Political Ecologies of Cattle Ranching in Northern Mexico: Private Revolutions

Notes

Notes All translations appearing in English are mine unless otherwise noted. See the glossary for Spanish terms and meanings. Chapter 1 1. Political ecology has been defined, used, and abused in any number of ways. Arguably, Watts (1983) produced the first example of political ecology, even if the term had been coined a decade earlier in anthropology (Wolf 1972). Some early programmatic statements were tendered in Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) benchmark work, followed by Bryant (1992); more recent works that nicely capture the array of approaches can be found in Robbins (2004), Peet and Watts (2004), and Zimmerer and Bassett (2003). Readers of, even practitioners of, political ecology will find a maddening diversity of approaches, themes, and influences in the literature, even if the subfield has reached near-hegemonic status in certain fields of human-environment research. To be sure, many of us are simply reformed “cultural ecologists” now engaging with a literature burgeoning with the influence of political economists and peasant studies. Others arrived more directly through an engagement of livelihood struggles and continental theory (also known as poststructural theory). Regardless, the field is massive, and any reviewer engaging in a project of synthesis is bound to trample on some empirical or theoretical feet in this subfield. Anthropologists, political scientists , and to some degree, sociologists are all contributing to this growing literature. A good and creative batch of papers from anthropologists can be found in Biersack and Greenberg (2006). 2. While analytically commendable, this study did not follow Sayre’s (2001, 13) multiscalar approach to analyzing ranch ecologies with four levels: plant, pasture, ranch, and watershed. The ranch is the spatial and empirical unit of analysis in this study. 3. I refer readers to such works as Craib (2004), a closet geographer, but also Kourí (2004), Amith (2005), and Boyer (2003, esp. chap. 5). An exception in the social sciences is Camp’s (2002) splendid analysis of how the largely urban elite in Mexico City has developed, how networks of elites are formed nationally, and how they are shaped internationally through such influences as higher education. 21 Notes 4. PROCEDE is usually translated as the Program for Certification of Ejidal Rights and Titling of Urban Patios. The program, overseen by the Registro Agrario Nacional (National Agrarian Registry), was started as a way to provide federalized ejidos, agrarian nuclei, with title rights to lands and resources. It ended in 2006. While nearly all ejidos participated at some level, many simply certified the outside boundaries of the total communal property without seeking individual rights by household member. See chapter 6 for more on this program and its implications for this region. Chapter 2 1. “One can assure one’s self, that if it is difficult to arrive at an exact statistical database in one of the states in the Mexican Republic, it is undoubtedly Sonora.” 2. Ganado mayor refers to cattle, horses, and mules. Ganado menor refers to goats, pigs, and sheep. 3. It is probable that haciendas were more numerous in the south because of the width of the floodplain; the narrow river bends so common near Arizpe become a wider expanse of fertile, alluvial soils near the town of Banámichi, narrow again to half this size near the town of Aconchi, and then widen closer to Baviácora. The river does not narrow again in expanse until the Río Sonora turns southwestward at the small hamlet of Mazocahui. 4. For a thorough treatment of the historical land-tenure terms, see Aguilar-Robledo (2003). Hacienda was typically the largest land estate designation in Mexico, which may have included one or more estancias (land areas) that were used for grazing or crop production, depending on regional location. The lowlier rancho implied both a smaller land base and a more humble direction in land use, directed at subsistence rather than cash crop generation. An assemblage of ranchos, especially if occupants were related, could also be termed a ranchería in both colonial New Spain and in late nineteenth-century Mexico. These informal clumps of separate structures can still be observed today in Mexico, with toponyms hinting at place-based signifiers or the old family name tied to the site. Chapter 3 1. The cultural importance of ranching versus any economic gains acquired is also strongly argued in Starrs (1998). See chapter 7 for more on this matter. 2. These are aggregate, averaged, summary data. For a fuller discussion of the data, including full graphs and tabular versions, please consult...