la Torre y León, "Informe sobre las minas de Bolaños, 1774," in Las minas de Nueva España en 1774, ed. Alvaro López Miramontes and Cristina Urrutia de Stebelski (México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1980), 44-45
44. West, Parral Mining District, 41.
45. Barba, Arte de los metales, 100, 106-07, 131
46. Peter Bakewell, "Mining in Colonial Spanish America," in The Cambridge History of Latin America Volume 2: Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 116-18.
47. Compiling the assembled fiscal data from the Cajas Reales-the Treasury Houses of New Spain-Richard Garner found that the mines of the Viceroyalty produced 48,917 tons of silver for a 262-year period ending in 1821. The annual average was 186 tons, the highest recorded annual production-611 tons-occurred in 1804, a few years before Hidalgo's insurrection. Forest clearance estimates for each mining center were based on the records of each of the relevant Caja Reals.
48. Memorial de Lucas Fernández Manjón, vezino del pueblo y minas de San Luis Potosí (Madrid, 1627) British Library 725.k.18 (7)2r, 3r.
49. J. E. Rehder, The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's Press, 2000), 20.
50. Bahre, A Legacy of Change, 147.
51. Petición de Jhoan de Paz, March, 1614, Archivo Historico del Estado de San Luis Potosí-Alcaldía Mayor (hereafter AMSLP), legajo (hereafter leg.) 1614.2, expediente (hereafter exp.) 2, f. 5v.
52. Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara, personal communication.
53. Merced de estancia para Diego Alonso Nuñez, September 22nd, 1610, AMSLP, leg. 1619.4, exp. 16, f. 7r.
54. Declaración de Pedro de Arizmendi Gogorron, January 1st, 1610, AMSLP 1610.1, exp.7,f. 1r.
55. Mapa del Valle de San Luis, date unknown (est. 1590s-1600s), AMSLP, Mapas y Planos.
56. Guadelupe Salazar González, Las haciendas en el siglo XVII en la region minera de San Luis Potosí. Su espacio, forma, función, material, significadoy estructuración regional (San Luis Potosí: Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí-Facultad del Hábitat, 2000), 485.
57. Lucas Fernández counted twenty-seven haciendas de beneficio in the central valley of San Luis in 1627 while in his visit of 1631 Ramón López counted nine in Armadillo, three in Pozos, six in Monte Caldera, and five in the valley of San Francisco.
58. See, Memorial de Lucas Fernandez Manjon, vezino del pueblo y minas de San Luis Potosi (Madrid, 1627) British Library 725.k.18 (7), 2r
59. Ramón López Lara, El obispado de Michoacán en el siglo XVII. Informe inédito de beneficios, pueblos y lenguas (Morelia: Colección Estudios Michoacanos, 1973), 65-67.
60. Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, Descripción geográfica de los reinos de Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya y Nuevo Leon (1605), ed. José Parres Arias et al. (Guadalajara: Instituto Jalisciense de Antropología e Historia, 1966), 56.
61. In "Biomass on the Borderlands," Taylor discusses contemporary scouring of semiarid regions of Sonora for charcoal making. Matthew J. Taylor, "Biomass in the Borderlands: Charcoal and Firewood Production in Sonoran Ejidos," Journal of the Southwest 48 (Spring 2006): 63-91.
62. For Armadillo, see López Lara, El obispado de Michoacán en el siglo XVII, and Testimonio de Juan Camacho Bravo, January 29, 1616 AMSLP 1616(1) exp 18. For Santa Mario del Rio see Queja de Bartolomé de Medina, March 7, 1628 AMSLP 1628(1), exp 4. For Charcas, see Carta de Juan Bautista Galan, February 19, 1607, AMSLP 1607(1), exp. 4.
63. Petición de Jhoan de Paz, March, 1614, AMSLP, leg.1614.2, exp. 2, 2r.
64. Montoya, 84, from Newberry Library, Ayer Collection MS 1106-C3, f. 133v and MS 1106-A, 47r.
65. For interesting parallels between fuel wood scarcity and technological innovation in the early modern Caribbean, see David Watts, The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture and Environmental Change since 1492 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 398-99.
66. Modesto Bargallo, La Amalgamación de los minerales de plata en Hispanoamerica colonial (Mexico: Compania Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey, 1961), 97.
67. Ramón Sanchez Flores, "Technology of Mining in Colonial Mexico: Installations, Tools, Artifacts and Machines Used in the Patio Process, 16th to 18th Centuries," in In Quest of Mineral Wealth, ed. Craig and West, 148-51.
68. Average silver production in the late eighteenth century was almost four times that of the earlier period (an average of 382 627 kg /year for the period 1750 to 1810 compared to an average of 96 476 kg/year for the period 1559-1643).
69. Informe del Real de San Pedro, 1772, in Las minas de Nueva España, ed. Miramontes and Urrutia, 139.
70. The price of wood was also rising sharply in the neighboring Real de Guadalcazar, Informe del Real de Guadalcazar, 1772, in Las minas de Nueva España, ed. Miramontes and Urrutia, 136-37.
71. Though see Cynthia Radding's excellent work by on northern Mexico, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
72. Richard Stephen Felger, Mathew Brian Johnson, and Michael Francis Wilson, The Trees of Sonora, Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205.
73. Nabhan, Gathering the Desert, 72.
74. D. D. Breshears et al. "Effects of Woody Plants on Microclimate in a Semiarid Woodland: Soil Temperature and Evaporation in Canopy and Inter-canopy Patches," International Journal of Plant Sciences 159 (1998): 1010-17.
75. Nabhan, Gathering the Desert, 64, 71.
76. John R. McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: an Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 311-13
77. Dan Klooster, "Forest Transitions in Mexico: Institutions and Forests in a Globalized Countryside," The Professional Geographer 55 (2003): 227-37
78. John Ludwig et al. "Vegetation Patches and Runoff-Erosion as Ecohydrological Processes in Semiarid Landscapes," Ecology 86 (2005): 291, 292, 293, 294.
79. Guillermo de Santa Maria, paloegraphy and notes by Alberto Carrillo Cazares, Guerra de los Chichimecas (Mexico 1575-Zirosto 1585) (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacan, Universidad de Guadalajara, Colegio de San Luis, 2003), 205.
80. Declaración de Pedro de Arizmendi Gogorron, January 1st, 1610, AMSLP 1610.1, exp.7, f. 1r.
81. Francisco Hernández, in his Historia Natural de Nueva España, also noted the peculiar ways that the Chichimecans prepared maize
82. see his Historia Natural de Nueva Espana vol .1 (Mexico: Universidad Nacional de Mexico, 1959), 290.
83. Francois Rodriguez Loubet, Les Chichiméques: Archéologie et Ethnohistoire des Chasseurs-Collecteurs du San Luis Potosí, Méxique (Mexico: Centre d'études méxicaines et centre-américains, 1985), 149. Game species of the sierras and plains of the Gran Tunal include hares, rabbits, squirrels, prairie dogs, pocket gophers, kangaroo rats, grey and desert foxes, bears, coyotes, raccoons, porcupines, ynx, and two kinds of deer (Odocoileus hemionus and Odocoileus virginianus).
84. For neighboring Zacatecas see, Leonardo López Luján, Nomadas y sedentarios: El pasado prehispanico de Zacatecas (Mexico: INAH, 1989), 21.
85. Santa Maria, Guerra de los Chichimecas, 195.
86. Philip Wayne Powell, "The Chichimecas: Scourge of the Silver Frontier in Sixteenth-Century Mexico," Hispanic American Historical Review 25 (August 1945): 331.
87. Hernández, Historia Natural de Nueva España, 290.
88. Felger, Johnson, and Wilson, Trees of Sonora, 206.
89. Richard Stephen Felger and Mary Beck Moser, People of the Desert and Sea: Ethnobotany of the Seri Indians (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 334, 338-39.
90. Hernández, Historia Natural de Nueva España, 288.
91. Relación de las Minas de Temazcaltepec y Tuzuntla, in Relaciones Geográficas del Siglo XVI: Tomo 7 Mexico, pt 2, ed. Rene Acuña (Mexico: Universidad Nacional de Mexico, 1996), 148.
92. Walter Ebeling, Handbook of Indian Food and Fibers of Arid America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University California Press, 1986), 751
93. M. E. Basgall, "Resource Intensification among Hunter-gatherers: Acorn Economies in Prehistoric California," Research in Economic Anthropology 9 (1987): 21-52.
94. Mota y Escobar, Descripción de Nueva Galicia, 63, 79.
95. On similar strategies adopted by French in North America, see Catherine Desbarats, "The Cost of Early Canada's Native Alliances: Reality and Scarcity's Rhetoric," The William and Mary Quarterly 52 (1995): 609-30.
96. Remate de la carne y maiz que se manda dar a las fronteras chichimecas January 9th, 1632, AMSLP 1632.1, exp. 2
97. Cuentas de carne y maíz que se da a los chichimecas, Archivo General de Indias, Contaduría, 922, 923 A, 923 B, 924
98. Eugene B. Sego, Aliados y adversarios: Los Colonos Tlaxcaltecas en la frontera septentrional de Nueva España (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 1998), 43
99. Philip Wayne Powell, "Peacemaking on North America's First Frontier," The Americas 16 (January1960): 221-50.
100. Powell, "Chichimecas," 328, 330.
101. Powell, "Peacemaking," 228, 229.
102. Sego, Aliados y adversarios, 32-52; 157
103. Powell,"Peacemaking," 244.
104. Translación de los indios Chichimecas, 1607-1609, in Colección de documentos para la historia de San Luis Potosí. Tomo 1, ed. Primo Feliciano Velázquez (San Luis Potosí: Archivo Histórico del Estado de San Luis Potosí, 1985), 360-80
105. Autos e informe en razón del abasto que se ha de dar a los indios chichimecos de la jurisdicción de San Luis Potosí, 1636, AGI-Audiencia de México, 1043, cuaderno 2
106. Informes que el alcalde mayor Leon de Alza Sobre la sublevación de indios chichimecas, September 1st, 1645, AMSLP 1645(3), exp. 8, 1r-2v.
107. Informes sobre sublevación de los Chichimecas December 24th, 1633, AMSLP 1633.7, exp. 13
108. Leon de Alza sobre la guerra con los Chichimecas, June 7th, 1645, AMSLP 1645.2, exp., 18
109. Informes sobre sublevación de los Chichimecas, September 1st, 1645, AMSLP 1645.3, exp. 8 from AHSLP
110. Juan Antonio de Asilona and Sebastián Manuel de Artuza, Informe sobre las minas de Durango, 1772 in Las minas de Nueva España, ed. Miramontes and Urrutia, 98.
111. Cramaussel, "Sociedad colonial y depredación ecologica," 97.
112. Alcabala sobre carbón, February 17th, 1610, AMSLP 1610(1), exp. 29, 2v.
113. Libro de cuentas de la hazienda de Miguel Maldonado, 1612-1613. AMSLP 1612 (3), exp. 20, 448 r.
114. Merced de tierras a Diego Alonso Nuñez, September 22nd, 1610, AMSLP 1619(4), 7r-v
115. Concurso de Acreedores de Diego de Cardenas, August 31st, 1620, AMSLP 1620(6), exp. 15, 2r, 4r.
116. Memorial de Lucas Fernandez Manjón, 1r.
117. Libro de cuentas de la hacienda de Miguel Maldonado, 1612-1613. AMSLP 1612 (3), exps. 20 and 21.
118. Salazar González, Las haciendas en el siglo XVII, 223-25.
119. Solicitud para extraer agua, January 1st, 1635, AMSLP 1635(1), exp.6.
120. Hammersley, "Charcoal Iron Industry", 606
121. see also discussion of metal processing and forest clearing in antiquity in, Rehder, Mastery of Fire, 153-59.
122. Colonial period: 242 830 MJ/ton of Ag ore; twentieth century: 116 MJ/ton of Ag ore; contemporary open pit mines: 206 MJ/ton of Ag ore. These figures are derived from a related study by Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, "Exhausting the Sierra Madre: Long-Term Trends in the Environmental Impacts of Mining in Mexico" unpublished ms. A draft is available online at: http://www.yorku.ca/cerlac/EI/papers/Studnicki-Gizbert.pdf.