Political Ecologies of Cattle Ranching in Northern Mexico: Private Revolutions

Preface

Preface Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. —Albert Einstein This book is a study of contemporary private ranches and ranchers in the state of Sonora, Mexico. It is based on long-term fieldwork, the bulk of which occurred between the years 1995 and 1997, with two return visits in 2002 and 2003 and archival work during the summers of 2006 and 2007. I keep in touch with a handful of ranchers, all of them profiled in this book, to get periodic updates about the Río Sonora and ranches in this valley of Mexico. Telephones and e-mail were helpful when ranches have passed on to the next generation. Observation, ethnography, field measurements, and informal conversations are the basis of this work. It is not a book I could have written ten or even five years ago, given that I was trying to understand a lifestyle and form of land use that has continually changed. It is not a work of history, in spite of my visits to several archives over the last ten years, because my interest is in land and water management decisions, actions, and contemporary ranching ecologies. I neither defend nor condemn this livelihood and form of land use; a ranch owner, Miguel, pointed out the futility of such actions when he acknowledged that although previous family members had made mistakes , as he had, he was interested in doing better for his property. The question he put to me was simple: “What are we doing well and what are we doing wrong?” What I hope to have done is highlight the geographies, politics, and ecologies of private ranches while comparing and contrasting these with the other land management institutions of Mexico. The kinds of management decisions, actions, and daily tactics for herding have changed little over time and space. The numbers, economics, cattle breeds, and land-use strategies have changed. I hope this work comes close to answering Miguel’s honest question. I have written this book as much for students as for my colleagues in geography, environmental sciences, area studies, history, sociology, and anthropology. Clarity of expression and explanation is the emphasis, and I can only hope that ranchers and policy makers who might stumble upon this work will find a set of clear messages. Private ranchers are not a monolithic class of people; they act in wildly different ways, compete against each other, and simply think in contrasting ways. Traditionally, land tenure in Mexico has been reduced to a picture of communal versus private landownership. The binary has worked insofar as past writers have created a false dichotomy for explaining rural Mexico. But it does little to honor and explain the continuum of landholding arrangements in Mexico. Grasslands and rangelands are, of course, of concern to a wider pool of specialists and general interest. There is an extensive literature in “range science,” largely using experimental methods, but little of it touches on the human dimensions of ranch management. In Mexico, range specialists spent a great deal of time on the specifics and applied knowledge for improving rangelands, yet paid little attention to the ranches or ranchers themselves. This attitude is slow to change. Ranchers across the Americas share much in common. I hope this book addresses some of the traditional shortcomings in scholarship on ranching without succumbing to, or repeating, past conventional wisdom. xii Preface ...