COLONIAL CATACLYSMS

L ATIN AME RICAN LAN D S C A P ES

Christopher R. Boyer and Lise Sedrez

Series Editors

Editorial Board
Guillermo Castro Herrera
José Augusto Drummond
Stefania Gallini
Stuart McCook
John R. McNeill
Shawn Miller
Cynthia Radding
John Soluri
 COLONIAL
CATACLYSMS
Climate, Landscape, and Memory in
Mexico’s Little Ice Age

BRAD LEY SKOP Y K

The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu

© 2020 by The Arizona Board of Regents

All rights reserved. Published 2020

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3996-3 (cloth)

Cover design by Leigh McDonald

Cover art: The Lower Teotihuacán Valley as Depicted by Natives of Acolman (1763) [detail],
courtesy of Archivo General de la Nación
Interior design and typesetting by Sara Thaxton
Typeset in 10/14 Adobe Caslon Pro, Grotesque MT Std, and Helvetica Neue LT Std

Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment
created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, a federal agency.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Skopyk, Bradley, author.
Title: Colonial cataclysms : climate, landscape, and memory in Mexico’s little Ice Age / Bradley Skopyk.
Other titles: Latin American landscapes.
Description: Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2020. | Series: Latin American landscapes | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019036752 | ISBN 9780816539963 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Crops and climate—Mexico—Teotihuacán Valley—History. | Crops and climate—
Mexico—Zahuapan River Watershed—History. | Climate and civilization—Mexico—Teotihuacán
Valley—History. | Climate and civilization—Mexico—Zahuapan River Watershed—History. |
Teotihuacán Valley (Mexico)—Climate—History—16th century. | Teotihuacán Valley (Mexico)—
Climate—History—17th century. | Zahuapan River Watershed (Mexico)—Climate—History—
16th century. | Zahuapan River Watershed (Mexico)—Climate—History—17th century.
Classification: LCC S451.7 .S56 2020 | DDC 338.1/4097252—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036752

Printed in the United States of America

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To Paula and Anastasia, for your love,
in memory of Elinor Melville, my teacher,
and in memory of Will Skopyk, my nephew.
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 3
1. Watermarks: The Colonial Mexican Pluvial and
Its Hydrographic Archive 31
2. Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty
Granaries: Managing the Ecological Revolution in
Early Colonial Tlaxcala 66
3. A Drunken Landscape: Pulque, Mule Trains, and the
New Wastelands 89
4. Embedded Lives: Silt, Water, and Politics 131
5. Memories of a Devious Landscape: The Commissioner’s
Report of 1761 165
Conclusion 201

Appendix A: Reconstructing Colonial Mexico’s Climate 213

Appendix B: A Framework of Soil-Water Dynamics 246
Notes 255
References 281
Index 305
 ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1. Two photos of courtyard of Ex Convento de Acolman 6

2. Erosion on the slopes of upper Zahuapan River basin
(near Tlaxco) 8
3. A General View of the Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacán, 1864 37
4. Map of the lake and adjacent lands between Tepexpan and
Tequiciztlan, 1578 46
5. The Gudiel map (1585), showing the hydrology of
San Juan Teotihuacán 52
6. Castañeda’s map of the Teotihuacán Valley, produced
for the Relación geográfica in 1580 55
7. Map production in the Teotihuacán Valley by quarter century 56
8. Population changes in colonial Tlaxcala 78
9. Abandoned land in the Tlaxcala City watershed (hectares) 79
10. Mature maguey pulquero (Agave salmiana) 90
11. Sloping terraces with maguey (metepantli), central Tlaxcala 108
12. Sloping terraces with maguey (metepantli) on barren hill
slope in central Tlaxcala 108
13. Deteriorating metepantli on Tezoyotepec Hill 109
14. Ratio of hectares to draught animals in rural Tlaxcala 113
15. The Late Maunder Minimum crisis in Tlaxcala 124
x | Illustrations

16. Flood frequency in Tlaxcala City (Tlaxcala) and Acolman

Dam (Teotihuacán) 136
17. Approximate sedimentation in the reservoir of Acolman Dam 144
18. Map of Juan del Campo Velarde showing townland of
Tepexpan, Cuanalan, and river and dam (1727) 153
19. The lower Teotihuacán Valley as depicted by an Acolman
priest (1762) 156
20. The lower Teotihuacán Valley as depicted by natives of
Acolman (1763) 157
21. Don Joseph González de Silva’s map, 1765 181
22. Scale and cardinal directions of don Joseph’s map 183
23. Don Diego Najara y Becerra near Tecopilco and Xipetzinco 186
24. Peacemaking at Cuamancingo with Malintzin, Cortés,
and local noblemen 187
25. Cortés and Malintzin await peacemaking near Texopan
and Zacatelco 188
26. PDSI values for east-central Mexico, 1500–1850 (i.e., the
Correlation Area) 223
27. Long-term precipitation trends in the Valley of Mexico 230
28. Annual rainfall from 1400 to 1850 CE reconstructed from
Juxtlahuacan speleothem and calibrated for the Valley of Mexico 231
29. Scatter charts of Tlaxcalan annals 235
30. Variability of the Agroecological Index, 1540–1809 239
31. Comparison of Agroecological Index and Mexican Drought
Atlas data, using the polarity of the Mexican Drought Atlas data 241
32. Agroecological Index cold variability, 1540–1809 243
33. Reported anomalies of cold and precipitation in the
Agroecological Index, 1540–1809 244
34. Diagram of a typical “raised barranca,” or elevated streambed 251

TA B L E S

1. Population estimates of Tlaxcala and the city of Puebla 103

2. Area cultivated with maguey 104
3. Historical output of natural springs in San Juan Teotihuacán 145
4. Founders of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates 193
 Illustrations | xi

5. Comparing versions of the origins of the Cuamancingo and

Río de las Vacas estates 194
6. PDSI extremes in Correlation Area 224
7. Six extreme decades 228
8. Summary of the Agroecological Index class counts 233
9. Eight Agroecological Index anomalies 242

MAPS

1. Location of study region 23

2. Location of Correlation Area within the central Mexican
settlement zone 24
3. Temperate climates of the Correlation Area 25
4. Geographic range of Agave salmiana 26
5. Mexico’s pulque marketing region 26
6. Reports of excessive humidity, 1545–1620 27
7. Regional hydrology of the study region 35
8. Hydrology of the Teotihuacán Valley 36
9. Hydrology of San Juan Teotihuacán, circa 1585 39
10. Hydrology of the Acolman Dam, circa 1800 41
11. Location of the Temascal, or “El Sifón” 42
12. Hydrology of Tlaxcala 68
13. Topography of Tlaxcala City on a floodplain on the
Zahuapan River 69
14. Wetlands in the Atlancatepec region in the Zahuapan
River basin of Tlaxcala, ca. 1580 72
15. Pulque markets and their regional supply zones in
Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán 101
16. Towns and disputed teccalli parcels near Atlihuetzyan 118
17. Disputed land (altepetlalli or ejido), circa 1703, Tlaxcala 132
18. Map of San Juan Teotihuacán (1865) 144
19. San Juan Teotihuacán chinampas 159
20. Sites of Villavicencio’s circumambulation, 1761 166
21. Candidate tree-ring series 220
22. Correlation of Montezuma bald cypress chronology
in central Mexico 221
xi i | Illustrations

23. Eleven PDSI extremes during the Spanish imperium 224

24. Speleothem locations in central Mexico 229
25. Mean Pearson correlation coefficients of Juxtlahuacan
speleothem and the Mexican Drought Atlas reconstructed
PDSI, 1540–1809 232
26. Mean Pearson correlation coefficients of Agroecological Index 240
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
his book started out as a dissertation at York University exploring the
history of Tlaxcala and was then extended by postdoctoral research at
the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas (Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México), exploring the history of Teotihuacán. Since 2014, I
have used my position as assistant professor in the Department of History
at Binghamton University (State University of New York) to merge the two
research programs into a single narrative. The book has thus come a long way.
The moves from Toronto, Mexico City, and then to Binghamton brought me
within the orbit of some truly wonderful persons who have supported my work
and influenced my thinking on a number of key issues.
At York University, Elinor Melville and Richard Hoffmann got me excited
about the environmental history of the pre-fossil fuel age whose social ecology
is vastly different from our own. I am so thankful for Elinor and Richard for
showing me this world before our own and for teaching me how the ecological
rigors of the everyday shape the larger world of economy, politics, and culture,
and vice versa. I also want to thank Anne Rubenstein, my teacher and mentor
at York University, who with great generosity gave me the professional and
scholarly support that I needed to get through and beyond the PhD program,
especially after Elinor’s untimely passing. But even more, her leadership within
the Latin American History Research Group in Toronto has been formative in
fostering models of inquiry and critique and in shaping, directly, some of the
chapters of this book. Many more in that wonderful research group should be
mentioned—especially Gillian McGillivray, James Cypher, Dot Tuer, and Alan
xi v | Acknowledgments

Durston. I must apologize for leaving others unnamed. Thank you for your
friendship and contagious enthusiasm for finding meaning and truth in the past.
While researching the dissertation, I began studying the indigenous lan-
guage of Nahuatl. The Department of History at York University, York Inter-
national, and Yale University supported summer language training under the
tutelage of Jonathan Amith in San Agustín Oapan, Guerrero, Mexico. Jona-
than’s brilliant teaching methods and unforgiving work schedule, and my host
Agustina’s patience and friendship, made this a productive and unforgettable
experience. Afterward, Jonathan continued to work with me through Skype.
Additionally, Camilla Townsend took a week out of her vacation to train me
to read and translate wills and annals. I cannot thank them enough for their
support and teachings.
Three weeks after defending the dissertation, I flew south to meet with new
colleagues in Mexico City, where I started a postdoc within an interdisciplinary
project exploring environmental change in the Teotihuacán Valley, mainly until the
end of the classical era (ca. 650 CE) but with some additional research on colonial-
era processes. The project was headed by Emily McClung de Tapia, who directs
the paleoethnobotany lab at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Uni-
versidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The scholars in the group spanned the
disciplines of geology, biology, geography, archaeology, and history. Emily invited
me to participate in the project, shared her deep expertise on the past and present
landscapes of Teotihuacán, gave me access to all of the institute’s resources, and
let me take over her office for two years. María Castañeda de la Paz and Diana
Martínez Yrizar studied historical processes in the valley and shared with me
their insights and findings. Diana worked closely with me on the history of the
Acolman Dam, and, together, we coauthored a chapter on the subject. Emilio
Morales (a palynologist) and Cristina Adriano Morán (a doctoral researcher in
archaeology) are core members of Emily’s team and took time to explain their
research to me. Gerardo Jiménez Delgado, archaeologist and cartographer in the
IIA, provided countless hours of instruction on ArcGIS software and cartography
in general, while also building a digital elevation model of the Teotihuacán village,
which was very helpful in reconstructing past hydrology. I thank all of these schol-
ars at the IIA for their willingness (and patience) to teach me about their findings
and unique methods to understand the history of Teotihuacán’s landscape and,
especially, for their generous friendship and genuine kindness.
The seemingly impossible task of bringing together two vast archival projects
on the history of climate, landscape, and memory started in 2013 and picked up
 Acknowledgments | xv

speed at Binghamton University. A Dean’s Research Semester offered generous

support that funded subsequent research trips to Mexico to tie up loose ends. A
teaching release from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, also
at Binghamton University, gave me additional time to write. My colleagues at
Binghamton have been enormously supportive and welcoming. Special thanks
goes out to Nancy Appelbaum for her unfailing support.
I am indebted to many for their help in getting this book through the pub-
lication process. The comments on the manuscript by Chris Boyer and two
anonymous readers have made the book much stronger. Not only did Chris read
the earliest draft of the manuscript along with some revised parts, he made a
case for this book within the Latin American Landscapes book series. I thank
Kristen Buckles, editor-in-chief at the University of Arizona Press, for her
enthusiastic support of the book, for advocating on my behalf, and for keeping
this all on schedule. Others have taken on the more daunting task of edit-
ing text and images. I am very thankful to Elbio Grosso—who is always too
nice to say “no” to my unreasonable requests for assistance—for copyediting
a second draft of this book manuscript with great care, skill, and speed. Simi-
larly, John Mulvihill—the copyeditor for the University of Arizona Press—has
approached the text with care and consideration, battling through my cross-
disciplinary adventures with aplomb and always improving the text.
Funding for the research and writing of this book has come from (in chrono-
logical order) York University, a Mexican Government Research Award, the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Yale University,
the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Mexico), and Binghamton Uni-
versity. I thank those agencies and institutions for their support.
The time for writing and researching must be subtracted from what matters
most in life: family. Thus, I thank my wife, Paula, and my daughter, Anastasia,
for letting me miss walks in Chapultepec, visits to museums, and so many
excursions within their busy sightseeing itinerary. But mostly, I thank them
for their love and companionship, and the walks and other adventures that we
did have. Their love sustains anything and makes everything more meaningful.
To my family back in Saskatchewan, thank you for always being there for one
another, especially when I was not. To my brother, Rod, for showing me what
true courage is. And to the memory of Will, my nephew, who at just seventeen
years old was inspired by, and found meaning in, a fire that occurred nearly five
hundred years ago, in a city an ocean away. I wish we had had the opportunity
to talk about that, and about so much more. Resurgam.
COLONIAL CATACLYSMS
Introduction

T
his book chases soil and water across central Mexico, from the early
decades of the sixteenth century until the last years of the Spanish
Empire. It finds a world in hyperactive flux, where not only society and
politics had been turned inside out, but where earth and water moved chaot-
ically and cataclysmically in an unprecedented manner. The pursuit traverses
the establishment of two types of cataclysmic landscapes, one with growing
marshes, brimming rivers, and new springs, and the other with quagmires, des-
iccated wetlands, eroded hillsides, and deep sedimentation that buried bridges
and buildings. As seen from the bulrushes at the edge of swollen wetlands or
knee-deep in muck left by the abrupt deposition of up to four meters of sed-
iment, the cataclysmic floods transformed not only environments but entire
ways of life.
These two environmental extremes of Mexico’s landscapes—the lush water-
scape or the ruined, desiccated landscape—are the most recognizable faces of
the Mexican environment. For some onlookers, then and now, the first has been
the object of much longing and the second a reminder of colonialism’s failures.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, observers struggled to explain the
environmental transformation. Some blamed Old World crops and animals
or the early colonial depopulation of indigenous peoples, while others pointed
fingers at Spain’s careless management of New World resources, particularly
forests and wetlands. Historians have been too eager to graft these anti-colonial
4 | Introduction

narratives into their own histories of landscape and environment in colonial

Mexico, where they appear as fact and adequate explanation. It is time to look
more critically at colonial discourse and to establish by other means where,
when, and why this transformation came about.
This book contends, on the one hand, that each of the two cataclysms had
a very different origin from what is commonly assumed. The first was no more
“natural” or “unnatural” than the second, although it did lack the physical per-
manence of the subsequent event. The first cataclysm was an extreme, although
ephemeral, manifestation of one of the strongest climate events of the last
thousand—perhaps ten thousand—years. The second moved earth and water in
unexpected ways, leaving behind a geomorphic legacy that could not be ignored,
not then and not now. A second contention is that each cataclysm—having
been forged during a critical conjuncture of truly unprecedented proportions, a
crucible of human and natural forces—unhinged the customary ways in which
humans organized, thought about, and made a living from the environment of
central Mexico. Each wrought profound changes on colonial Mexican society,
altering land use and distribution, rural social relations, and even how locals and
elite alike characterized Mexico’s “innate” fertility—or infertility.

The Geomorphic Cataclysm

Let us look a little more closely at the second of those cataclysms, an extraordi-
nary transformation of the Mexican countryside, in a matter of decades, from
an idyllic palustrine environment to a landscape with barren hillsides and over-
burdened valleys, where floods occurred with intensities and frequencies never
before seen. In multiple watersheds in central Mexico, topsoil and underlying
sediment eroded at astounding rates from the 1690s onward, with complemen-
tary sedimentation along the colluvial footslopes, in floodplains, and farther
downstream in valleys. The first signs of crisis had emerged by 1730, but not
until midcentury did the accretions of alluvium (fluvially deposited sediment,
sorted along the reach of the river from fine to coarse materials), reaching two
to three meters in depth, garner frequent remark. By the last decades of the
Spanish imperium, depths of four meters were not uncommon. The alluvium
accumulated so rapidly that even middle-aged onlookers, who could compare
reference points a mere two or three decades apart, observed the changes first-
hand. They were astonished by what they saw.
 Introduction | 5

The sediment obstructed river channels, in-filled wetlands, and caused gen-
eral chaos in the hydrological network, leading to the emergence of a new flood
regime. Floods increased in frequency, reaching a climax in the 1770s of once
in five years. Roads were washed away, inns abandoned, great colonial churches
and convents savagely flooded, their patio cemeteries “naturally” excavated by
the floodwaters, leaving bodies and church relics floating downstream. Silt
mounded around the foundations of the buildings, such as the Ex Convento
de Acolman, about forty kilometers northeast of the main square (Zócalo) of
Mexico City. By the late eighteenth century, the convent was abandoned alto-
gether when the ground-level doors could no longer be accessed, submerged by
meters of dirt. Later, in the early twentieth century, at the end of the Mexican
Revolution, archaeologists led efforts to excavate the church from the alluvium.
Today, the Ex Convento has a “sunken” appearance, lying close to three meters
below the surrounding (highly alluviated) terrain, as seen in figure 1. Signs
posted in the building (now a museum) indicate the height of historic flood-
waters, but do not offer any notice of the deep alluviation.
A watershed away, in the neighboring province of Tlaxcala, a similar sequence
with a similar chronology unfolded. The floods were so devastating by the 1780s
that the indigenous government there juxtaposed their historic enemy—the
Mexica, or Aztecs—with its current one, its “greatest enemy . . . the volumi-
nous river that passes nearby called the Zahuapan.” A few years later, the tone
became more emphatic:

The very great damages [gravísimos extragos] that the impetuous floodwaters
of the said Río de Zahuapan have caused and continue to cause, mainly in the
rainy season, and the complete absence of any help that the city has had in order
to combat them, and as such this furious enemy prepares the total ruin of this
city, if a fix is not found very quickly.1

No fix came. The same problems continued in the mid-nineteenth century

and are still reported today, although now dredging machines are employed to
remove the sediment. In the 1760s and 1780s, both upstream and downstream of
the city, the furious enemy had buried entire bridges below deep accumulations
of sand and silt, or simply washed away all signs of the bridges. The river shifted
from one channel to another, all formed well above the elevation of the ground
in the previous century. Vast extensions of wetland were in-filled with sediment
and thereby desiccated. Today, these palustrine gems are lost even to memory.
FI GURE 1 Two photos of the courtyard of the Ex Convento de Acolman. In both pictures, the excavated courtyard is juxtaposed
with the surrounding terrain, which sits about 2.4 meters above it. Even with these excavations, the original base is likely about fifty
centimeters lower. Churches and other important constructions were built above the surrounding ground/street level, so that access
to the floor of the atrium required visitors to climb a few stairs. Photos by author, November 22, 2012.
 Introduction | 7

Above these valley features, hillsides were completely washed away and carved
by gullies that formed in a matter of decades. Figure 2 exemplifies the effects of
erosion on hillslopes in the northern Zahuapan River basin.
Was the transformation of soil and water a product of extreme climate
variability? With the benefit of new paleoclimatological data, it is possible to
reassess the role of climate in Mexican history and to answer this question
with remarkable certainty. (See appendix A for a full analysis of the climato-
logical sources and chronologies.) State-of-the-art climate reconstructions for
the region show that with the exception of two periods—1696–1705 (the most
significant decadal-scale drought in the last six hundred years) and 1729–1733
(a short and only moderately dry five-year phase)—the eighteenth-century
Mexican climate was exceptionally good, lacking multiyear periods of extreme
weather until 1779. It was, in fact, the most salubrious climate of the colonial era
and one of the best of the last six hundred years. The climate of the eighteenth
century was actually celebrated by the scientist José Alzate Ramírez, who noted
that “between 1771 and 1778, New Spain experienced a Golden age (abundant
grain and free of disease), when the public finally enjoyed an Octavian peace
[i.e., Pax Romana].”2 The climate of central Mexico between 1706 and 1778
was uncharacteristically balanced, with essentially as many wet as dry years (38
versus 35). Compared to the previous 160 years of climate history, the period
in which the geomorphic cataclysm unfolded was strangely moderate. There is
little doubt that landscape desiccation was underway by the 1780s, but drying
should not be confused with drought. It is best characterized as a process of
dehumidification spawned by a normalization of precipitation and a warming
of temperatures, a withdrawal from the extreme wetness of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries (discussed below). Thus, when the House of Bourbon was
internationally recognized as rulers of the Spanish Empire in 1713, the imperial
skies were already beginning to clear and a new age of imperialism was dawning.
By contrast, the Habsburgs who ruled Castille and its global empire from 1516
until 1700 could not find respite from troubled Mexican skies until late in their
dynasty, from 1662 until 1688, a period of twenty-seven years with only three
extreme years (two wet and one dry).
After 1778, the Bourbon monarchy finally got a taste of the Habsburg expe-
rience, climatically speaking. The era of the “Octavian peace” ended quite
abruptly with two very dry years in 1779 and 1780, followed by highly variable
precipitation patterns. The eruption of the Laki volcano (in Iceland) in 1783
resulted in a couple of years of damp, cool, and cloudy conditions, especially in
FIGURE 2 Erosion on the slopes of upper Zahuapan River basin (near Tlaxco). To the left, a wide vista of a deeply eroded landscape and, to the right, a
close-up of eroded soil profiles with pedestals of two to three meters high. While the erosion shown in this photograph is severe, it is nevertheless quite
common in both Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán. Photos by author, July 2005.
 Introduction | 9

1784—a typical weather pattern in Mexico for the immediate post-eruption

years. The extreme wetness of 1784, however, was followed by the driest tan-
dem of years in the Mexican paleoclimate record, which Alzate called the Year
of Hunger, a disastrous sustenance crisis from 1785 until 1786. For the next
six years, the climate continued to oscillate between extreme wet (1788) and
extreme dry (1789/90) conditions—the latter associated with a strong El Niño
phase—and then settled into an extended multidecadal period of sustained
high humidity.3
Thus, other than the megadrought of 1696–1705, the drought of 1729–1733,
along with three (admittedly closely spaced) two-year extremes in 1779/80,
1785/86, and 1789/90, climatological evidence does not support a definition of
the eighteenth-century Mexican climate as drought-stricken. Variability, rather
than long-term drought, best characterizes the century. Falling lake levels and
decreasing stream baseflow were natural consequences of the dehumidification
that followed much wetter times during the first 150 years of colonial rule.
Indeed, the truly severe climate events of the late colonial era occurred after the
Year of Hunger and took the form of pluvials, not drought. Between 1791 and
1818, 79 percent of years were wetter than normal. The period from 1791 to 1796
was one of the six wettest in the colonial era, although not as wet as the period
from 1809 to 1817. The second wettest year on record was 1816, with the pre-
ceding and subsequent years very wet too. Such humidity was owed to another
post-eruption phase that followed the Tambora (Indonesia) eruption of 1815,
one of the biggest climate events of the Holocene and “the largest eruption of
recorded history,” which “resulted in the greatest-known death toll attributable
to a volcanic eruption.”4
It is worth emphasizing that the timing of the cataclysm did not coincide
with climate-induced drought. To be clear, there is no direct causal relation-
ship between the geomorphic cataclysms and climate. This goes against the
grain of scholarly depictions of the eighteenth century that uniformly describe
the century as an extended drought-induced crisis. In their assessment of the
Mexican landscape and of environmental degradation, historians have relied
unduly on the work of Alzate, mentioned above, who wrote in the last decades
of the eighteenth century about the state of the Mexican environment, partic-
ularly with regard to issues of drought and desiccation. Alzate began recording
daily weather observations in the 1770s, but quickly tired of such tedious data
keeping and focused, instead, on theoretical discussions of climate change. He
wrote frequently about what he saw as long-term desiccation, which he linked
10 | Introduction

to deforestation and colonial mismanagement of Mexico’s natural resources.

His drive to study and explain the apparent drought and desiccation gained
momentum after he witnessed the horrors of the drought of 1785 and 1786.
Thus, having experienced the end of the Octavian peace that reigned until 1778,
and having observed a decade of mostly drier conditions (punctuated by the
three two-year extremes of 1779/80, 1785/86, and 1789/90), Alzate was struck by
the drying trend and worsening weather. He wrote on seven separate occasions
between 1784 and 1791 (especially in 1790 and 1791, at the end of the mainly dry
phase) about the effects of trees and deforestation on atmospheric humidity.5
Given his recent experience of dry weather—conditions that were shared across
many regions of the world as a result of teleconnections between warming
temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and global atmospheric systems, that is, the
El Niño Southern Oscillation—he was preoccupied with the threat of drought
and terrestrial desiccation, not with the dangers to agriculture and urban infra-
structure posed by water-saturated soils. In doing so, Alzate brought to Mexico
a new global climatological discourse that worried about growing desiccation of
the Earth—particularly the tropics—because of deforestation. This discourse,
which scholars have labeled “desiccation theory,” remained popular throughout
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.6
Alzate’s influence runs throughout modern historiography, as is evidenced
by the recurrent emphasis on drought in works by Charles Gibson, Enrique
Florescano, Susan Swan, Arij Ouweneel, Virginia García Acosta, and Georgina
Endfield.7 Gibson, for instance, treated the land-atmosphere feedback mech-
anism advanced by Alzate’s desiccation theory as fact.8 Florescano, one of the
most important historians of colonial Mexico, and by far the most important
and prolific historian to explore climate-society interactions in Mexico until the
1990s, emphasized drought above all else in Mexico, especially during the late
eighteenth century.9 The same thematic (drought) and temporal (late eighteenth
century) parameters were reinforced within the work of historians Swan, 10
García Acosta,11 and Ouweneel, all deeply influenced by Alzate.12 In the last
twenty years, geographer Endfield has led a resurgence of research on colonial
Mexican climate history, especially with regard to the central settlement zone
from Oaxaca to Mexico City to Guadalajara. While this work has provided a
sophisticated conceptualization of the relationship between climate and society,
based on deep archival research, the climatic parameters and periodization are
quite traditional, reifying the master narrative focused almost exclusively on
late-colonial drought.13 Indeed, in one influential essay, Endfield (and coauthor
 Introduction | 11

Sarah O’Hara) recast the global “Little Ice Age” as Mexico’s “Little Drought
Age” (my emphasis).14
In light of these erroneous depictions of eighteenth-century climate and
ecology, my work seeks to reframe both the periodization of climate change in
colonial Mexico and the ecological and geomorphic conditions that contributed
to the turbulent times of the eighteenth century. Existing scholarship has not
identified the existence of this cataclysm, much less dated its onset (ca. 1700),
its first phase of significant sedimentation (ca. 1730s), its peak (ca. 1770s), or its
waning (ca. 1790s). Yet these were not silent forces. As I hope to make clear, the
record of this cataclysm is fully visible in the archive; it was not only a subject of
much concern, but discussed, debated, and litigated over. In some cases, the flow
of water was physically measured in the field and the accumulation of sediment
was visually estimated by experts. The geomorphic cataclysm has been hiding
in plain sight under the blazing skies projected through the work of Alzate and
other desiccationists.

The Colonial Mexican Pluvial

The geomorphic cataclysm was the second cataclysm in colonial Mexico. The
first, by contrast, was climatic rather than geomorphic and coincided with an
extreme wet/cold climate phase that dominated central Mexico, peaking in
three thirty-year waves around 1550, 1580, and 1610. In many ways, it trans-
formed Mexican society more fully than the later event. I call this climatic phase
the Colonial Mexican Pluvial.
The pluvial began with an extreme oscillation from drought to high humid-
ity. From 1514 to 1539, June rainfall (a telltale month to predict yields of rainfall-
dependent agriculture) was consistently low, with early season drought peaking
in 1524, 1528, and 1538. Normal or warmer-than-normal temperatures likely
predominated. Total annual precipitation during these years dropped substan-
tially from the millennial-scale maxima reached during the Mexica era, but the
drought was not of such severity or duration to desiccate the lakes, wetlands,
and rivers of central Mexico. After the Conquest-era drought, the Mexican
pluvial mentioned above reasserted itself until at least the second decade of
the seventeenth century, replenishing lakes, wetlands, and rivers across central
Mexico. It is difficult to exaggerate the cold, damp conditions that predom-
inated during this critical phase of Spanish imperialism. Increased volcanic
12 | Introduction

activity, falling levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and reduced solar out-
put left central Mexico—like so many other places in both the Northern and
Southern Hemispheres—with cool, cloudy, and damp conditions. The pluvial
was not, however, uniformly wet and cold, geographically or temporally. Rather,
conditions varied, reaching pluvial peaks circa 1545, 1552, 1577, and 1610. Cold
predominated from the early 1540s to the late 1550s and again from the 1590s
to the 1620s. Afterward, from the late 1620s until the early 1670s, pluvial con-
ditions dissipated, replaced by a veritable seesaw of cold/wet with hot/dry.15
This climate chronology for central Mexico parallels the global Little Ice
Age, one of the coldest phases of the last 11,500 years (i.e., since the last ice
age). While some scholars have defined the Little Ice Age as occurring between
roughly 1300 and 1850, recent work has refined its temporal scope to the long
seventeenth century. Paleoclimatologist Raphael Neukom and colleagues have
identified an extended cold phase from 1594 to 1677 (which they call the “peak
Little Ice Age”) and a slightly longer, globally synchronous cold phase from
1571 to 1722. Indeed, the period from 1570 to 1715 is just one of two tran-
shemispheric climate events in the last one thousand years (the other being
the current global warming era).16 Similarly, the golden age of the eighteenth
century—which Alzate called the Octavian peace—has been referred to, glob-
ally, as the Enlightenment climate optimum.17 Even the quasi-normalization
of climate in the mid-seventeenth century is corroborated by the Neukom
and colleagues study. The only substantial difference between central Mexican
and global climate variability is the rather early and abrupt onset of Little Ice
Age conditions in central Mexico during the 1540s, a couple of decades before
most other Northern Hemisphere locations and three to five decades before
most Southern Hemisphere locations. Otherwise, the reconstruction provided
in this study matches global chronologies. The identification of a statistically
significant period of climate change does not preclude significant and crisis-
inducing climate variability before or after the Little Ice Age. Yet it suggests that
such conditions were more frequent and more severe during this period. It also
denotes a period of statistically significant global cooling at the century scale,
a cooling phase not found in any other period of the last two thousand years.18
During the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, soils saturated, springs burst forth
everywhere, lakes and wetlands reached maxima, and river channels could no
longer contain the copious waters, leaving land, towns, and cities devastated.
The great floods that ravaged Mexico City during this era are directly and
mostly attributable to the pluvial. Across central Mexico, floods—in completely
 Introduction | 13

separate watersheds from that of Mexico City and without the extensive marshes
that were so unique to the viceregal city—challenged the sustainability of urban
and rural societies, simultaneously and quite uniformly. Extreme cold, however,
was the most crucial aspect of this crisis. Not only did it lower rates of evapo-
transpiration and thereby increase wetness, but it resulted in frequent frosts that
destroyed crops and occasional winter snowfall events that toppled vegetation
and killed off livestock. The abrupt shift to a cold, water-saturated landscape
changed the ecology of fauna and flora in ways that—admittedly—can only be
partially reconstructed in this book. This much is known, however: the pulses of
the pluvial caused wild swings in the population dynamics of many invertebrate,
fungal, and mammal species. In some cases, these cycles caused great harm to
crops and thereby combined with frost and snow to threaten the viability of land
use and food production systems. Additionally, the climatic and corresponding
faunal oscillations generated epidemics among humans and epizootics among
livestock, decimating these populations. By the end of the pluvial, Mexican
society had reached its demographic nadir. It rebounded in improved climates
of the later seventeenth century (the era of Habsburg respite, mentioned above),
was struck down again with a final cold period in the 1690s (with an oscillation
from very wet to very dry), and then grew rapidly in the eighteenth century
under warmer and less humid skies.

Ecological Mestizaje

The narrative thus far, of climatic and geomorphic agency in two colonial cat-
aclysms, threatens to give the impression that this book treats climate and
geomorphology as strictly “natural” forces, untouched by human influence.
The implication would be that humans were somehow on the receiving end
of capricious nature, innocent bystanders in a world beyond their control. It is
time to correct this view and discredit the dualistic paradigm of human/nature,
which fails to capture the complexity of human ecology, the incessant interplay
between and interdependency of the sociocultural practices of humans and the
biophysical world they inhabit. All of the so-called natural agents explored in
this work—with the partial exception of climate—were profoundly shaped
by human activity. Pathogens that invaded human bodies had (and have) a
long coevolutionary history with humans, with the spaces and niche ecologies
humans create, with the companion species of our societies, or even with the
14 | Introduction

weeds and pests that, themselves, form part of ecosystems that give us suste-
nance, warmth, and shelter. Similarly, the ecological contexts of many diseases
shift with changes to land use or climate. Indeed, the interdependency of disease
and climate has been discussed in relation to the emergence of many epidemics,
such as plague, yellow fever, malaria, and also the great Mexican “cocoliztli” epi-
demics of the sixteenth century. This latter case is discussed in chapter 1.19 The
domestication of plants and animals is also a coevolutionary process, managed
but not conquered by humans. As Edmund Russell has made clear, this coevo-
lution continues to this day.20 Similarly, the flows of energy and matter that
move through carefully planned agricultural systems ensnare societies—at the
most basic and essential level—within a complex ecological web that humans
can only partially control. Even the most complex economic systems of capi-
talism do not somehow lie outside of “nature.” As sociologist Jason Moore has
argued, capitalism—like all economic systems—is both a way of organizing the
natural world and a part of the natural world itself. There is no way out of the
“double internality,” as he calls it.21
Some have argued that even in the preindustrial world, humans have shaped
the global climate, contributing to global warming and global cooling long
before fossil fuels were used in any substantial way. Climatologist William
Ruddiman, for instance, argues that anthropogenic forces gave shape to the
Little Ice Age when depopulation in the New World—particularly in the
Neotropics—initiated a phase of forest regrowth, terrestrial sequestering of
atmospheric carbon, and thus cooling. That the Little Ice Age was driven mostly
by non-anthropogenic forces (volcanic eruptions, lessening irradiation, and
orbital anomalies) does not negate the human hand in the climatic downturn
of the sixteenth century.22
Within this messy back-and-forth between humans and the nonhuman
world, across space and time at various scales, this book avoids the pointless
search for original causes or attempts to put culpability in either human or
natural domains. Recovering the interplay between the human and nonhuman
provides a far richer template to understand our place in nature. How we erect
and manage these socioecological systems—and the mastery of the skills and
knowledge to modify them to manage challenges such as demographic growth,
energy shortages, abrupt changes in the population dynamics of other species in
socioecological systems, or climate-induced changes to the availability of plant
and animal life—very much determines our success in limiting our vulnera-
bility to climatic or biophysical agency. The approach taken here is to follow
 Introduction | 15

the ingenuity of the ecologies we build, but also the human and environmental
consequences.
Indeed, the idea of “colonial cataclysms” seeks to convey more than just
the sudden changes in the natural order, particularly great floods that clearly
occurred within both the climatic and geomorphic landscapes. Even though all
of these connotations—sudden, transformative, environmental, and aquatic—
suggest the types of events narrated in this book, “cataclysm” does not imply
despair, destruction, or declension. Nor does it rule out the possibility that these
“natural” revolutions materialized because of the vulnerabilities of socioeco-
logical systems that colonial Mexicans created and inhabited. Instead, I argue
that the two colonial cataclysms were moments of opportunity, contestation,
struggle, and even renewal, where even the historically downtrodden might
come out on top.23
In navigating the new biotic agents brought by newcomers from the Old
World, in assessing the economic potential of new products, and in devising
agrarian systems that, by their very nature, were ensconced within on-the-
ground ecological interactions and interdependencies (which I call “agroecolo-
gies”), local indigenous producers took a lead role in reshaping the rural Mexi-
can landscape through creative recombinant ecologies, a process that some have
termed “ecological mestizaje.”24 It has been obvious to historians for decades
that depictions of local farmers and local communities as “traditional” and “con-
servative” cannot capture the dynamism within the indigenous world.25 While
collective projects and elite indigenous projects might be the easiest to chart,
individual acts recorded in archives show small-scale indigenous producers
identifying market opportunities and working out ecological solutions.26 Local
environmental knowledge and a profound experience with new and old biota
gave them a natural advantage in agrarian innovation. European elite discourses
of science (such as medicine, astrology, and cosmography in the Habsburg era
or natural history in the Bourbon era) created little applied agricultural knowl-
edge. Clearly, some disciplines such as architecture and hydrology provided
approaches for solving practical problems of earth and water, but biological/
agrarian innovation was lacking in the early colonial Spanish sphere.27
During this pluvial phase, local indigenous societies across central Mexico
experimented with and profited from agrarian production for new global and
regional markets. Local indigenous farmers devised new ecological strategies
that successfully tied together—at least for a time—local skills and emerging
global climates and markets. They made small fortunes from native Mexican
16 | Introduction

insects and worms. They supplied new mining towns during the global silver
boom with newly imported Asian pigs raised in the now-abundant Mexican
wetlands. They invested tremendously in Old World gristmills that harnessed
the abundant waters of the pluvial. They hired Spaniards to teach shepherding
and wheat production, which they then learned to master to supply woolen
textiles to high-altitude mines in the Andes or carbohydrate foods consumed on
transoceanic vessels. And, most significant for this book, they adapted the pro-
duction of a native inebriant called pulque to a new agroecology and marketing
system. Pulque production centered on a native Mexican plant (a drought- and
frost-tolerant succulent) within a community of plants and animals, mainly
from the Old World. By century’s end, central Mexico was thoroughly domi-
nated by the new pulque agroecology.
Successfully determining appropriate and profitable land-use practices required
careful adaptation to rapidly emerging economic markets, and to the shifting
terrain of soil, water, climate, and sociopolitical dynamics. The four meters of
alluvium that accumulated in the eighteenth century caused significant social
repercussions for those who lived or farmed in the valley lands where these
sediments accumulated. Thus, the radical shifts in climate, hydrology, and geo-
morphology played critical roles in the deployment of biota and the evolution
of agroecological systems throughout the course of the Spanish imperial era.
Farmers were drawn into prolonged conflicts with their neighbors: wetlands
alluviated, opening up new lands for cultivation; flooding rendered some lands
unfit for cultivation; desiccated wetlands terminated aquatic land uses, such as
the harvesting of reeds and fish, while wetland growth could foster such uses or
end others; decreasing water resources led to disputes; stream avulsion caused
chaos in property lines; and so on. Local indigenous persons and communities—
the groups mainly, but not exclusively, addressed in the pages of this book—did
not shy away from conflict, but picked legal battles they thought they could win.
Even when court decisions favored their opponents, they could not be consid-
ered passive victims. Upstream, on the hillsides from which soil was entrained
and carried away, other problems arose: some parcels became too eroded to
cultivate; roads were washed away or cut through by newly formed gullies; land
use shifted to accommodate the scant soils that remained; and crucial landmarks
that determined property lines disappeared. In sum, the changing flows of water
and silt caused problems for some and opened opportunities for others—that
is, environmental dynamism had its human counterpart. Environmental and
climatic crises did not bring on lethargic resignation to the capriciousness of
 Introduction | 17

nature. Rather, the population got busy and creative, responding to new market
opportunities, and assembling critical biological and engineering knowledge
that enabled environmental projects to succeed.
This argument adds to the scholarship that complicates the narrative of the
encounter of Old and New World ecologies. Who controlled the process; who
won; who lost; and what were the environmental costs? The starting point to
answer such questions is clearly the now classic work of Alfred Crosby. In a
series of essays and books starting in the late 1960s and culminating in 1986
with Ecological Imperialism, Crosby explored the impact of Old World biology
on New World environments, arguing that Europeans succeeded in the New
World not simply because of their technological superiority, but because their
companion species (germs, seeds, and animals) prospered in the new land. 28
While Crosby had little to say about the interactions of power and biology in
Mexico, historian Elinor Melville adapted Crosby’s thesis to the central high-
lands of Mexico by studying the environmental impact of the introduction of
Old World sheep in the Mezquital Valley, located immediately to the north
of Mexico City.29 According to Melville, sheep—and deforestation because
of fuelwood demand—reduced biomass and biological diversity, producing a
barren landscape best suited to European livestock and favoring Spanish indus-
tries and, thus, Spanish economic and political power. In the wake of Melville’s
momentous study, others added to the historiography of post-conquest biolog-
ical dynamism, offering different interpretations of the impacts of transoceanic
biological diffusions.30
The argument that the diffusion of Old World agrosystems in Mexico caused
extraordinary ecological destruction has a very long history. Early versions
of the argument emerged with the work of Lesley Byrd Simpson (1952) and
Charles Gibson (1964), both of whom made significant use of descriptions in
early seventeenth-century comments by royal cosmographer Enrico Martínez
(1606) and friar Juan de Torquemada (1615), the latter reiterating the argu-
ment of Martínez and giving it wider dissemination. Both figures established a
causal link between flooding and erosion, and between erosion and the spread
of Old World agriculture. Similar to the anti-colonial position held by Alzate,
the anthropogenic arguments of Martínez and Torquemada spoke to preex-
isting social issues and debates. For Martínez, the anthropogenic argument
allowed him to counter competing theories that emphasized a climatic pluvial
(a debate engaged in chap. 1). In the case of Torquemada, a Franciscan friar, the
anthropogenic argument functioned in two ways. On the one hand, it placed
18 | Introduction

moral culpability on the actions of supposedly immoral Spanish cultivators who

threatened the well-being of the indigenous population. On the other, it allowed
him to avoid portraying the floods as God’s will, as punishment—perhaps—for
a relapse of indigenous idolatry. If such a relapse had occurred, the spiritual work
of Torquemada and other friars would be deemed a failure.
The argument of Martínez and Torquemada was subsequently picked up
by Simpson and Gibson, and then Crosby, Jack Licate, Melville, and Sonya
Lipsett-Rivera. A recent article by Tim Beach, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, and
Nicholas Dunning has kept alive the argument that Old World shepherding
practices caused extreme soil degradation.31 In this last essay and those cited
earlier, no additional evidence beyond that of Martínez and Torquemada was
ever brought to the table. A slightly more nuanced view is provided by Ángel
Palerm and, much later, by Vera Candiani, who favor a two-pronged approach to
explain flooding: livestock-induced erosion and poor management of hydraulic
infrastructure.32 Yet again, the argument in favor of livestock-induced sedimen-
tation relies entirely on Martínez and Torquemada.
There have been some dissenting voices. Sherburne Cook (1949) identified
the origins of erosion in pre-Columbian times. Others have emphasized colo-
nial watershed stability, highlighting benign consequences of Old World biota.33
Arguments in favor of stability have added new types of evidence. Karl Butzer,
for instance, identified relic landscape features, such as long-living trees in river-
ine environments (which suggested fluvial stability) or remnants of Old World
livestock technology (which suggested sustainable agricultural practices). Geog-
rapher Andrew Sluyter used ecological theory to suggest that Old World live-
stock actually expanded arboreal vegetation by dispersing seedpods and by reduc-
ing burning that had, in the pre-Columbian era, suppressed forest regrowth.
While the doubters seem to have won the day (the only English-language
textbook on the environmental history of colonial Latin America emphasizes
less conflict and fewer dire outcomes of the Columbian Exchange34), both the
pluvial and the geomorphic crisis have remained unidentified in scholarship.
From Martínez to Torquemada to Alzate and beyond to modern historiography,
the ethical considerations of the Spanish conquest have certainly skewed the
conversation, producing either an image of a ruined landscape originating in the
sixteenth century or denial of the existence of any pluvial or geomorphic cata-
clysm at all. Neither line of argumentation gave much, if any, agency to climate.
Neither saw the Mexican landscape as anything but either in decline or stable,
negating the possibility of nonlinear environmental change.
 Introduction | 19

A second wave of scholarship has added another layer of complexity to the

discussion, showing that the story of the Columbian Exchange can no longer be
told Eurocentrically and teleologically to explain European domination. Recent
trends have emphasized the role of Africans and African biotic agents, partic-
ularly in the tropical circum-Caribbean. Judith Carney has pushed the bound-
aries of the conversation, showing how enslaved, marooned, and free Africans
reproduced and adapted African plants in the New World, giving agency to
those who seemed to have none.35 Andrew Sluyter has done much the same
thing for African cattle-herding practices, though also clarifying the sites and
processes of transcultural exchange and adaptation.36 John McNeill has shown
that Africans and African ecology were so crucial to the development of the
sugar industry in the Caribbean that, once established, the ecology of sugar
discriminated against outsiders who lacked immunity to the diseases that had
found their niche within the Neotropics. Nowhere was this more evident than
during the wars of independence when armed newcomers died mostly from the
violence of yellow fever and other mosquito-borne illnesses.37 James McCann
has argued that Africa did not just export its biology, but that it, too, was an
active and creative site of agrarian adaptation, combining African and New
World species in innovative ways.38
Lacking in these discussions has been the role of New World agrosystems
and native farmers, who were far more innovative and market oriented than pre-
viously thought. Contrary to popular belief, native species—used in new agro-
ecological systems and for new colonial markets—also harbored great potential
to transform the ecology of New Spain. Thus, this book seeks to further com-
plicate the conversation by showing how local native communities in central
Mexico acted as the primary sites of ecological creativity, assembling knowledge
and skills for cultivating native and exotic plants and animals to form new, and
successful, agrosystems that defy the binary of native and non-native. Further-
more, the story told extends the temporal parameters of biological exchange.
Acts of biological and ecological innovation did not cease after the first decades
of Spanish conquest, but continued to the last years of the colonial era, and
certainly beyond. This longue-durée approach merges the original Colum-
bian Exchange with the neo-Columbian Exchange reconstituted by the new
ecologies of nineteenth-century industrialization.39 The Columbian Exchange
was not a tidal wave of biological change set off by the arrival of Christopher
Columbus, but a persistent ebb and flow of ecological creativity that favored
those who possessed grounded ecological knowledge.
20 | Introduction

The Ecological Rift

Indigenous ecological mestizaje could produce unwanted and edaphically vio-

lent outcomes, most extraordinarily exemplified by the unprecedented rates
of soil degradation and sedimentation set off by the imperfect agroecologies
during the terminal Little Ice Age. I argue that the origin of the eighteenth-
century cataclysm and the ecological rift that separated it from the seventeenth-
century precursors was a new agrarian regime based on the cultivation of agave
(maguey) plants in monocropped sloping terraces for the extraction of pulque
(a beerlike beverage). As a shorthand, I call this agroecology the “metepantli
system,” which came to dominate land use across central Mexico by the late sev-
enteenth century. The metepantli system emerged in the first three decades of
the century in the wake of extreme cold, saturated soils, and recurrent famines,
epidemics, epizootics, floods, and a fiscal crisis. Carried out on friable hillside
soils by a large, market-oriented, and disease-susceptible population, native land
use strongly determined the geomorphic outcome.
By following water and soil through time and across space, this book shows
that the origin of the eighteenth-century troubles were set off by the “failure”
of the metepantli system during the greatest multidecadal climate extreme of
the last six hundred years, beginning in the early 1690s (and perhaps before)
during a final cold and wet anomaly before emerging as the drought of the
millennium, between 1696 and 1705.40 Important droughts would recur in the
eighteenth century—notably during the crisis of 1785–86—but none matched
the relentless severity of 1696 to 1705, which occurred within a global climatic
event of unparalleled decadal-scale severity, the so-called Late Maunder Min-
imum (roughly 1675 to 1715).41
The metepantli system experienced widespread abandonment during the
Late Maunder Minimum in large part because of the unfortunate conjuncture
of biological, climatic, and political chaos. During the 1690s, the human pop-
ulation suffered its greatest setback since the 1570s; the population of draught
animals (oxen and mules) plummeted for the first time during the colonial era;
famine-induced rebellions led to government-issued orders to restrict the sale
and transport of pulque to urban markets, resulting in a drastic contraction
of pulque production and thereby driving field abandonment in the untested
metepantli system. Rapid degradation, sedimentation, desiccation, flooding, and
social-agrarian turmoil ensued for decades and even centuries afterward. While
I have focused on the degrading effects of the metepantli agrosystem under
 Introduction | 21

adverse climatic conditions, other agrarian processes may have contributed to

the initiation of the cataclysmic landscape. For instance, it is almost certain that
the epizootic of the late 1690s and early 1700s resulted, directly, from the lack of
water and grasses at that time. Before the epizootic set in, livestock overgrazed
the withered pastures and exposed soils to fluvial forces.

Memory and the Paper Landscape

Finally, I offer another line of argumentation, one that goes beyond the strictly
socioecological narratives outlined above. It weaves through this ecological warp
a colorful weft of memory, cognition, and knowledge of the natural world. I
argue that each biophysical cataclysm produced a parallel set of beliefs, memo-
ries, and documents reflecting how people thought, and would think, about the
central Mexican landscape. The environmental extremes of the two cataclys-
mic landscapes explored in this book (one characterized by extreme humidity
and the other by geomorphic dynamism) were systematically and preferentially
recorded in textual and graphic form. The impetus to record and remember fol-
lowed the logic of a number of distinct genres and historical processes. Flooded
and alluviated lands were surveyed; property boundaries were walked when
disputes erupted; and regional boosters highlighted ample wetlands. At times,
the production of the archive of cataclysms was coincidental: the maps and
texts of the Relaciones geográficas and the land transactions documenting the
Spanish acquisition of land after the demographic collapse of the indigenous
population both occurred, by chance (mostly), at the height of the pluvial.42 But
just as often, environmental change provided the impetus to write, paint, and
talk about landscape.
Regardless of how the archives formed, I argue that this memory of land-
scape is, and was, biased toward the recording of environmental extremes, pro-
jecting a landscape burdened by an overabundance of water or a scarcity of
water. Cataclysmic landscapes were thus indelibly wrought in memory, in the
archives and in living social memory. In fact, the latter often drew from—and
still draws from, as is the case with the present book—this archival record,
allowing the recorded past to inform subsequent depictions. The transformation
of the landscape played havoc with oral memories and paper archives of land-
scape that were critical to property management and identity formation. Cir-
cumambulating properties and painting and describing landscape are powerful
22 | Introduction

legal acts that have important cultural significance, especially in a world in

which claims to property were contingent on anecdotal, circumstantial, and
documental evidence. When the objects of the past could no longer be located
in the present—that is, when past and present landscapes differed remarkably
and inexplicably—problems arose that threatened the status quo and opened
spaces for rethinking both the past and the present. Environmental transforma-
tion, then, had important interpretive consequences that could overturn legal,
economic, and cultural norms.
Indeed, because social acts of remembrance drew from the earliest colo-
nial record, and because the vast majority of those first instances of recording
date to the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, the extreme humidity of that period has
become normalized as the “natural” and “original” condition of Mexico’s nature.
The corollary, of course, is that the state of nonabundance or scarcity is firmly
established as an aberrant and thereby unwanted condition. The fond memories
of the pluvial and the specter of eighteenth-century “desiccation” thus remain
alive and well in the phantasmagoria of the natural imaginary of Mexico, not
only in today’s media but in current historiography. This book hopes to expose,
expunge, and put in play these normative discourses.

The Study Regions

The arguments and themes outlined above are developed through the examples
of two separate watersheds: the Valley of Teotihuacán (a sub-basin of the Basin
of Mexico, which is located in the modern State of México and, historically, was
administered by magistrates in Tetzcoco, Teotihuacán, and Otumba) and the
Zahuapan River basin (in the modern state of Tlaxcala and, historically, in the
colonial province of Tlaxcala). The Zahuapan River basin is contiguous with
the Basin of Mexico, following an arc extending from Mexico City to Teoti-
huacán, northeastward to Otumba, eastward to Atlancatepec, and southward
to the cities of Tlaxcala and then Puebla. Map 1 shows the general context of
the study region.
There are good reasons to believe that the general historical patterns of
climate that have been identified for Teotihuacán and Tlaxcala also apply—
generally, although less rigorously—to other parts of Mexico. As is made clear
by the location of the Correlation Area (the geographic area used to calculate
climate variability—see appendix A for a more detailed description) at the
M A P 1 Location of study region. View “C” highlights two areas (with dashed boxes)
that are the primary focal points of the study. Data are from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional
de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI).
24 | Introduction

MAP 2 Location of Correlation Area within the central Mexican settlement zone. The
Correlation Area is a rectangle extending from N 19º to N 20º (110.7 km) and from
W 98º to W 99.5º (157.9 km). In 1800, the core settlement axis extended from Oaxaca
to Querétaro and then westward to Guadalajara, similar to both today and the early
colonial era. Population data from Tanck de Estrada, Miranda García, and Chávez Soto,
Atlas ilustrado.

heart of both the central settlement zone (map 2) and the temperate climate
region that is roughly coterminous with the central settlement zone (map 3),
the two study regions of Teotihuacán and Tlaxcala are highly representative of
the demography and climate of a broad region in Mexico.43
The strong correlation between the central settlement zone and temperateness—
with climate even replicating the arched spatial pattern of settlement from Oax-
aca to Mexico City to Guadalajara—suggests common socioecological strate-
gies across central Mexico. The same general agricultural practices extend across
this contiguous area. Many of the same crops are produced throughout this
region, such as maize, wheat, chilies, tomatoes, and—important to this book—
the maguey pulquero (a select number of species from the Agavaceae family,
which are/were grown in the temperate central settlement zone), which was one
 Introduction | 25

MAP 3 Temperate climates of the Correlation Area. Hatched lines indicate temperate cli-
mates. Climate data derived from Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la
Biodiversidad (CONABIO). Population data derived from Tanck de Estrada, Miranda
García, and Chávez Soto, Atlas ilustrado.

of the key biological agents that drove soil erosion in Mexico (see maps 4 and
5).44 It should be noted that, while not visible on this map, the primary settle-
ment axis continues to follow temperate climates along the western mountain
range (Sierra Occidental) that follows the Pacific coast of Mexico. The only
exception to the parallelism of climate and settlement is in the northeast, where
few Mexicans settled until recent times despite its near-temperate climate.
One of the important consequences of this symmetry between demography,
climate, and subsistence strategies was that social vulnerabilities tended to be
exposed simultaneously and quite uniformly across central Mexico. Epidemics
in one region quickly became central Mexican pandemics; drought or frost
affected harvests throughout most of the larger region, hampering relief efforts;
and similarly, excessive rain and dampness affected many watersheds simultane-
ously, causing the swelling of rivers, wetlands, and springs across central Mex-
ico. Take, for instance, reports of excessive and anomalous humidity between
MAP 4 Geographic range of Agave salmiana. The area is delimited by the natural habitat
of the most common maguey species producing pulque. Adapted from Cervantes and
Cruz, as reproduced in Ramírez Rancaño, Ignacio Torres Adelid y la industria pulquera, 8.

MAP 5 Mexico’s pulque marketing region. This map shows the sites of pulque asientos
in Mexico and the contiguous zone of eighty-kilometer marketing regions surrounding
each asiento.
 Introduction | 27

1545 and 1620, one of the key climatic outcomes of the early Little Ice Age in
Mexico. As observed on map 6, the geographic pattern of excessive humidity
follows the same arched pattern, from Oaxaca to Mexico City and westward to
Michoacán, and also near the important coastal settlements of Puerto Vallarta,
Vera Cruz, and Acapulco. Even though little research has been conducted in
these regions on climate and society during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, this geographic pattern suggests that the results of this book (specifically,
the identification and timing of climatic, hydrological, and geomorphological
events) will have broad application in the core regions of Mexico.
Methodologically, this book employs a wide variety of tools deriving from
disparate disciplines such as agroecology, archaeology, climatology, geomor-
phology, historical GIS (geographic information science), hydrology, as well as
cultural and social history. I use primary sources written in both Spanish and
Nahuatl from the sixteenth century onward. While some of these disciplines
and methods are common to readers of colonial Mexican history, others (partic-
ularly climatology, hydrology, and geomorphology) will seem foreign and overly
technical. I have thus relegated much of the discussion of climate and physical
geography to the two appendices. The maps derived from my GIS database, on
the other hand, have found their way into the five main chapters of this book,

M A P 6 Reports of excessive humidity, 1545–1620. Data derived from García Acosta,

Desastres agrícolas en México.
28 | Introduction

except for many of the cartographic visualizations of climate extremes, which

are found in appendix A. GIS has been an important tool to record, process, and
analyze hydrological, geomorphological, and climatological data, and to inte-
grate this with social, agrarian, and economic processes. Not only has GIS soft-
ware been used to produce the maps of this book, it has also been instrumental
in keeping track of where things are, where they move to, and to determine and
correlate between the geographic distributions of things or phenomena.

Chapter Summaries

This book is organized into five chapters, with a chronological presentation.

Chapter 1 looks at the Colonial Mexican Pluvial and reconstructs the impressive
hydrographic archive of this period. Maps, litigation, flood reports, geographic
reconnaissance, and scientific inquiries produce an image of central Mexico
as waterlogged: swollen rivers and wetlands, high spring volume, and a num-
ber of floods driven by climatic forces. Through this archive, the early colonial
hydrology of the two basins is reconstructed, and in doing so we find individuals
and towns struggling to adapt, to fix place in a hyperactive landscape, and to
do so in a legal and administrative setting that was being invented on the fly.
The anomalous nature of this hydrological situation has never been identified
in historiography, much less in subsequent colonial administration and litiga-
tion. As the extreme humidity of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial receded, the
hydrographic archive of the aqueous world of early colonial Mexico remained,
stowed away in community chests, viceregal archives, and in private collec-
tions. This voluminous record of the pluvial would, in the late colonial era—
and even today—cause many difficulties for litigants, administrators, and
nation builders.
Chapter 2 uses an agroecological lens to take a second look at the Colonial
Mexican Pluvial. The chapter shows agroecological adaptations to the pluvial,
mainly in Tlaxcala. I examine (and reject) the theory of ecological imperial-
ism resulting from Old World diseases and livestock, and then focus on the
rise of the cochineal industry in Tlaxcala and its dramatic effect on landscape
management. Between 1540 and 1580, the rise of cochineal and collapse of
indigenous human populations led to widespread abandonment of land and
the regrowth of wild vegetation. At the height of its ascendency and wealth,
the cochineal industry in Tlaxcala was brought down by Little Ice Age cold,
 Introduction | 29

forcing production to warmer climes. Despite the radical turbulence of agro-

ecology during the first one hundred years of colonial rule, accelerated soil ero-
sion and deposition never occurred. Instead, the combined ecological shock of
colonialism and climate was successfully mediated by early colonial indigenous
agrosystems, resulting in transformation without lasting degradation.
Chapter 3 continues the story of indigenous field systems during the Lit-
tle Ice Age, now focusing on adaptations initiated at the height of the cold
pluvial, and which accelerated in the first decades of the seventeenth century,
reaching their zenith after the 1660s. The chapter documents the rise of the
metepantli system, whose economic wealth belied its impoverished ecology.
The pulque industry would grow throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, despite the fact that it acted as the catalyst for unprecedented mass
soil movements and for the cataclysmic landscapes of the eighteenth century.
The final two chapters explore the new colonial ecology that resulted from
the conjuncture of climate, pulque agroecology, and the sociodemographic crisis
of the 1690s. Chapter 4 is divided, roughly, into two parts. The first part provides
detailed evidence of the transformation of soil and water in colonial Mexico
and the birth of cataclysmic landscape. I offer analysis of flood frequencies,
shrinking wetlands, degradation, and aggradation. Through a robust geomor-
phological and hydrological context, I argue that a drastic transformation of
the watersheds occurred between 1696 and 1730. Before this disjuncture, floods
were rare events driven by extraordinary precipitation and without significant
geomorphic change. Afterward, cataclysms were frequent, poorly correlated to
precipitation trends, and determined by anthropogenic accelerated soil erosion
that transformed watersheds. Evidence from both basins demonstrates the rapid
onset of deep hillside erosion and valley sedimentation after 1715.
The second part of this chapter drops us into the social conflict produced
by the cataclysms. Four examples—two from each basin—show the varied and
often ingenious responses of locals to the changing world. Careers and liveli-
hoods were won and lost; some communities succeeded in obtaining new land
and resources, while others failed; conflicts cut across elites and commoners,
Spaniards and indios; and even the fates of the faithful seemed to hang in the
balance, at times. At a basic level, these examples reveal the degree to which
individuals and local communities struggled to “adapt” to the new biophysi-
cal reality, using violence, litigation, sabotage, and hydraulic infrastructure to
advance their interests. The term “adaptation,” however, fails to capture and
order the messiness of the processes explored in these examples, giving a false
30 | Introduction

sense of harmonious and beneficial responses to socioecological phenomena.

Similarly, this chapter emphasizes that the cataclysmic landscapes of the eigh-
teenth century—however lamentable and disruptive they might have been, and
might continue to be—cannot be depicted in strictly declensionist terms. These
examples—like the chinampas project of 1818—demonstrate clearly and unam-
biguously that when the weather turned bad, when rivers ran dry, when floods
disinterred bodies from cemeteries, when alluvium piled high around buildings
and critical resources, folk got busy, necks craned to the heavens, shovels hit the
ground, and accusations took flight.
Finally, chapter 5 takes the reader on a ten-day circumambulation of a cat-
aclysmic landscape, walking along with a commissioner of the Holy Office of
the Inquisition, in the last days of August and the first of September 1761. The
commissioner traveled with reams of legal and documentary papers from the
sixteenth to eighteenth century and an entourage of witnesses and litigants.
As it turns out, few of the landmarks from those documents could be found
in the 1761 landscape. To close the gap between the paper landscape and the
biophysical one, litigants forged documents, lied, and stretched the truth; they
also naïvely misplaced, confused, and misunderstood what they were looking at.
The chapter thus explores what abrupt climate-induced environmental transfor-
mation meant to memory and to understandings of place and identity.
 CHAPTER 1
Watermarks
The Colonial Mexican Pluvial and Its Hydrographic Archive

T
his chapter provides evidence for the existence and severe social and
hydrological consequences of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, a climatic
event that was probably the most important wet and cold period in Mex-
ico in the last seven hundred years. Although the Little Ice Age lasted another
century after the pluvial, and some would say longer, it would never attain such
deep and sustained deviation from the mean as it did from approximately 1540
to 1620. According to the growth of trees at this time, the first forty-five years
were the most incessantly wet, and within this, the first two decades were the
most severe. Indeed, the period from 1542 until 1554 was more extreme than any
other climate anomaly of the last six hundred years, and if the same dendrochro-
nologically derived reconstruction of climate were available for earlier times we
might find the period to be even longer. That anomaly was then followed by a
similar, although shorter, one in the late 1570s and another in the mid-1580s.
Given that tree growth during the second half of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial
was more moderate than during the first, it is tempting to conclude that condi-
tions of everyday life might have been improving for many Mexicans starting,
already, by 1590. Nevertheless, agriculture suffered more than ever in the later
part of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, peaking between 1597 and 1623, mostly
as a result of cold summers and unseasonal frosts that killed crops. Because
such temperature extremes do not alter the growth of the tree species used
by dendrochronologists in Mexico, cold—a crucial climatic variable for the
32 | Chapter 1

agrarian societies of the central Mexican highlands—remains unregistered and

unremarked upon. Yet when we combine both data sets—the arboreal and the
human—we find evidence for a truly remarkable event: an unparalleled and
sustained eighty-year socioecological crisis.
Even though the frequency and variety of agroecological stress events wors-
ened between roughly 1595 and 1625, almost all of the elements of full-scale
socioecological disaster had appeared by the 1580s. Severe droughts, frosts,
and winter flurries occurred frequently. Flooding in the 1550s and 1570s/80s
was rampant. From 1545 to 1546, central Mexico suffered a disastrous epi-
demic, paralleled only by an outbreak of a similar, if not identical, disease in
1576. Diego Muñoz Camargo called the 1545 epidemic “the most terrifying
thing that could be imagined that ruined and finished off towns and places
that today [1580–85] are nothing more than forests [montes].”1 In the 1545
epidemic, mortality was likely near 50 percent across central Mexico. Between
1541 and 1562, frosts ravaged crops in nine of twenty-three years, drought in
four. Rodents (probably mice) destroyed crops in 1548, an event that some have
attributed to a frost- and drought-induced shortage of traditional food sup-
plies.2 Grasshoppers (also associated with drought) decimated crops in 1556.3
When drought did not pose a problem, excessive rainfall often did. A fungal
crop disease called chiyahuiztli attacked maize plant roots in 1544 and 1559,
weakening the plants and permitting worms to consume the ears. Of course,
the essential characteristic of this pluvial, like any other, was excessive rainfall
and abnormally high soil humidity. As we saw in the introduction to this book
(see map 6), reports of humidity surged across central Mexico, especially in
the core basins of Mexico, Toluca, and Tlaxcala/Puebla, and somewhat less
severely in western and south-central Mexico (i.e., Michoacán and Oaxaca,
respectively). The pluvial culminated in transregional floods in 1629, the most
famous of which was the great flood of Mexico City. There, flooding had begun
in 1627, and then, during a massive regional storm in September 1629, the city
fell below meters of water. The five-year flood from 1629 to 1634 nearly ruined
Mexico City, prompting and inspiring plans to move the city, although funding
for such an ambitious project never materialized.4 The last century-scale pluvial
of this magnitude ended in the mid-fifteenth century. It, too, inspired major
hydraulic projects, such as the rerouting of the Cuauhtitlan River (beginning in
1433) and the construction of the twenty-two-kilometer dike in the valley lake
system (initiated in 1449), both located in the immediate vicinity of Mexico
City, known then as Tenochtitlan. When humidity returned, briefly, in the
 Water marks | 33

1480s, it spurred another round of hydraulic investments, specifically the call

to finish the Cuauhtitlan channel.
What makes the Colonial Mexican Pluvial so much more intriguing—and
more difficult to interpret—than the pre-Hispanic floods is that it coincided
with Spanish imperialism. Thus, the climatic influence on floods, diseases,
and agroecological crises that bedeviled the newly subjected peoples of central
Mexico must be contextualized within—and perhaps disentangled from—the
effects of Spanish rule. After all, the peak pluvial is undeniably coincident with
the establishment of Spanish colonial legal hegemony, the essential period of
transference of land and water rights from indigenes to Spaniards, the onslaught
of epidemic disease, the demographic nadir of the indigenous population, and,
generally, the impoverishment of central Mexican indigenous peoples. The
tendency among historians has been to downplay the role of climate and ecol-
ogy in driving hardship and mortality during this period. For instance, floods
have been explained as the product of colonial influences such as Old World
livestock, Old World disease (which decimated indigenous populations and
led to soil erosion in abandoned lands), indigenous depopulation, or Spanish
ignorance of New World ecologies and indigenous hydraulic infrastructure.
Strangely, historians have not considered the role of climate in these floods.
Even the question of indigenous depopulation—once considered unavoidable
because it resulted from virgin soil epidemics in which native Mexicans lacked
acquired immunity to Old World pathogens—has been fully revised in the
most recent literature. Historical demographer Massimo Livi Bacci and histo-
rian Suzanne Alchón, for instance, have each in separate monographs pointed
to Spanish imperialism (coercion, impoverishment, and the general disruption
of traditional indigenous ways of social reproduction) as the primary cause of
depopulation.5 These are important arguments backed by good research, but
how much of the problem (of flooding, erosion, or depopulation, for instance)
do they explain? And what part of the solution to the floods, sicknesses, famines,
and other socioecological stresses resides with the dynamics of the Colonial
Mexican Pluvial?
In light of these critical questions, this chapter seeks to clarify the role of cli-
mate in the socioecological and hydrological chaos of central Mexico during the
first century or so of colonial rule. The deep hydrographic archive of the Colo-
nial Mexican Pluvial, along with complementary paleoclimatological sources,
will serve us well in reconstructing the ebbs and flows of water during this
critical period in Mexican history. I argue that climate played a decisive role in
34 | Chapter 1

driving flooding, famine, and mortality. Not only does the socioecological stress
caused by this first surge of the Little Ice Age provide clear and substantive
evidence to explain the slow and often absent demographic bounce back after
major epidemics, but it also suggests that some of the epidemics might not have
occurred at all without climate-induced ecological turmoil. Most importantly,
the chapter argues that even in the context of sickness and death, the pluvial
fueled a creative and productive response by local communities as they sought
to protect resources and find ways to profit from the changing ecology.
Finally, the chapter addresses the question of memory, archive, and inter-
pretation. It explores how colonial officials understood and experienced the
pluvial, how they rationalized it, and how they connected not only sky and land,
but also heaven and earth, sin and soil, and body and environment. By chance,
the pluvial coincided with the critical post-conquest phase of early coloniza-
tion, empire building, geographic reconnaissance, and new patterns of colonial
resource utilization and land tenure. Forces such as water-induced social crises,
imperial information gathering, and the codification of property in Spanish
law all ensured that the pluvial would be remembered, or at least documented.
From high politics and science to local administrations and land-use planning,
the pluvial inspired a document-generating cycle of studying, compiling, and
producing knowledge and representations of the rising water. The resulting
hydrographic archive of the pluvial reveals how water penetrated deep within
local and viceregal politics, spurring officials, astrologists, priests, hydrologists,
planners, farmers, and many more to consider the meaning and causes of rising
water, as well as to devise creative solutions to it. In charting out how and why
this archive emerged, I also stop to consider its legacy, as it laid the groundwork
for normative historical discourses examining the “natural” hydrological condi-
tion of Mexico and, by extension, which historical persons or groups should be
held responsible for the loss of Mexico’s aquatic patrimony.

The Hydrology of the Teotihuacán Valley

The examples used in this chapter all derive from the endorheic Basin of Mex-
ico and, mainly, from the Río de San Juan, an important tributary of that basin
and the central river of the Teotihuacán Valley. Before discussing the historical
hydrology of the valley during the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, I offer some brief
notes on its physical and human geography.
 Water marks | 35

MAP 7 The regional hydrology of the study region. This map shows the watersheds of
Tlaxcala City and the Acolman Dam, which are used to gauge flood frequencies. Note
that the map uses modern hydrology, thus showing the artificial exits of the waters of
the Valley of Mexico to the north.

Today, the Teotihuacán Valley falls within the modern territorial limits of
the State of México. Map 7 shows the regional hydrological context, while
map 8 helps us to visualize the spatial extent and organization of the Teoti-
huacán Valley. In the colonial era, the political situation was more complex. Five
important cabeceras (administrative head-towns of local politics in the Spanish
imperial system) populated the valley. Beginning closest to the lake and work-
ing upstream, we find the towns of Tepexpan and Tequiciztlan (in the lower
valley—i.e., below the dam). In the middle valley were located the cabeceras
of Acolman and of Teotihuacán. Farther upstream, the cabecera of Otumba
functioned as the central hub of the upper valley.
The southern limits of the valley are formed by the Patlachique mountain
range, with peaks roughly between 2,600 and 3,000 meters, and to the north,
mainly by the broad hill known today as Cerro Gordo (also known as Hueyte-
petl, or Tenan), which rises to 3,057 meters. A number of smaller hills sur-
round the valley, especially around the northern limits of the watershed, many
36 | Chapter 1

MAP 8 The hydrology of the Teotihuacán Valley. The maps show hydrology for the Acol-
man Dam in the Teotihuacán Valley. The “lower” branch of the Río de San Juan (i.e., the
area below the Acolman Dam) is not shown. The Acolman Dam watershed is 532 sq. km.
Hydrographic lines provided by INEGI.

of which are only thinly populated by pine-oak forests and frequently by areas
with deeply eroded soils.6 While the valley has a climatic seasonality similar to
other parts of central Mexico, it is one of the few important productive regions
with a semiarid rather than semihumid climate, receiving just 500–600 milli-
meters of rainfall each year.
At the center of the valley is Teotihuacán de Arista, a small town located
about fifty kilometers northeast of Mexico City that was known in the colonial
era—and colloquially today—as San Juan Teotihuacán. It is the seat of the
modern municipality of Teotihuacán, and—as we have seen—functioned as
a head-town and also as seat of the eponymous jurisdiction. The town lives
in the shadow of its past. Less than two kilometers to the east of San Juan’s
municipal administrative offices is the Teotihuacán Archaeological Site (fig-
ure 3), an enormous area covering 238 hectares and extending 2.4 kilometers
from end to end. Today, the “ruins” are well preserved, some of the most famous
in Mexico and all of the Americas, and were the first in Mexico to be rebuilt,
cleaned, and showcased to the world “in order to present Mexico as a unified
 Water marks | 37

FIGURE 3 A General View of the Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacán, 1864. Lithograph. The
Pyramid of the Moon (left) and of the Sun (right) are shown. The image was produced
for a scientific committee examining the physical and biological geography of the Teo-
tihuacán Valley and other nearby places. In preparation for the centennial celebrations
of 1910, and in order to make the site— and Mexico— seem more sublime, the chief
“inspector of monuments” for the Mexican state, Leopoldo Batres, purchased all private
land in the zone and removed all vestiges of domesticated vegetation (i.e., maguey and
crops). Almaraz, Ballesteros G, and Comisión Cientifica de Pachuca, Memoria de los tra-
bajos ejecutados, image located between pages 350 and 351; Bueno, “Teotihuacán,” 62– 65.

and modern nation with ancient and prestigious roots.”7 Few of the 4.1 million
annual visitors to the site will ever set foot in the town, which remains visibly,
and remarkably, largely untouched by this tourism giant.8
San Juan Teotihuacán remained famous and prosperous in its own right
during the colonial era and into the modern period. The village was famous
and economically viable because of its abundant waters, produced by hundreds
of natural springs that emerged directly within the town. An assessment of
the aggregate volume of the springs, carried out in 1580, indicated that they
produced eight bueyes of water, with each buey equal to twenty-four surcos (i.e.,
192 surcos), and each surco thought to be about equal to 6.5 liters per second
(i.e., 1,248 L/s).9 Canals and fountains—now dry—still line the town’s streets.
Many homes were literally built around a spring, allowing the water to rise
into beautiful tile-laden fountains, offering a form of running water to the
lucky residents. When the springs went dry in 1992, a fetid odor was released,
38 | Chapter 1

causing many to permanently seal the water spouts. Even in the absence of the
spring water, signs of the water-saturated landscape remain. The humid soils
gave rise to a savannah of ahuehuetes, an aquatic tree with an exceptionally long
life. These, too, functioned as residential infrastructure. Today, the magnificent
thousand-year-old trees grow directly through the roof of some restaurants and
houses. Or rather, the houses and roofs were built, cleverly, under the canopy
of one or another of these magnificent trees, taking advantage of the arboreal
shade they offer.
At the center of the village lay the town’s marsh, a depressional wetland with-
out any significant or normal fluvial inputs. Occasionally, some overland flow
arrived from the Malinalli Hill directly to the north, and in some extraordinary
years the Río de San Juan (its channel located just 230 m to the south of the
wetland) spilled over its banks and deposited alluvium in the marsh. During
the eighteenth century, the rapidly aggrading stream channel of the Río de San
Juan initiated this process, leaving the river four meters higher than the nearby
wetland and monastery. As sedimentation progressed in the marsh from the
nearby river, the town’s marsh shifted palustrine classes from a depressional
to a riverine wetland. Nevertheless, throughout the bulk of the colonial era,
and especially during the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, it remained depressional,
lacking any substantial fluvial input. As such, it remained relatively stable, undy-
namic, and altered only by the variability of groundwater discharge that, itself,
was subject to rates of recharge upstream and long-term time lags of thirty to
fifty years, as discussed above.
Map 9 presents a historical reconstruction of the town’s hydrology circa
1585. Many of the elements presented in the reconstructed hydrology should be
considered as approximations with regard to their location and quantity. This is
especially true for the springs and ahuehuetes (Taxodium mucronatum), which
were located by one of four means: a detailed map from 1585 (the Gudiel map),
maps from the 1970s produced by archaeologist René Millon, a site survey of
the village in 2012, and aerial photographs.10 The ahuehuetes grow near streams
and wetlands and indicate the presence of a high water table. Local elevation
readings and a digital elevation model derived from the Millon maps with
one-meter contours also indicate low points in the terrain. While the modern
locations of aquatic features are only suggestive of historical conditions, they
confirm and build on the hydrology derived from historical sources: archival
maps and descriptions (especially the 1585 litigation mentioned above), and an
accurate map of the buildings in San Juan Teotihuacán in 1864. In this last case,
 Water marks | 39

MAP 9 Hydrology of San Juan Teotihuacán, circa 1585.

the location of buildings delimited the maximum extent of the marsh. Salvage
archaeological reports were also important in defining the location and extent of
rivers, wetlands, roads, markets, and other cultural features. The location of the
Río de San Juan derives from the scientifically digitized 1:50,000 topographical
series produced by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI).11
The reconstruction should not be considered representative of hydrological
conditions much before or after 1585. Indeed, the location of ahuehuetes and
springs provides a sort of time mosaic of their past locations, albeit with much
missing data. The spatial extent and location of the marsh and streams, on the
other hand, offer a complete and somewhat proximate snapshot of very dynamic
wetlands in 1585. The number of springs increased and decreased throughout
the colonial era and beyond, as did their individual and collective output. The
marsh, accordingly, grew and shrank with the variability of spring output and
evapotranspiration/precipitation rates, as well as by means of human interven-
tions within the local hydrology (i.e., the construction of canals, roads, buildings,
and other infrastructure).
40 | Chapter 1

Teotihuacán’s water flowed toward the Tetzcoco Lake, part of the chain of
lakes within the endorheic basin of the Valley of Mexico. The complex pre-
Hispanic network of streams and wetlands in the Teotihuacán Valley became
increasingly complex during the colonial era. Rivers changed names, locations,
and volume frequently.12 Teotihuacán’s marshland emptied into a channel known
as the Río de los Manantiales (translated literally as the River of the Springs, or
in some documents as the Río Atezcalaque, a Hispanicized version of Atezcalac,
a word derived from atezcatl [lake], an obvious reference to the town’s marsh).
Additional spring water was added to the system at a site named El Tular,
located near the town of Santiago Atla (or Atlatonco). At some points along
the river’s path, its water was subdivided into as many as four main irrigation
channels, with innumerable lesser branches that brought water to fields via
makeshift ditches.
Before the Río de San Juan emptied into Tetzcoco Lake, the waters from
the springs of Teotihuacán were joined with those of the upper valley, a large
catchment area upstream of San Juan Teotihuacán. While there were a number
of small springs upstream that contributed to a negligible base flow, the upper
Teotihuacán Valley was truly active only during the rainy season, from May/
June through September/October. In this semiarid climate, with loose volcanic
soils, torrential downpours could produce significant volumes of water. Chan-
nels collected from the Patlachique range, from the flanks of the large conical-
shaped Cerro Gordo, and from the range east of the towns of Otumba and
Nopaltepec.13 The latter three all tracked toward the center of the valley, leaving
behind deep sedimentation and a highly fractured stream network. The rivers
converged immediately upstream of the classical Teotihuacán archaeological
site, thereby forming the Río de San Juan. The other stream system—from
the Patlachique range—delivered its flow into the Río de San Lorenzo, which
then merged with the Río de San Juan immediately east of the village of Teoti-
huacán. The resulting river was generally referred to as the Río de San Juan, but
at times—particularly in the lower valley—it might be called the Rio Grande.
A critical turning point in the history of the hydrological network occurred
in 1630, when the Presa de Acolman (or “Presa del Rey”) was constructed. The
dam was built as a response to the great flood of 1629 at a cost of 23,500 pesos,
by order of the viceroy of New Spain, Rodrigo Pacheco y Osorio, Marqués
de Cerralbo (see map 10). The dam established a reservoir that was designed to
hold back the waters of the Teotihuacán Valley during the rainy season. Extend-
ing 1,208 meters between two low-lying hills (the Tlahuilco and Tezoyuca hills),
 Water marks | 41

MAP 10 The hydrology of the Acolman Dam, circa 1800.

the mortar and stone dam had a curtain 50–100 centimeters thick, a maximum
height of about 6 meters, and thick lateral supports every few meters.14 Near the
midpoint of the length of the dam, a gate allowed dam caretakers to manage
water flow by inserting or removing custom-cut logs, known as trabas, that were
stacked in order to lower or raise the gate. A small structure called El Castillo
housed and restricted access to the gate. Hydrologically speaking, the dam’s
reservoir acted as a depressional wetland with strong upland inputs, making
the reservoir extremely dynamic, with substantial year-to-year variability and
subject to long-term alluviation. While the idea was to drain the lake in the
dry season and let it rise in the wet season, sedimentation and acts of sabotage
undermined the ability of officials to control lake levels with the traba system.
Sedimentation obstructed water, holes were cut in the dam, and rivers were
routed around it.
A second important change in the valley hydrology occurred in 1684, or a
few years before this, when a branch of the Río de los Manantiales (i.e., the
Acequia de San Antonio) was separated from the Río de San Juan (i.e., the
42 | Chapter 1

MAP 11 The location of the Temascal, or “El Sifón.” The maps show the new hydrology
formed by the Temascal, which separated and redirected the Río de San Juan from the
Río de los Manantiales irrigation system.

precipitation-fed flow from the four subdivisions of the upper basin) where
the two had, historically, merged. The waters of the Acequia de San Antonio
were thus tunneled underneath the channel of the Río de San Juan via a stone
and mortar construction known as the Temascal, or El Sifón, and then directed
toward another channel, immediately to the east (map 11). Beyond the Temas-
cal, however, the Río de San Juan flowed within a new channel toward Santi-
ago Atla and then southward via the extant channels once used for irrigation,
located directly east of the Hacienda de San José and west of the Acolman
convent. Finally, immediately before the Acolman Dam, the many channels of
 Water marks | 43

the Río de los Manantiales merged and then combined with the waters of the
Río de San Juan, creating one stream that passed through El Castillo.
One of the mysteries of the Temascal project is the factor, or factors, that
motivated its inception. Unfortunately, the documentation lacks any open
declaration about why the project was needed. Nevertheless, what is known
is that the Temascal was built in the context of reports of the presence of
excessive water in fields and in towns. Flooding had hit Teotihuacán, Mexico
City, and Tlaxcala City in at least two separate incidents during the 1670s.
Recognition of growing reserves of water spurred officials to measure the val-
ley’s fluvial volume and to distribute it accordingly. When measurements were
done in 1684—the same year that the Temascal was constructed—farmers
were delighted to discover that the hydrological volume had doubled since
the late sixteenth century, from sixteen to thirty-two surcos. By 1715, another
sixteen surcos were added when new springs popped up in the village of Teo-
tihuacán, bringing the early eighteenth century total to forty-eight surcos.
With water supplies in abundance, the Río de San Juan must have seemed
not only superfluous—it delivered water only during the peak rainy season,
when already-thriving crops required no further humidity than what the skies
would provide—but a risk to the perennial waters that emerged in the town
of Teotihuacán. The Temascal served to protect the conduits of spring water
from the storm surges of the upper basin, thereby limiting the ability of high-
energy flows to alluviate canals and harm hydraulic infrastructure. Was the
project precautionary or remedial? Was it dictated by the protection of growing
agrarian endowments downstream (such as the powerful Hacienda de San
José), or was it responding to increased costs of dredging and repairing canals,
bridges, diversion mechanisms, and other hydraulic infrastructure? While doc-
umentation cannot provide definitive answers to these questions, it is certain
that the project was not a response to the needs of Mexico City. The deferred
merging of the two river systems and the displacement of the Río de San Juan
to the center of the valley had no discernible impact on the vulnerability of
the reservoir of the Acolman Dam to flooding. Yet it had important conse-
quences for sites in the upper middle valley, such as Santiago Atlatonco, the
Hacienda de San José, and perhaps the convent of Acolman, sites that now lay
much closer to the channel of the Río de San Juan and now experienced the
direct predations of the storm surges of the upper basin. Yet to have identified
the need for the Temascal—and to have funded, designed, engineered, and
executed the project—does strongly suggest that residents of the valley had
44 | Chapter 1

identified a problem, and it is likely that this problem was incipient flooding
and sedimentation. Consequently, one of the winners of the water-sharing
agreement of 1684 was the community of San Miguel Xometla, in the eastern
middle valley, which offered to clean the Temascal and associated canals of
the San Antonio branch in return for not only water rights to irrigate town
land but the chance to reroute the floodwaters of the Río de San Juan a good
distance from the village.15

Harvesting the Wastelands

It did not take long for the Colonial Mexican Pluvial to assert itself in the Teo-
tihuacán Valley. Rising water manifested itself first and foremost in the valley’s
wetlands, in the village of San Juan Teotihuacán, near Acolman, and where the
Río de San Juan met Lake Tetzcoco, the deepest part of the lake system in the
Basin of Mexico.
Teotihuacán, like many other villages, picked an unfortunate time to lay
the foundation of the town’s first church, the iglesia y monasterio of San Juan
Teotihuacán, a Franciscan temple and monastery that would rival the Augus-
tinian convent in Acolman. Construction in Teotihuácan began in 1548, amid
the single wettest period of the colonial era that lasted from 1542 until 1554.
The Teotihuacán church was built among the springs, on the south side of the
wetland, and directly east of the town’s market. Canals and bathing pools were
cut from the land of its patio and surrounding yards, while openings were left
for fountains to appear within the church itself. Why a site with such high
humidity was chosen is unclear, although its proximity to the estate of one of the
most influential indigenous noble families (of don [Francisco Verdugo] Quezal-
mamalitzin Huetzin and his wife Ana [Cortes] Ixtlilxochitl) might have been a
factor. Alternatively, and intriguingly, the site might have been selected because
of its aquatic condition. A codex from the 1550s—associated with an uprising
of the townsfolk who wanted the monastery to be governed by Franciscans and
not the Augustinians who sought to control it, as they did downstream in San
Agustín Acolman—shows a woman giving birth at the church, in a site that
was either in the courtyard or in the neighboring wetland, where thrushes rose
from palustrine landscape.16
Farther downstream, the pluvial caused widespread flooding in Acolman and
across the Basin of Mexico in 1552 and 1553 and enlarged the extent of Lake
 Water marks | 45

Tetzcoco and others in the valley. Unfortunately, only scant comments about
water conditions remain from this first phase of the pluvial. Only later, in the
1570s and 1580s, during the second pluvial peak, was climate-induced hydro-
logical dynamism mirrored in Teotihuacán’s social realm. Litigation from the
Teotihuacán Valley reveals creative interactions between towns and the rising
waters in wetlands and rivers, carried out in the new legal, economic, techno-
logical, and biological context of the colonial world. In one example, Hernando
de Serna, a Spaniard and resident of Mexico City, petitioned to receive a grant
of land located near the shifting shoreline of Lake Tetzcoco. In 1578, the Crown
accepted Serna’s petition for the grant, declaring the lands uncultivated and
tierras baldías, that is, vacant or public lands, that could be redistributed to
another person. The land in question lay between the towns of Tepexpan and
Tequiciztlan, in the lower valley, being claimed (in the majority) by Tepex-
pan and (in the minority) by Tequiciztlan. The property lines and hydrological
context were demonstrated in the pintura (painting) presented by the local
communities (figure 4).
Writing in the middle of the wet season of 1578, and at the end of the second
pluvial pulse—precisely at the moment in which paleoclimatological proxies
tell us that soils were saturated with water (the years of 1575, 1576, and 1577
registered PDSI values on average 1.5 standard deviations above the 1400–
2000 mean) and, as they would soon see, on the eve of floods across central
Mexico in 1579 and 1580—the townsfolk of both Tepexpan and Tequiciztlan
argued that cultivation of the said lands had been set aside in the past few years.
Their testimony noted the shifting land-use strategy as floodwaters rose and
receded. Given the unique uses that they made of the land at different flood
stages, it appears that such a diversified strategy had been practiced in times
before the current pluvial.
The hiatus stemmed from two separate factors. First, the land was too wet.
Soils were essentially saturated already in the spring and the expectation was that
groundwater would eventually reach the surface during the summer months.
For the last three decades, with few interruptions, soil humidity trended upward,
such that the situation in the 1570s would have surprised very few in the com-
munity. The 1570s was one of three peaks between 1542 and 1630 (ca. 1552, 1577,
and 1610) and was the second-most severe of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial. It
was also the fourth-most severe of all events in the colonial era. But more than
this, in the forty-eight years between 1542 and 1589, soil humidity was below
normal in only three years, and only marginally so.
FIGURE 4 Map of the lake and adjacent lands between Tepexpan and Tequiciztlan, 1578.
Archivo General de la Nación, #1272. The Tetzcoco Lake is shown at the bottom-right
margin, which in the original color version is painted blue. AGN Tierras, Grant of two
caballerías, fol. 7v.
 Water marks | 47

Even in the heart of the pluvial, during the dry season the townsfolk found
some use for the seasonal wetland by harvesting grasses that they then burned to
prepare what they called yzcahuitl (i.e., izcahuihtli, edible worms), “which come
from the foam of the lake and that form into a mass when fired.”17 Tequiciztlan,
the coplaintiff in the case, had long made an industry of salt collection and pro-
cessing from seasonal fluctuations in the lake. Such production would have been
especially robust in the previous dry era before 1542 in which intense capillary
action in the clay soils near the Tetzcoco Lake lifted salts from the subsoil to
the surface. Indeed, the name of the town means “place where salts abound.”
According to an account from 1580, “in past times they used to make salt in the
town, with which they would supply Mexico City, but in the last thirty-eight
years since being in this region, [I have seen that] they have had to stop doing
it [i.e., collecting salt] because of the growth of the lake that has covered the
salt lands that they had harvested.”18 Thus, as the lake rose to historic elevations,
the evaporated salts that had collected on the surface returned to a soluble state
and could no longer be harvested.
The second cause of the hiatus was a sharp demographic contraction between
1576 and 1578 that reduced the capacity of indigenous communities to use land
in a manner that met a certain, hitherto unknown, criterion of sufficient land use
intensity that avoided the dreaded tierras baldías designation. Livestock rearing
was acceptable use; collecting nature’s fauna and flora was not. Falling below
the threshold threatened claims to ownership.
In 1576, New Spain was struck by an epidemic, called by contemporaries “the
sickness” (cocoliztli), that reduced the local community by perhaps a third and
thereby lowered demand on land. The pathogen appears to have been the same
as that of 1545, which killed about 50 percent of the population. Traditionally,
the belief was that the pathogen was typhus, but more recent analysis of symp-
toms and the etiological mechanisms implicated call into question this diagno-
sis. The strongest theory at present has been advanced, separately, by historical
epidemiologists J. S. Marr and Rodolfo Acuña Soto, who have made convincing
arguments for a disease of New World origin, arenavirus hemorrhagic fever.19
Acuña Soto has implicated the shift from drought to high humidity in the 1540s
as driving rodent population and disease dynamics that were then transferred
to the human population. Thus, the shift from very dry conditions during the
Conquest era—especially during the 1530s—to the wettest period of the last
seven hundred years (1542–54) was the ecological catalyst for the event. While
there was not a similar climate reversal in the 1570s that would explain the 1576
48 | Chapter 1

outbreak, the virgin soil epidemic paradigm helps to explain the return of the
virus. Since 1546, while the cocoliztli disease reservoir remained strong in local
rodent populations, the sector of the population lacking immunity to the disease
had been steadily growing. Thus, the disease’s complex ecology (involving the
onset of a millennial-scale pluvial, the meeting of biotic communities from two
previously separated continents, the development of a large rodent population,
and the presence of a large human population without immunity) was allowed
to play out once more before disappearing into obscurity.
Climate extremes influenced human health in ways beyond the ecology of
etiological mechanisms, as we saw in the cocoliztli outbreaks of 1545 and 1576.
In many cases, the hardships posed by the agroecological stresses initiated by
climate anomalies (stresses such as acute malnutrition, exhaustion, and insuffi-
cient shelter) could substantially increase the rates of morbidity and case fatality,
while also decreasing fertility and demographic resurgence following the epi-
demic. Case mortality rates during epidemics of crowd diseases such as smallpox
and measles, for instance, rise substantially when the infected population is
acutely malnourished. Moreover, agroecological stress can also increase mor-
bidity by causing crowding when accessing limited food supplies and gathering
in places with adequate shelter.
Did colonial epidemics occur more frequently with climate extremes? Avail-
able evidence suggests that, yes, the outbreak of disease was strongly correlated
with climate-induced agroecological stress. The Tlaxcalan data—which offers
good estimates for all relevant factors: disease, demography, climate, and agro-
ecological stress—can be used to answer this question. In Tlaxcala, years with
epidemics correlate exceptionally well with years with statistically significantly
climate anomalies. Of the thirty-four unique outbreaks of disease between 1519
and 1810, 91 percent of epidemics coincided with either a statistically significant
PDSI extreme (of at least one standard deviation) or with reported agroecolog-
ical stress that led to malnourishment. In fact, either PDSI or agroecological
stress—taken individually, not together—correlates with the outbreak of dis-
ease in about three-quarters of all cases (74 and 76 percent, respectively). Only
the cases of 1566, 1623, and 1735 have no discernible connection with climate-
induced hardship. While it is important to remember that correlation is not
causation, this evidence strongly implicates climate in sickness and death in
colonial Tlaxcala and, likely, throughout central Mexico.
By 1580, the case was closed, with Serna winning his petition and subsequent
litigation, meaning that Tepexpan and Tequiciztlan lost control over a large
 Water marks | 49

tract of land. Lakeside communities like these had seen many ebbs and flows in
this lake system. In this case, they had adjusted their resource use accordingly,
shifting from salt production, to worms and grasses, and to agriculture when
appropriate. As the failed litigation against Serna demonstrated, however, life at
the water’s dynamic edge had lost the flexibility needed to respond to climatic
and hydrological variability. Serna described the land in terms that avoided
recognizing any prior cultivation or any current use, using words such as “an
uncultivated plain” (heriazo llano), barren lands (están yermas), and that “they
were ready to be worked and cultivated that do not look to have [ever] been
cultivated” (unas tierras heriaças que estaban por labrar y cultivar y no pareçian
aberse cultivado).20 The community was specific about its past and present uses,
but failed to convince the judge that such cultivation had taken place or would
in the future. In the short term, the case shows the inability of the colonial legal
and bureaucratic system to accommodate—or even contemplate—the dynamic
natural rhythms of highland life in the Little Ice Age. The rigidity of Spanish
legal standards for prior use proved prejudiced against the flexible and adaptive
agroecological strategies that seemed necessary to make life work—quite liter-
ally—at the water’s edge.

Managing Excess

At virtually the same moment that Tepexpan and Tequiciztlan lost control of their
lakeside lands, climate-induced hydrological shifts also propelled action in San
Juan Teotihuacán and San Agustín Acolman. In fact, San Juan had long recog-
nized the economic value of the aquatic landscape it inhabited. The Teotihuacán
Valley functioned as the main thoroughfare for muleteers and cart traffic between
Mexico City and the port of Veracruz, and the abundant waters allowed the town
to function as a key roadside station. Baths and ample stables were available for
the mules, horses, and donkeys that hauled and carried goods. Perhaps most
importantly, the humid soils made available an abundant supply of grasses and
feed for the stables. The town possessed a large, full-service inn where travelers
could rest and enjoy some of the local foods and drink, especially its famous pul-
que. All this would have been possible without the pluvial. Yet climatic conditions
in the sixteenth century made these resources more bountiful than before or after.
Immediately downstream of the church, the town had constructed and oper-
ated a water-powered grist mill by the 1570s, at a distance of “a shot of a crossbow”
50 | Chapter 1

from the monastery. The mill was a substantial investment that involved new canals
going to and from it, the construction of a mill house, and—most importantly—
the installation of a complex water-driven mill, complete with interlocking gears
and shafts that turned expensive millstones. There is little doubt that the design,
execution, and management of the entire operation was contracted from out-
side the town. Unfortunately, no documents have been located regarding these
investments. By the 1570s, apart from private residences and fields, the town had
a church, hospital, inn, government offices, and a royal munitions factory (salitre),
which used local labor to harvest wood from the Patlachique range and to extract
saltpeter from nearby caves. Thirty laborers worked full-time in the salitre. San
Juan Teotihuacán, then, was no ordinary town. It thrived as much from industry
as from agriculture, and it must have accrued a substantial technical and industrial
skill set that was repurposed in many new scenarios.
The town also sought to profit from its water supply. It seems that Teoti-
huacán had always assumed some special rights to its water and thought that
it could manage its distribution to (paying) downstream users. The town had
effectively monetized its spring water in exchange for annual cash or tribute
payments. In 1578, the town imposed new payments from the town of Acol-
man, which had followed Teotihuacán’s lead and installed a grist mill beside the
Augustinian convent. For four years (until 1582), Acolman provided an annual
sum, but ceased payment when San Juan upped the rate from some agricultural
products (chickens, etc.) to one hundred pesos a year. In 1584, San Juan litigated,
asking for not only its annual payment, but the two years of back payments.21
If those were not made, Teotihuacán threatened to cut off the water supply to
Acolman’s new mill.
In an era of vast hydrological wealth, San Juan’s demands had little traction.
Assessing the hydrological situation for what it was, Acolman testified that the
waters were too plentiful to control and, consequently, it was impossible for San
Juan to cut off or redirect the water. The fluvial geopolitics of the valley were
very complex. Teotihuacán and Acolman held many pockets of noncontiguous
territory, such that water actually flowed from the village of Teotihuacán to
lands controlled by Acolman, and then back through lands controlled by Teo-
tihuacán, then Acolman, and then Teotihuacán once again. Thus, Acolman’s
response was not to threaten Teotihuacán with cutting off water, but to flood the
dependencies of Teotihuacán by rerouting the water. Even though Teotihuacán’s
gambit failed, both it and Acolman remained flush with water, operating their
mills until the end of the pluvial.
 Water marks | 51

It seemed that Teotihuacán had learned an important lesson: water had become
ubiquitous, and its primary risk—at least the risk recognized by the court—was
overabundance, not scarcity. Amid pluvial conditions, the Crown granted water
rights to most users who could demonstrate their projected use would not preju-
dicially alter flow downstream. The problem was not how to distribute a limited
resource, but how to protect downstream users from excessive and unpredictable
flows that resulted from upstream modifications. When safe use could not be
proven, rights were generally not granted or were subsequently withdrawn.
As quick learners, the town’s elite reversed their strategy in dealing with the
threat of yet another grist mill opening. This time, it was a Spaniard (Cristobal
Gudiel) who petitioned the viceregal government for the right to establish a
mill, and this time the threat would be located in town, in the Ayotzinco dis-
trict, a few hundred meters upstream from the town’s wetland, beside a large
ahuehuete. Gudiel already had a house in town, owned the salitre there, and
had agricultural properties in the valley. The mill would have given Gudiel an
enormous economic and political footing in the community. Yet it was not on
these grounds that the town opposed the petition, nor because the proposed mill
would undercut the economics of its own mill, which they had been operating
for more than a decade. The town’s lawyer did not even bother to refute the
defense’s testimony that the operators of the Teotihuacán mill lacked expertise
to keep turning at full capacity. Normally, claims of economic prejudice would
be the first line of attack for plaintiffs. Nor did the town suggest that the mill
infringed on their rights to the town’s spring water. Rather, Teotihuacán focused
its case on the downstream dangers posed by altering stream and spring flow at
the headwaters of the Río de los Manantiales.
For a community built within a marsh to declare a fear of excess water was a
rhetorical feat. As seen above, already in the earliest phase of the pluvial, in the
1540s, the community seemed to embrace the marshland, architecturally and
spiritually. The construction of the Franciscan church and monastery in 1548
at the edge of the marsh, with baths, springs, and canals, along with expressed
associations between water and fertility, certainly suggests a double standard
during the litigation with Gudiel. Clearly, the town’s opposition was intended,
mostly, to limit Spanish investment and preserve local autonomy.
Gudiel’s luck, however, had run out by the 1580s. Just as he made his petition
for the mill and associated canals in town, a decade of heavy rains left the site
extremely saturated, with floodwaters reaching a peak in September of 1585. The
1585 litigation produced a detailed map and prolix descriptions of the town’s
52 | Chapter 1

FIGURE 5 The Gudiel map (1585), showing the hydrology of San Juan Teotihuacán. The
map was produced by Cristobal Gudiel at the behest of the Spanish corregidor, Juan
Lopez Catho. Archivo General de la Nación, #1167. AGN Tierras, Teotihuacán against
Cristobal Gudiel, fol. 12.

hydroscape (figure 5). From this documentation, we learn that common areas of

the village were established in the immediate vicinity of natural pools for recre-
ational bathing, an activity still fondly remembered by many in the town. Other
aquatic sites were reserved for cleaning of both nextamalli (lime-soaked maize)
and clothing. No roads or buildings were located within the springs zone in the
sixteenth century and were probably absent until the late nineteenth century.
The historical toponomy of town districts—mostly forgotten today—revealed
its aqueous roots. Take, for instance, the sites of Ayotzinco (Place of Turtles),
Atezcatzonco (Lake Headwaters), Ahuehuetitlan (Ahuehuete Grove), Atez-
catzinco (Little Lake), or Atezcalac (Lake Water, a term used for the stream
that flowed from the wetlands).
Smartly conceived, but ultimately ineffective, Gudiel’s strategy was to show
that more water could do no further harm to a town built within the marsh
itself. Teotihuacán’s strategy was to show that their urban planning represented
a delicate balance that should not be disturbed. Overall, both sides described
 Water marks | 53

aquatic excesses in the town (either as opulence or peril), a situation that could
be understood all too well by viceregal authorities, located themselves in a place
(Mexico City) experiencing the same overabundance problem as Teotihuacán.
The sympathies of viceregal officials were played on yet again, in 1603, when
plans were made to relocate (congregate) the community of Los Reyes to San
Juan Teotihuacán. In this case, too, the event occurred simultaneously with a
pluvial surge. Judging by flood reports at the time, the colonial palustrine max-
imum was reached during this decade. Here, one of San Juan’s dependencies
resisted its relocation to the district cabecera, citing “a very bad and boggy site
that floods in the rainy season” (el sitio es muy malo y çenegoço por que en
tiempo de aguas se anega), preferring instead the town of San Martín because
it was “an elevated site to which the water cannot reach.”22

The Hydrographic Archive

The Colonial Mexican Pluvial occurred coincidentally with what happened

to be the most critical phase of Spanish colonization—that is, the redistri-
bution of property and resources, the codification in law of these rights, and
the determination of the character of central Mexico’s environment. Indeed,
climate-induced diseases in the 1540s and 1570s, and likely climate-aggravated
diseases in the 1590s and first decades of the 1600s liberated property from
indigenous hands and thus contributed to Spain’s own legal imperative to cod-
ify and describe the new kingdom in image and text. But regardless of why
(and why then), the coincidence of the pluvial with record-keeping left a deep
hydrographic archive of the pluvial, one that for decades and centuries after the
waters had receded would provide an indelible snapshot of a highly anomalous
aquatic world.
Take, for instance, the coincidence of the pluvial with the creation of the
Geographic Relations, or Relaciones geográficas. In 1577, the Crown ordered that
the territories of the Kingdom of New Spain be described and assessed, in
terms of both their human and natural resources. The instructions set out by the
Crown stipulated fifty different aspects of the territory that should be described
and, ideally, mapped. The task of fulfilling the Crown’s request for geographic
information for the Teotihuacán Valley fell to the top Spanish official (corregi-
dor) of the region, Francisco Castañeda. In 1580, he oversaw the production
of a large-format map of the valley, focused mainly on the middle and lower
54 | Chapter 1

watersheds (figure 6). Drawn with sepia-colored ink on multiple pages adhered

together to form a large canvas (145 × 61 cm), the map displays elaborate hydro-
logical and transport networks, drawn surprisingly to scale.23 What really sur-
prises, however, is the complexity of the irrigated landscape between San Juan
Teotihuacán and the town of Tepexpan. Seven artificial bifurcations of the
river channel are shown. Clusters of rural houses are located very deliberately.
The central irrigation zone between the convent of San Agustín Acolman and
the settlement of Santa Catarina is, appropriately, devoid of any inhabitants.
The map details the inlets and outlets to and from the river system and the two
indigenous mills (one in San Juan Teotihuacán and the other near the convent
of Acolman). The representation of the village of Teotihuacán includes detailed
characteristics of the location of dozens of springs and their placement within
the complex hydrological network of the village. The Relación geográfica of Teo-
tihuacán, then, demonstrates an intimate knowledge of local hydrology across
a vast swath of the valley.
In image, as in text, Castañeda consistently portrays an aquatic landscape.
With respect to the entire zone between Teotihuacán and Tequiciztlan, he affirms
repeatedly that the region is “cold and humid,” a description that would seem—
today—completely inappropriate, given the sunbaked terrain. As Castañeda
notes, Acolman was situated “between irrigation canals”; Teotihuacán “among
water springs and canals, and is all covered by springs of water”; Tequiciztlan
“is located by the great lake and among irrigation canals”; Tepexpan “is largely
swamped and between canals.” Repeatedly, Castañeda juxtaposes this wet region
with the surrounding sujetos (literally, “dependencies,” but better “allied towns”)
that are in “cold and dry lands and lack any water except in artificial ponds
[jagüeyes].” Acolman is where “the San Juan River splits into three large irri-
gation canals with which a swath of land almost a league and a half [6 km]
wide is irrigated” and “remarkably fertile in pasture and agricultural goods.”
Teotihuacán is “very abundant in water and has many springs in a small area
from which proceeds a large river along which the natives have a [grist] mill.
This water irrigates two leagues [about 8.4 km] and its waters reach the lake
[of Tetzcoco].”24
Maps such as the Relación geográfica of the Teotihuacán Valley, or the maps in
the Serna or Gudiel cases, were common products during the 1580s and 1590s.
In fact, the last quarter century of the sixteenth century exceeds all others in car-
tographic production. Taking the quantity of maps as a proxy for the intensity
of landscape description, I analyze a catalog of fifty-seven maps (all preserved
FIGURE 6 Castañeda’s map of the Teotihuacán Valley, produced for the Relación geográ-
fica in 1580. The sepia-ink map, 145 × 61 centimeters, is kept in the Archivo General de
Indias, Seville, Spain. The original map (right) is juxtaposed with a schematic rendition
(left). Streams are represented with dark lines, springs with small dots, mills with an M,
roads with light gray lines, rural settlements with gray squares, and topography with
blurred ovals and discs. Villages are indicated with four different symbols, depending on
the cabecera (head-town) to which they belong: blocks (Tequiciztlan), octagons (Tep-
expan), flowers (Teotihuacán), and diamonds (Acolman). The head-towns themselves
are indicated with stars inside one of those four village symbols. Ministerio de Cultura
y Deporte, Archivo General de Indias.
56 | Chapter 1

FIGURE 7 Map production in the Teotihuacán Valley by quarter century. All but four of
the maps are located in the Archivo General de la Nación. The others are found in the
municipal archive of San Martín de las Pirámides.

in national or municipal archives) that focus on either the Teotihuacán Valley

as a whole or on a subdivision of the basin. The catalog is comprehensive and
exhaustive, although it excludes large-scale maps that show the Teotihuacán
Valley as a small part of the regional setting.
The catalog is summarized in figure 7, which reveals two waves of activ-
ity: the first during the Mexican pluvial and the second during the eighteenth
century. Two extended periods of cartographic inactivity are evident: the first
until 1575 and the second between 1618 and 1719. The first is easily explained
by the lack of a Spanish colonial administrative presence in the early years
after the Conquest. The second, however, lacks an easy explanation. Does this
lacuna reflect the overall paucity of archival sources at this time or the paucity
of conflict over resources during a period of low population density? Probably
both factors contribute. Yet, it is also true that the flurry of mapmaking between
1576 and 1617 made it less pressing in subsequent decades. During this phase, a
new map was produced every other year, more or less. Copies of the maps from
the earlier era would then resurface in the later period as evidence presented in
litigation, a point addressed later in this book.

Interpreting the Pluvial

The hydrographic archive was not simply a product of Spanish legal customs
and a sudden shift in property and administrative patterns following the demo-
 Water marks | 57

graphic collapse of indigenous populations. The pluvial, itself, was a direct

impulse. The floods were a source of grave concern and wonder. Indeed, some
speculated that the sun was failing the new colony and that the floods were
God’s punishment for the human failure to fulfill its spiritual and moral duties.
The interpretation of water—either too much or too little, in the right or wrong
places, at the right or wrong times—was closely tied to its social and cultural
importance. It was meaningful to rich and poor, natives and newcomers, in
secular as well as religious discourses, and to hydrologists, cosmologists, and
astrologers. This is amply illustrated by flooding in the first three decades of the
seventeenth century. Let us return to the debates about flooding in the viceregal
capital in order to reveal some of the ways in which the pluvial was interpreted,
and thus remembered and recorded for posterity.
Just months after the 1629 inundation of Mexico City, architect and Car-
melite friar Andrés de San Miguel described in detail for his Majesty the cause
of the current cataclysm. The problem, he wrote in 1630, was in the “change in
weather in the last few years,” which he qualified as a change “in the way that
it rains”:

It used to be temperate, raining most always by day, beginning at one or two

until four or five in the afternoon, such that one day’s rainfall would be cleared
up by the next, causing little rise in the lake. Nowadays it rains at all hours,
and more commonly at night than day. . . . While in years past the torrential
downfalls did not remain on the ground long after the sun came out to clear up
the land and make it ready for more rain, the rains these last years . . . are con-
tinuous, drench the land and greatly enrich and augment the springs . . . such
that one day of these rains has greater effect than a month of crazy downpours.25

For Friar Andrés, “the change in the weather” was actually quite complex.
In Friar Andrés’s account, rain came day after day with little respite while the
sun evaporated little of what accumulated. Extreme convective rainfall events
(the usual type of precipitation in the tropics, driven by high evaporation rates
and associated with downpours) were conspicuously absent, although this had
little impact on groundwater recharge and lake extent. In modern terms, he
characterized the changing precipitation patterns as constituted by a shift from
convective to frontal showers (the type of precipitation driven by the interaction
of two different air masses, often resulting in lighter rainfall), increased cloud
cover, falling rates of evapotranspiration, and deep groundwater recharge. From
what we know about the climate of his time, his assessment was correct, except
58 | Chapter 1

for his neglect of temperature, the observation of which (especially at the scale
of just one or two degrees Celsius averaged over the course of a year) was very
difficult and perhaps impossible without thermometers. The climate synopsis
offered by Friar Andrés is replicated in a letter written by Viceroy Cerralbo to
the king, in October 1630, in which he prayed “for a few years of temperate
rainfall” to follow “these rainy ones.”26
Friar Andrés was a renowned hydraulic engineer and architect, designing
bridges, canals, and dams, along with many monasteries. Apart from his letter
addressing the state of the desagüe (the project to drain Mexico City) and the
predicament of Mexico City after the flood of 1629, he wrote a few treatises
on astrology, engineering, and water, all in the 1630s.27 Born in Spain, he had
moved to New Spain in the 1590s, when waters had receded somewhat from
the peak years of the 1580s. This meant that he watched—since his arrival—the
growing extent and threat of water as humidity spiked again in the first decade
of the seventeenth century, remaining wet until at least the early 1620s, and
then cataclysmic in 1629.
His account of the rising floodwaters was remarkable for its sometimes mod-
ern hydrological perspective, an accurate description of how the precipitation-
induced pluvial influenced central Mexico as a whole. Whom did he blame for
the floods? No one, really, although he heaped scorn on the architects of the
desagüe, who had wasted time, money, and labor on ineffective remedies that
worsened the flooding. Predicting a long and unequivocal rise in waters, Friar
Andrés recommended building good infrastructure to cope with the problem.
By extension, the architects of the desagüe failed to see the writing on the wall
(i.e., the pluvial) and thus condemned the city to disaster.
In a work written at the end of thirty-five years of wetland growth, Friar
Andrés dug deeper into the causes of the pluvial, ultimately reinforcing its
depiction as inevitable and blameless. Mexico’s growing humidity was part of
a global event that functioned on a millennial, not decadal, scale. He addressed
not only the underlying causes of “the growth of springs and rivers,” but “also
all the oceans.” It is unclear whether or not he knew of other examples where
humidity was on the rise at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Through-
out this lengthy treatise, he argues that humidity originates in the deepest
entrails of the earth, mostly in high mountainous areas. In his hydrological
model, subterranean water conduits connect oceans to mountains, their flow
held constant in normal conditions by the opacity of land that guards water
underground. With heavy rainfall, he notes, this surface is slowly washed away,
 Water marks | 59

opening new pathways for groundwater to escape, thereby filling rivers, valleys,
and ultimately oceans.
Thus, Friar Andrés’s “change in the weather” operated at two scales: the
decadal and millennial. He recognized decadal-scale climatic patterns (i.e., “a
change in weather in the last few years”) but located this change within a cli-
matic “shift” of a much longer duration. Moreover, the process of humidifi-
cation was not only natural but essentially locked in a positive feedback loop
that humans could do little to alter. This was not a bad thing. It could not be.
In his treatise, entitled Del natural origen y principio de las fuentes y ríos (Of the
natural origin and beginning of the springs and rivers), he argued that the
pluvial was part of Divine Providence, a plan put in action many years before
the discovery of the New World.28 For Friar Andrés, the current humidity did
not have a peccatogenic origin—that is, human sin did not incite the wrath of
God, a popular idea among his religious contemporaries. Instead, San Miguel’s
God was beneficent, and so, too, were rising waters. While Friar Andrés did
not merge the multidecadal “change in the weather” and millennial-scale shifts
into a single, coherent theory of the pluvial, the two were not opposed to each
other, and both were considered an expression of God’s will.
Ultimately, what stands out as especially important in San Miguel’s inter-
pretation of extreme wetness in Mexico City is not whether he got the science
“right” or if he had a unified theory of divine providential pluvials. The crux of
his argument was that the precipitation trends were “natural” (i.e., not anthro-
pogenic) and that high humidity, per se, was neither penance nor problem, but
an opportunity, a challenge. There was neither reason for Mexicans to liberate
themselves from humidity nor hope that the humidity would be or could be
conquered. The only remedy was to cope and adapt, which was best accom-
plished by building smart and appropriate hydrological infrastructure, the type
of solution for which he was extremely well suited and well trained.
San Miguel’s idea that providential climate change could be to blame for
the catastrophic flood of 1629 was a radical proposition and one that few, if
any, other commentators actually shared. Not even the religious supported
these ideas. More popular then, and now, has been the argument that the early
colonial diffusion of Spanish agriculture on surrounding hillsides caused cata-
strophic soil erosion and the alluviation of rivers, lakes, and wetlands (i.e., Alfred
Crosby’s much celebrated Columbian Exchange thesis).
This latter position is exemplified by a text written by royal cosmographer
Enrico Martínez (to which Friar Andrés’s text was appended) that explained the
60 | Chapter 1

1629 flood as the outcome of erosion and siltation produced by this early biotic
exchange from the Old World to the New World. Martínez was the architect of
the first (failed) drainage project of Mexico City in 1607–8 and was a publisher
and astrologer. The Martínez argument first appeared in 1606 within a larger
volume he authored on astrology and was then more widely disseminated after
1615 by Friar Juan de Torquemada, a renowned scholar, whose writings have
held considerable weight in modern historiography.29
Martínez was born in Germany and schooled in Europe, where he trained
as an astrologer, writing about celestial effects on Earth. Like Friar Andrés,
Martínez immigrated to Mexico from Spain in the 1590s, but unlike the Car-
melite friar, he rose quickly within the colonial bureaucracy, being awarded the
title of official cosmographer for the Spanish Crown in Mexico, a post that
Friar Andrés clearly felt that Martínez did not deserve. To say that Friar Andrés
simply disagreed with Martínez would be to misread the ensuing debate. An
acerbic man by nature, the friar could not hide his resentment of the royal
favor afforded Martínez, whom he called “an impostor with only a foreign title
who wanted to get involved in, and give opinions on, matters which he did not
understand.”30
Martínez, however, was also an accomplished writer and printer, by which
means he published his most complete and most cited work, his Reportorio de
los tiempos y historia natural desta Nueva España (1606). The work sought to
rectify previous and inappropriate interpretations of Mexico’s astrological con-
dition, while also providing some chapters with historical material and almanac
forecasts. Some parts of the Reportorio were written while Martínez was still
in Spain (ca. 1591), while others were inked as late as 1605. The third treatise,
which examined “some particularities of New Spain,” was written shortly after
1599, and certainly before the heavy rains of 1604.31
There is little doubt that Martínez identified cooling and humidity as a
credible, and increasingly important, problem. By the time he sat down to write
his astrology of the New World, the land he lived in was seen as degenerating,
overly humid, and emasculating of mind and body. In his Reportorio, he noted
that sublunar “generation and corruption” was afoot and expected important
astral conjunctions in 1606. Based on his calculations for the conjunction of
Saturn and Mars in 1606 (and, I would assume, because of his own climate
experience in New Spain in the last few years), he predicted mass mortality. For
1606, his almanac called for heavy rains to begin in May, one or two months ear-
lier than normal, and to continue until September, noting ominously that only
 Water marks | 61

divine providence could intercede to attenuate the effects of the poor climate.
The celestial conjunctions of 1606 would be similar to those that occurred in
1519, 1546, and 1576. In all three cases, he noted, millions died, particularly the
phlegmatic natives.
Similar to Friar Andrés de San Miguel, Martínez also noted the existence
of longer-term shifts (mudanças) in the weather (tiempo), which could cause
the rise and fall of civilizations. Martínez notes that “experience has shown a
shift in the temperament of the land in New Spain as elsewhere in the world,
such that some [lands] that used to be hot, are now temperate or almost cold.
We also see that some nations that flourished in arms and letters in the past
are almost barbarous, and others that used to be wild now govern the world.”
According to astrological logic—which he spells out clearly over the next two
pages—man’s fate could be told from the celestial sphere, although both were
clearly subject to God’s divine will. The consequences of this shift were obvious
in New Spain: just as Greece lost its science, vigor, and might, classical Athens
had degenerated to

the lowliest people in Europe, given to torpid vices, most subjected to the Turks,
and others to the Venetians. . . . And in what long ago used to be the cradle of
all the good arts and sciences, now there is such ignorance that there is not in
all that land . . . a single study, nor do the people bother to teach their children
to read. . . . By extension, when the Spaniards conquered this land, natives
were much more bellicose than at present, thus is it seen that all in this world
changes.32

Thus, Martínez not only indicated a change in the climate, but also a parallel
shift in the qualities of natives, who had become—in his view—ever more
torpid and docile.
After a number of consecutive years of flooding that followed the relatively
dry 1590s, Martínez was hired by the viceroy, in 1606, to design and lead the
infamous desagüe project, an immense and ultimately failed undertaking to rid
Mexico City of its unfortunate humidity problem. Martínez’s plan to relieve the
city of its rising waters ignored his own astrological predictions (which came
true) and climatic observations (of a pluvial). Martínez, an astrologer without
any academic knowledge or practical experience in architecture, engineering,
or hydrology, would identify anthropogenic sedimentation in the valley as the
cause of flooding, a subject he first discussed in his Reportorio.33 His plan thus
62 | Chapter 1

focused on rectifying the human influences by excavating a tunnel to evacuate

excess water from the basin, a plan so complex that it was not successfully
finished until the twentieth century. Unlike Friar Andrés’s plan, which involved
adapting to the pluvial, Martínez sought to conquer it. Twenty-one years after
shovels hit the ground in September 1608, and months after the 1629 cataclysm
endangered life in Mexico City, Martínez tried, once again, to defend his plan
and its rationale.34 Almost word for word, he brought out the same explanation
used in 1606. Despite admitting that “although, it has been quite rainy here
lately,” he adhered to the logic that got him the job in the first place. To have
now emphasized his climatic thesis would have proved his critics right about
not only the nonhuman causes, but about his own ineptitude.
Franciscan friar and historian Juan de Torquemada was yet another voice in
this important conversation. Before the desagüe project was conceived in 1606,
and before the floods of 1604 and 1607, Torquemada believed that the lake
was actually shrinking, an observation that would agree with tree-ring growth
at the time, which shows a lull in the pluvial during the 1590s. Torquemada
attributed desiccation to two causes: (1) water diversion for irrigation, and (2)
divine intervention. Believing in the power of God and the menace of water,
Torquemada cited the fall of idolatry as a prompt for God’s beneficence. Such
divine causation is fundamentally different from that proposed by Friar Andrés
de San Miguel. In the latter case, growing wetlands were part of God’s origi-
nal plan, were neither punishment nor reward, and required a complementary
physiographical explanation of the mechanics of how and why water would
become more or less abundant. For Torquemada, no such discussion of fluvial
mechanics was necessary. Water moved by the merciful hand of God and His
judgment of the faithful. He made no mention of either hillside erosion or
lakebed siltation in 1604.
After 1607, influenced by the floods and Martínez’s Reportorio, Torquemada
changed his line of argument. Now, abandoning arguments based on divine
will or irrigation, he carefully recited Martínez’s argument about valley sed-
imentation. He highlighted the spread of Spanish agriculture up to the high
forested zone and the erosive effect of “rainfall that carries away the flower and
essence of [the land] . . . such that one sees many fields already without soil,
the underlying tepetate [hardpan] and tuff exposed,” thereby raising the surface
of the lake bed.35 All three of the arguments supported by Torquemada (God,
irrigation, and agriculture) not only tended to laud the faithful indigenous and
blame Spanish farmers, but highlighted anthropogenic causes. After the floods
 Water marks | 63

between 1604 and 1607 (which continued for the next few years), Mexico’s elite
searched for a solution and, it seemed, Martínez’s plan was a good one.

Conclusion

The debates over the causes of flooding in Mexico City during the first decades
of the seventeenth century reveal much about the political positioning and
personal history of the authors. The signs of the pluvial were widely recognized,
and all three authors were deeply aware of the abundance of water and what
was at stake in making one or another argument. Both Friar Andrés de San
Miguel and Enrico Martínez provided ample evidence to support the existence
of climate-driven flooding, and yet only the former was willing to put aside
anthropogenic causes. Avoiding taking a moral and political stand was not a
popular choice in the early 1600s; nor does it seem to have been in the ensuing
centuries. Choosing sides in the dichotomous debate between Friar Andrés and
Martínez—between nature and humans as drivers of change—stretches back
to at least the beginning of the seventeenth century, as is evidenced by the work
of Torquemada and the royal favor afforded to Martínez. Already then, Friar
Andrés found his climatic theory to be unpopular with his contemporaries. The
floods of 1604 and 1607 truly energized and popularized the Martínez argu-
ment. As Mexico entered peak pluvial, the pluvial-induced hydrological condi-
tions led to a denial of the pluvial itself and increasing support for Martínez’s
position.36 Up until this time, and especially in the lull of flooding, after the
early 1580s, the Relaciones geográficas, administrative and legal responses to flood
events, and the textual and cartographic imagery of the pluvial did not stew
over causes, find fault in human failures, or even see the pluvial conditions as
negative. The early seventeenth-century floods changed that, and the rising
popularity of Martínez’s Reportorio led to a growing and enduring consensus
that his identification of anthropogenic/agrarian causes was right.
Modern historians who have examined hydrological conditions in colonial
Mexico have also overlooked Friar Andrés’s thirty-three-folio Relación and
the rich descriptions and paintings of aquatic abundance, favoring instead the
Martínez/Torquemada position, which highlights the governing role of human
folly and malice. Perhaps the geomorphic evidence will be discovered that shows
simultaneous erosion across central Mexican watersheds within decades of the
Conquest. Yet, even if this archival miracle appears, it would not erase what
64 | Chapter 1

we know about hydrology between 1542 and 1630. It would not justify ignor-
ing either Friar Andrés or the Colonial Mexican Pluvial. Climate’s presence
in Mexico’s deep and rich early colonial hydrographic archive reveals nature’s
incipient role in human affairs, not just as catalyst within a bundle of anthro-
pogenic causes, but as a millennial-scale climate event that drove humans to
creative action, and often to death.
Amid these concerns for the recognition of the hydrographic archive, I hope
to remind the reader of the more elemental point of this chapter: Central Mex-
ico’s hydrological dynamics—particularly its palustrine dynamics—are highly
sensitive to climate change. There is, indeed, an uncanny correlation between
flooding and the heaviest cycles of cold and wet that characterized the Colo-
nial Mexican Pluvial from the mid-1540s until about 1630. Geographer Alfred
Siemens has made this point convincingly in his conceptual framework of the
hydrological dynamics of floodplain and endorheic wetlands, which suggests a
high sensitivity to climate variability.37 Care must be taken to avoid fatalistic
depictions of dry or supra-saturated wetlands. Substantive social, ecological, or
climatic evidence should be marshaled to support any interpretations.
Take the example of Mexico City, where the flood chronology fits extremely
well with these climate trends. A cycle of floods—and social investment in
hydraulic infrastructure—occurred between 1430 and 1450, at the tail end of
the Aztec (or Mexica) pluvial. Efforts were redoubled in the 1480s and 1490s
during another spate of flooding, once again closely mirrored by a climate that
was unusually wet. Flooding ceased during the Conquest era, when waters in
central Mexico receded; and they resumed again in lockstep with the Colonial
Mexican Pluvial with floods in 1552–55, 1579–80, 1604–8, and 1623–35. These
Mexico City trends are mirrored in Teotihuacán and, as we will see in the
following chapter, in Tlaxcala, where simultaneous floods occurred in all three
areas. Downstream of San Juan Teotihuacán, the Augustinian convent in the
town of Acolman, which dates from 1539, flooded in 1553, 1606, and 1629. In the
last of these years, the convent was under 4–5 feet of water (1.5 varas). Lest we
believe falsely that the area escaped the floods of the 1580s, we know of flooding
in 1580 in the town of Santa María Tlatechco, located near the Río de San Juan
and immediately upstream of the convent.
As the pluvial came and went, so too did the production of texts and images
to be included in the hydrographic archive, as well as the debates, scientific
theories, peccatogenic discourses, personal recriminations, land thefts, litiga-
tion, and business ventures. Mass mortality from climate-induced epidemic
 Water marks | 65

disease spurred the wholesale transfer of indigenous land to Spaniards and

other natives. Mostly, however, the pluvial itself provoked humans to describe
and paint it into memory. Apart from local maps made for specific purposes,
some of Mexico’s most famous maps were painted as waters surged, such as the
Uppsala Codex (ca. 1555), the Trasmonte map of 1628, or—looking forward to
the terminal Little Ice Age—Sigüenza’s map of 1691.38
The Colonial Mexican Pluvial and its hydrographic archive did not get lost
or even ignored. It simply became normalized or, to use a phrase common in
colonial documentation, part of “time immemorial,” that is, a state without a
definable beginning or end. In later chapters, we will see that subsequent gen-
erations would draw from this archive in creative ways, lamenting the rise of
“drought” and “desiccation,” idealizing the aquatic world of the pluvial (which
has continued unabated since Alzate’s time), or by “simply” copying, preserving,
and instrumentalizing this hydrographic archive within the context of prop-
erty and resource management. By the late eighteenth century, and continuing
until the present, the rich hydrographic archive of the pluvial resurfaced time
and again, often with awkward results. Memories of aquatic landmarks that no
longer existed played havoc with post-pluvial property relations, while hydro-
graphic phantasmagoria were drawn into hydrophilic discourses and national
lamentations, unwittingly normalizing and celebrating an anomaly that had
caused such despair. Before addressing that period, we will first revisit the plu-
vial, now exploring its agrarian ups and downs along the reaches of the Zahua-
pan River in Tlaxcala.
 CHAPTER 2
Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands,
and Empty Granaries
Managing the Ecological Revolution in Early Colonial Tlaxcala

T
his chapter explores the process of agrarian, economic, and environmental
change in early colonial Tlaxcala, especially within small-scale parcels of
land farmed by the region’s indigenous population. We are afforded such
a rare vista of patterns of local indigenous life and agriculture thanks to Tlaxca-
la’s unusually rich and varied early colonial source base, found in both regional
and national archives, in published collections of wills and the minutes of town
meetings, and in numerous series of annals produced by the local elite. Here, we
leave behind for a moment our previous focus on the pluvial’s contested terrain
(i.e., litigation, antagonistic business deals, hydrological debates, bureaucratic
wrangling, etc.) and redirect our attention to the challenges of managing a
tripartite ecological revolution emerging from the conjuncture of radical shifts
in climate, biology, and demography.
This chapter demonstrates and explains the paradox of geomorphic stability
amid the ecological revolution from 1542 until 1630. New agrarian and hydro-
logical strategies emerged in the sixteenth century in the context of not only a
new hydro-climatic era but a new biological era. Native Mexicans would soon
come to realize that the Mexica-era ecology had slipped away and that new
socioecological strategies were needed to support life in the valley. I argue that
the Tlaxcalteca demonstrated remarkably successful agroecological adaptation
to one of the world’s most transformative moments: ecologically, politically,
demographically, and climatically. Soils stayed put amid dynamic ecological
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 67

change. To make this argument, the chapter takes readers through the biophys-
ical repercussions of this ecological revolution—water/land adaptations, vegeta-
tion responses to the 1545 climate-induced mortality crisis, interactions between
the rich grasslands and watering holes, and so on—and then through agrarian
adaptations, particularly experiments with sheep, pigs, and, most importantly,
cochineal (Dactylopius coccus)—a small domesticated insect from which a red
dye was produced for international markets. The cochineal industry in Tlaxcala
was, I argue, brought down by the coldest decades of the Colonial Mexican
Pluvial, thereby preparing the ground for yet another agroecological shift—the
rise of the pulque industry and its metepantli agrosystem—that fit better the
climatic, ecological, and social contours of central Mexican society in the Little
Ice Age.

The Politics and Geography of Tlaxcala

The colonial provincia of Tlaxcala, located about one hundred kilometers east
of Mexico City, was a politically atypical region of New Spain. The Tlaxcalteca
allied with Hernán Cortés during the conquest of the Mexican capital of
Tenochtitlán and continued this military alliance to conquer territories across
Central America.1 Their political astuteness and power brought them the reward
of a large colonial territory, the largest and strongest indigenous government in
colonial Mexico, and some privileges within the Kingdom of New Spain, such
as lower taxes and tribute, along with the absence of encomienda (an early form
of labor exploitation used by the Spanish Crown).2 The indigenous government
even held considerable fiscal power over Spaniards residing within the prov-
ince. Indeed, the polity successfully increased its territory and protected the
independence of Tlaxcala by resisting efforts to be amalgamated into a larger
administrative district, meaning that Tlaxcalteca leaders had the undivided
attention of their own Spanish gobernador.3 In doing so, they maintained their
pre-Conquest system of four cabeceras (i.e., altepetl) with numerous dependen-
cies (i.e., tlaxilacalli).4
Geographically, precipitation and temperature patterns in Tlaxcala are fairly
typical for central Mexico, more or less mirroring those of the Valley of Mexico.
Today, as probably in the past, Tlaxcala is slightly more humid and cooler than
the capital, and definitely wetter than Teotihuacán. The Zahuapan River basin
occupies the majority of the province. The river is a tributary to the Balsas River
68 | Chapter 2

basin, originating in the Sierra Madre Oriental range in northern Tlaxcala and
flowing southward through central Tlaxcala before merging with the Atoyac
River at the southern limit of the polity. Its water then winds through the states of
Puebla, Morelos, Guerrero, and Michoacán before finally draining into the Pacific
Ocean. The basin of the Zahuapan River comprises roughly 165,000 hectares of
land. Two-thirds of the basin lies upstream from Tlaxcala City, which is located
on a small floodplain along the main channel of the Zahuapan River (map 12).
The pre-Conquest indigenous population of Tlaxcala lived on the flanks and tops
of the hills around Tlaxcala City, not in the floodplain where Spaniards ultimately
decided to build the city in 1528 (map 13). As the colonial era wore on, floods
occurred with increasing frequency, sweeping away urban infrastructure, polluting
drinking water, and prompting local officials to record their occurrence.

M A P 1 2 The hydrology of Tlax-

cala. The maps show the hydrol-
ogy of Tlaxcala City’s watershed
within the basin of the Zahuapan
River. The “lower” branch of the
Zahuapan (defined, here, as the
area below Tlaxcala City) is not
shown. The Tlaxcala City water-
shed is 1,142 square kilometers.
Hydrographical lines provided
by INEGI.
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 69

MAP 13 The topography of Tlaxcala City. The urban grid of the colonial center of Tlax-
cala City is shown. The colonial center was located on a floodplain of the Zahuapan
River immediately downstream of a narrow valley, meaning that the city received the
onslaught of many tributaries, which converged immediately upstream of the narrows.
The pre-Hispanic centers (i.e., the head-towns of the four altepetl) were located on the
flanks of hills north of Tlaxcala City.

At the time of the Conquest and during the first century of the colonial
era, the Zahuapan hydrological network above Tlaxcala City was much simpler
than that of the Teotihuacán Valley. The river system was unified and lacked
significant human intervention. No major dams or canals marked the landscape,
although some check dams and agrarian interventions had unfolded in small
hillside ravines. Some important sources of spring water existed, especially near
Santa Clara Atzompan (meaning “headwaters” in Nahuatl), but such clusters of
spring water did not substantially alter the overall discharge of the Zahuapan,
which was driven by precipitation in the Sierra Madre Oriental. At the end
of the seventeenth century, one witness suggested that the stream’s output—
measured at a site well below Tlaxcala City after the confluence of the Atoyac
and Zahuapan Rivers—was “more than three thousand surcos,” more than triple
that of the Teotihuacán Valley.5 While this is a minuscule volume compared to
major continental rivers, for a small regional river just seventy-five kilometers in
length and with a watershed of seventeen hundred square kilometers, the flow is
70 | Chapter 2

quite substantial. The slopes of La Malinche—like most conical volcanoes, such

as the Cerro Gordo in Teotihuacán—discharge water to the Zahuapan through
an efficient radial stream network (i.e., subcatchments E and F in map 12). Else-
where, however, tributaries of the Zahuapan flow through a landscape of fast-
eroding cinder-cones and whose erosion over the Quaternary has obstructed
drainage in interceding valleys (i.e., subcatchments A through D in map 12).

Tlaxcala in the Colonial Mexican Pluvial

With regard to the sequence of flooding and growth of wetlands, the Colonial
Mexican Pluvial left Tlaxcala with an extreme abundance of water. As was
the case in Teotihuacán and elsewhere in central Mexico, the first flood event
occurred in 1552, which destroyed the northern part of Tlaxcala City. Tlax-
calteca nobleman don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza described the
event in his annals:

This was when the Zahuatl River flooded. The water really broke its banks in
Atzompan and at the corner of Chalchihuatzin’s house it flooded deeply. It
covered the bridge with stones. Everything was broken. On the other side of
the river— all over the place— it did the same thing.6

Soil humidity did not substantially decrease until the mid-1590s, with peaks
in the late 1560s and again between 1575 and 1579. These were truly exceptional
years within an exceptional pluvial era. A second round of flooding began in the
late 1570s and continued until the early 1580s. The province’s chronicler, Diego
Muñoz Camargo, documented the floods, noting that

the river floods here in some years, which results in notable harm to the natives
whose houses are swept away and churches are inundated, as was done this very
year [1582] when it flooded and carried off more than five hundred houses and
was lost more than 50,000 pesos worth of cochineal and other products that the
natives produce, which occurred at the end of May. And it did not harm any
persons because it happened in the early evening when nobody slept.7

One of the curious features of this passage is that Muñoz Camargo had already
normalized flooding as though it were to be expected, thereby downplaying the
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 71

danger of the menacing waters. Tlaxcalan annalists noted other floods in 1579
and 1580, in Tlaxcala City and in the town of Atlihuetzyan.8 Yet it is worth
noting the extraordinary nature of this flood. The total destruction of five hun-
dred houses meant about 2,500 people lost their homes, about 2.5 percent of the
total population of Tlaxcala, and probably about 25 percent of the population
of Tlaxcala City. Note that these figures do not refer to houses damaged by,
for instance, flooded basements, as is often the case with bloated statistics of
flood damage reported by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The houses—no doubt earthen constructions—were completely washed away.
Furthermore, it is worth pondering the significance of 50,000 pesos, a great sum
at the time, roughly equivalent to the average annual income of about 5 percent
of the Tlaxcalan population.
Traveling through the area of Tlaxcala—and Teotihuacán—in these years
was Franciscan friar Antonio de Ciudad Real. In August and September 1585,
Ciudad Real described a rain-saturated landscape. At the end of the rainy sea-
son, he portrayed his travels from Tecalli to Tepeaca as a difficult slog through
“savannas or valleys very rain-soaked and full of water.” Then from Tepeaca
to Tecamachalco, he found “a good road mired in water and full of puddles.”
Numerous trips between Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco nearly ended in disaster
when he was fording very full rivers.9
What stands out in the Tlaxcalan hydrology of the late sixteenth century—
when we get our first panorama of Tlaxcala’s hydrology—are the numerous
and extensive wetlands. The Ciénega de Santa Clara, the Ciénega de Atlancate-
pec, and the Ciénega de Nativitas are three large floodplain wetlands situated
along the reach of the Zahuapan River, from north to south, respectively. Other
smaller wetlands dotted the landscape. Whereas the Teotihuacán Valley had
only a dozen or so hectares of palustrine land, Tlaxcala possessed thousands. In
a series of texts written between 1578 and 1585, that is, at the heart of the pluvial,
Muñoz Camargo detailed these aquatic conditions, piece by piece, assembling
the river segments within the Zahuapan River basin, using río and arroyo to des-
ignate streams with greater or lesser flows. Beginning with the uppermost parts
of the upper Zahuapan River basin and then progressing downstream toward
Tlaxcala City (see map 14), Muñoz Camargo identified a large stream (“un
arroyo grande”) that originated in the northern mountains of Tlaxcala, passed
through the town of Tlachco (known today as Tlaxco), and then combined
with another rivulet that descended from the town of San Pedro Tecomallocan,
the Arroyo de Tecomatla.10 This water then entered into a very large lowland
72 | Chapter 2

MAP 14 Wetlands in the Atlancatepec region in the Zahuapan River basin of Tlaxcala,
circa 1580. The location and extent of wetlands should be taken as approximate. All of
these wetlands have since disappeared except the Zacatepec (#9) and Xalnene (#4). See
text for citations of relevant historical documents.

depression (“por unas vegas y llanos grandes y espaciosos”), creating a series

of wetlands that I have called the Atlantepetzinco Marsh.11 From the western
margin of the Atlantepetzinco Marsh, a river flowed for a short distance before
it, too, combined with “the water that comes from Santa Clara,” which emerged
from the western portion of the upper Zahuapan.12 The origin of the western
branch was a series of springs that Muñoz Camargo called atzontli (“headwa-
ters”), which in turn formed the Santa Clara Marsh. The marsh was apparently
more than thirteen kilometers in length.13
The wetlands did not stretch continuously but were broken intermittently
by short streams, such as that which passed by the town of Atlancatepec.
Using topographic and soil maps, one can estimate the location of the small
areas of wetlands that separated the Atzompan and Atlancatepec Marshes.
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 73

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de

Estadística y Geografía, hereafter referred to as INEGI) publishes a series of
1:50,000 scale edaphic maps that can be used for such purposes. There is a close
correlation between past or current wetlands and heavy fine clay soils (“vertisol
pelico fina,” Vp/3) overlaid with fine alluvium (“fluvisol eutrico fina,” Je/3).
Such soils are also deep (defined by INEGI as lacking tepetlatl horizons within
the first meter). Of course, not all such soils originate in wetland environments.
Mention of boggy soils near Atlancatepec, along with Muñoz Camargo’s ref-
erence to a near continuous wetland extending thirteen kilometers to the south
of the Atzompan Spring, makes it possible to sketch the intermittent marshes
between the Atzompan and Atlancatepec Marshes.14
Given the location of the wetlands within a riverine environment and the
archival references that mention rivers running directly into them, the Tlaxcalan
marshes can be classified as “floodplain wetlands.” The rivers connecting one
wetland to another, however, were very short and lacked potential for alluvia-
tion. Thus, water passed through the wetlands by means of slow-moving flows
of groundwater, entering at the upper part of the wetland and leaving at the
lower end where groundwater then seeped into nearby fluvial channels. Such
wetlands have been described as “windows to the water table,” an English term
that resembles the Nahuatl term atezcatl, or “water mirror,” or lake.15 Water took
on a fluvial form only below the Atlancatepec Marsh. At this point, the stream
was named El Río Zahuapan. Thereafter, it flowed another forty-five kilome-
ters to Tlaxcala City, finally encountering the southernmost depression of the
Zahuapan River basin, the Nativitas Marsh, otherwise known as the Marsh of
Tlaxcala (Ciénega de Tlaxcala).16

Old World Ungulates in New World Hands

The Colonial Mexican Pluvial was, perhaps, an ideal time to introduce Old
World livestock practices, particularly sheep and pigs, which eventually came to
complement indigenous agriculture. Muñoz Camargo pointed out that “all over
this area there are very good watering holes and pasture land for livestock, and
many lakes and marshes with small and large extents.”17 Contrary to arguments
of ungulate irruptions and mass environmental destruction, evidence from Tlax-
cala demonstrates a cautious and slow development of herds. I have found
evidence of only one Spanish estate (in 1592) that had extraordinary numbers
74 | Chapter 2

of sheep (twenty thousand).18 Otherwise, in almost every scenario where sheep

were raised, their numbers were moderate (between two hundred and five hun-
dred) and often only slightly greater than the number of hogs kept at the same
estate. Some specialized sheep operations, closely tied to woolen textile man-
ufacturers, kept flocks of between fifteen hundred and three thousand sheep,
but these operations were rare.19 These properties were usually located in what
historian Rik Hoekstra has called “the wastelands,” mostly the flat valley lands
with heavy soils that were not easily broken by indigenous agricultural technol-
ogies and remained mostly uncultivated until the Spanish estates.20
As the colonial era progressed, stocking rates seemed to fall even further. The
Hacienda de Santa Clara had more than twenty-five hundred hectares of land at
its disposal in 1686 and yet possessed a relatively tiny number of grazing animals
(five hundred sheep and thirty cows) and focused mainly on cultivation (one
hundred oxen, sixty threshing mares, twenty ploughs with necessary implements,
twelve coas and fifty seeded fanegas of barley, eight of maize, thirty of vetch, and
ten of beans).21 A census of Tlaxcalan haciendas from 1712 shows that this haci-
enda was below average, but even provincial averages indicate that much land
remained underused. On the almost one hundred thousand hectares recorded in
the census, there were fewer than fifty thousand sheep, stocked at a rate of 0.5
sheep per hectare, or fifty per square kilometer.22 The Hacienda de Cuamanc-
ingo exhibited almost identical stocking rates in 1652.23 Tlaxcalan haciendas
stocked only one-fifth as many sheep per hectare as has been documented in
northern central Mexico, such as the Mezquital Valley.24 Mainly, Spanish estates
remained focused on grain production, with as many as two hundred oxen to
pull the ploughs, as well as a number of hogs and sheep. As historian Carlos
Sempat Assadourian has argued, in Tlaxcala “the expansion of Spanish land did
not follow the path of sheep raising. To the contrary, it was a land of grains.”25
In fact, this focus on Spanish operators appears to be misguided. During
the pluvial extreme circa 1580—when the descriptions of a water-saturated
landscape became plentiful and varied—few Spanish agricultural operations
existed. A handful of Spanish livestock operations had appeared in Tlaxcala by
the late 1540s, but were denounced by the indigenous government (Cabildo)
of the province of Tlaxcala. Most were thus terminated and removed by 1554.
Nevertheless, between 1585 and 1604, Spanish estates had re-emerged through-
out Tlaxcala, filling the great rural voids opened by indigenous depopulation.26
Tlaxcalteca, not Spaniards, dominated early shepherding operations in the
province. Indeed, the indigenous government in Tlaxcala—that is, the Cabildo
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 75

de la Ciudad y Provincia de Tlaxcala—developed the earliest and largest flocks,

with numbers ranging from ten thousand in 1542 to fourteen thousand in 1559
and fifteen thousand in 1593.27 Their sheep grazed on enormous tracts of lush
(previously uncultivated) valley land in Amalinalco, Teoatlauco, and Mazatepec,
all regions in northwestern Tlaxcala with extensive grasslands.28 Some mid-
size private indigenous sheep farms were established in the 1560s when the
Crown awarded to native noblemen from Atlihuetzyan (a central town along the
Zahuapan River) estancias (livestock ranches) for sheep in the flatlands in north-
eastern Tlaxcala, tens of kilometers from their home town of Atlihuetzyan.29
Despite ample watering holes and pastures, herd success was not guaranteed.
Indeed, the flocks were difficult to keep alive, almost dying out in 1549 as ewes
failed to birth, and then struggling again in the 1580s when shepherds misman-
aged their flocks.30 After the first episode, indigenous governments in Tlaxcala,
for instance, even hired Spaniards in the 1540s and 1550s to teach Old World
agriculture.31 The timing of these high-mortality events coincides with pluvial
extremes as well as with the cocoliztli events, suggesting links between climate,
demographic collapse, and the health of flocks. On the other hand, price signals
might have been most important. Falling demand for wool in the wake of the
epidemic of 1576 caused the value of sheep to plummet, forcing many peasants
to liquidate their herds, exchanging them for maize or butchering them for
meat.32 As the human populations rebounded somewhat, and as international
wool markets opened up, so too did interest in shepherding, although the apex
of the shepherding rebound seems to have occurred about 1620, followed by a
slow diminishing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.33
Ultimately, the restrained investment in shepherding in Tlaxcala—despite
the wealth of water and grass—is best explained by opportunity costs analysis.
Tlaxcala was a land of relative natural bounty in close proximity to the largest
markets in New Spain. Grazing took a back seat to other agrarian pursuits.
Riverine and palustrine pig-raising ventures, for instance, proliferated after
the 1580s. The earliest agrarian ventures in the Atlancatepec region of Tlaxcala
sought to profit from the burgeoning pork industry, selling meat, bacon, and
soap in both local and distant silver-mining markets.34 According to Muñoz
Camargo, indigenous Tlaxcalan peasants were already specializing in hog prod-
ucts by the 1580s, specifically in areas around wetlands. He described “great
wetlands . . . in which great quantities of pigs are raised.”35 Downstream, the
area near Topoyanco “harvested a great quantity of . . . hogs because of the many
marshes that are here and because the natives are given to raise much quantity
76 | Chapter 2

of this livestock.” In fact, across the entire province of Tlaxcala both Tlaxcalteca
and Spaniards “raise pigs in small sties [pequeños pegujales]” that “amounts to a
large sum of this livestock.”36
The timing of these ventures and the location of their production leads one to
wonder if the stocks raised in the cold, wet early colonial era were primarily of
the Asian variety, perhaps newly imported from the Philippines, following the
global reach of the Spanish empire. The short, stout Asian hog was very differ-
ent from the European variety with long legs, claws, and snout. The former was
penned, lived in sties close to homes, and enjoyed cool, muddy conditions. The
European variety was a forest forager, using its agility to forage long distances
in forest ecosystems.37 This was an animal—and associated ecology—that was
unfamiliar to not only natives but to Spaniards too, perhaps developed in the
highlands of New Spain where the animal, ecology, and knowledge converged
in novel forms.
There is reason to believe that the ecological relations necessary to develop
this industry were developed by indigenous groups, particularly in Tlaxcala’s
great wetlands. As revealed above, indigenous farmers in Tlaxcala were deeply
involved in this wetland hog industry and not the forest variety. Muñoz Cam-
argo noted that the pigs ate the roots of plants that grow in these wetlands.38
Other documents from the early seventeenth century make it clear that the
pigs fed on tule, a large bulrush whose growth had been very much encour-
aged and tended to by native farmers since pre-Hispanic times, in order to
produce baskets, mats, and many other household supplies. Indigenous farm-
ers had recognized since the mid-sixteenth century that European livestock
showed interest in consuming the tule.39 This wild plant was such a critical
food source for ciénega pigs that a rental agreement from 1600 specified that
the temporary rights to the hog farm near the Atlancatepec Marsh included
passage via a neighboring estate into the Atlancatepec Marsh, so that “when
the dry season came, the pigs could eat in the said wetland.”40 The estate being
rented was surrounded by indigenous properties, many of which would be sold
to the estate between 1595 and 1620. Not infrequently, the line of biotic diffu-
sion was not from Spaniard to native (as one might expect), but from native to
Spaniard. The earliest references to the industry are associated with the Tlax-
calteca, while estate records strongly suggest that Spaniards purchased their
stock from the natives, and perhaps even relied on indigenous knowledge of
wetland swine ecology.41 It is also true, however, that other Spanish estates
cultivated a more traditional, European, upland swine industry. Upland hog
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 77

farms—in Spanish-dominated areas—let pigs graze in juniper savannas, “fat-

tening” on the berries that grow on those trees.42 Spanish estate records often
differentiated the forest hogs from the wetland varieties, calling the former “of
the savanna” (de savana), and the latter “sty pigs” (de pegujales) or even pigs “of
the land” (de la tierra), a term used for native animals.43 This latter term strongly
suggests a non-European origin to the pigs raised in sties and wetlands. In sum,
it seems that a very traditional Spanish-looking upland swine industry operated
parallel to a new wetland swine industry that was likely led and innovated by
indigenous farmers in Tlaxcala and probably elsewhere in central Mexico. This
new wetland swine ecology indicates creative and productive uses of the new
hydrology, ancient native plants, and new biota traveling across the Pacific on
the Spanish galleons.

The Ecology of Collapse

While Tlaxcala was exceptional geopolitically, its residents were as suscep-

tible to disease as people elsewhere. Tlaxcala has some of the best available
demographic data to back up this conclusion. The locally produced, Nahuatl-
language census (padrón) of 1557 is particularly rich, giving a good baseline from
which to project backward (toward the Conquest), and to connect to subsequent
colonial population counts, which lacked the depth of the indigenous count.44
The mortality events with the greatest impact (in terms of total case mortality
and even case mortality rates) were the earliest epidemics: 1520 and 1545 stand
out as truly exceptional, while 1576 was the last year in which a high-magnitude
mortality event occurred (until the 1690s, when ~40,000 died, and again in the
1730s, when ~50,000 died, both of which are roughly equivalent to deaths in
1576: ~48,000). Other events hardly compare. In fact, the number of dead in
1520, 1545, and 1576 were eight, ten, and three times, respectively, more than the
average case mortality of other pre-1630 epidemics. These demographic trends
are depicted in figure 8.
Many scholars of the environmental history of early colonial Mexico see
disastrous consequences of demographic sixteenth-century collapse. In a study
of Santa María Asunción, in the Valley of Mexico, anthropologist Barbara Wil-
liams argues that population decrease “would have caused abandonment of ero-
sion control in the barrancas and on the terraces, leading to upper slope erosion
of soil and archaeological materials and concurrent sedimentation and burial
78 | Chapter 2

FIGURE 8 Population changes in colonial Tlaxcala. Square markers on the gray line iden-
tify the reports of Tlaxcala’s population in historical documents. Skopyk, “Undercurrents
of Conquest,” chap. 4.

of material on the lower slopes.”45 Geoarchaeologist Carlos Córdova identi-

fied significant soil erosion immediately after the Spanish conquest, which he
associates with the “abandonment of lands on slopes and the lack of terrace
maintenance.”46 Archaeologist Christopher Fisher, too, advanced this position
for the Pátzcuaro Lake region in Michoacán, while Aleksander Borejsza drew
similar conclusions for Tlaxcala.47
Both quantitative and qualitative evidence cast doubt on a link between
demographic collapse and land degradation. First of all, the temporal patterns
of land abandonment have been poorly understood. Most land would have been
abandoned within a few decades of the Conquest. By estimating the number of
hectares cultivated per person, and by multiplying this by the known population
totals at various times of the colonial era, the total area of abandonment can be
calculated and summed. The results of this calculation are presented in figure 9,
which suggest that 64 percent of all land had been abandoned within twenty-
five years of the Conquest and 80 percent within a little over fifty years. This
means that even with more than fifty to one hundred–year lag times—to allow
for entrainment and transport of sediment liberated from hillsides—Tlaxcala
City should have witnessed great accumulations of sediment by 1629, when the
last of the pluvial floods struck. Significant alluviation is not reported until the
eighteenth century.48
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 79

FIGURE 9 Abandoned land in the Tlaxcala City watershed (hectares). For the method-
ology of determining total population, case mortality, and area under cultivation, see
Skopyk, “Undercurrents of Conquest,” chap. 4.

While such calculations provide a rough guide to when we should expect to

see degradation resulting from land abandonment (if it occurred), descriptions of
the ecological response of the Tlaxcalan ecology to demographic collapse enable
a more qualitative assessment. These descriptions reveal that the mid-sixteenth-
century crisis inscribed itself on the Tlaxcalan landscape as ecological renewal,
not transformation or degradation. As agriculture receded, herbaceous and
arboreal vegetation regenerated. This process is visible through the prolonged
and fiery discourse within the Tlaxcalan Cabildo, which sought to rectify the
perils of empty granaries and expanding grasslands. The “grasslands discourse,”
as I call it, continued for at least seventeen years (1551–67) and perhaps longer;
minutes were discontinued after 1567.49 In total, twelve sessions addressed the
problem of the expanding grasslands and the desire to reclaim them.50
The Tlaxcalan Cabildo understood all too well that the uncultivated lands
would be lost if not utilized and, moreover, that the epidemic of 1545 had only
expanded these wastelands, which it defined as grasslands.51 The Cabildo first
mentioned the need to counter the spread of grasslands when it met at the end of
April 1551, a month or so before the beginning of the planting season. Agricultural
production had dropped significantly since 1545, and as farmers abandoned fields,
grasses invaded the cultivated spaces, transforming them into “grasslands” (zacat-
lalli). Thus, on April 27, 1551, the Cabildo assembled to discuss the problem of
abandonment and to hatch a plan to revitalize Tlaxcala’s shrinking agrarian sector:

They discussed and united to speak because all over Tlaxcala there are many
grassy agricultural fields [zacacuemitl]; the area within sight of churches should
80 | Chapter 2

be cleared of grass [zacamoz]. If many macehualli [non-elite farmers with land]

are available, they will clear it of grass [quizacamozque]; if there are not many
persons, it is also possible that they will clear it of grass [quizacamozque]. The
land newly cleared of grass [zacamolli] will divide in two parts, belonging to
the altepetl and church; where it produces maize it divides into two parts, the
City takes one part and that belonging to the Church is the remainder. . . . As
such it progresses, year after year; the lands will be cleared of grass [zacamoloz]
for the improvement of the fields.52

As seen above, the Cabildo’s minutes for that day repeat the compounded
form of the noun zacatl (zaca-)—which appears in two nominal forms, zacacue-
mitl (grassy agricultural field) and zacamolli (land reopened after clearing)—and
the verb zacamoa (to clear land a second time). Early colonial texts and Nahuatl-
Spanish dictionaries define the verbal formation primarily as to reclaim land,
and in only one instance is the focus on removing grass or other vegetation.53
This leaves open the possibility that grass or other vegetation was not present,
or at least not in any significant amount. The use of standard tropes within
this discourse threatens to discredit the text as little more than rhetoric. For
instance, the Cabildo’s famous discourses on congregación utilized the Crown’s
own rhetoric about the “protection of vassals,” the Nahua conceptualization of
center and periphery, or elements of Franciscan moral discourse such as women’s
honor and social degeneration.54
Yet unlike the religious metaphors, the nominal formations (excepting zaca-
molli, a derivative of zacamoa) are quite varied and leave no doubt that the
primary task was to remove grass that grew up in fields. Most instructive is
the word zacacuemitl (grassy agricultural field), which does not appear in any
dictionary. Likewise, the minutes describe the presence of “much grass” (ueuey
zacatl),55 “grassland” (zacatlaly),56 “land . . . covered by grassed” (tlally . . .
zacayotimani),57 and simply “grass” (zacatl).58 Most tellingly, the minutes from
December 18, 1553, make it clear that grass was literal and not figurative in the
following phrase: “auh yn cuemitl ya miec yn zacaquizaya ic poliui yn tlayliztly”
(there are already many agricultural fields that are coming up in grass by which
maize cultivation is lost).59
While references to zacatl often denote actual grass regeneration, it is nev-
ertheless important to understand that the deeply ingrained conventions in
Nahuatl that connected grass with land abandonment helped to obscure the
existence of woody regeneration. Nahuatl would have rendered nonherbaceous
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 81

vegetation such as brush and trees as tlacotl and cuahuitl, respectively. I have not
encountered such references. Muñoz Camargo, on the other hand, writing in
Spanish, described arboreal regeneration in the wake of field abandonment as
the norm. Unequivocally, he stated that the epidemic of 1545 “ruined and fin-
ished off towns and places that are today nothing more than forests [montes].”60
Explaining the resurgence of secondary growth, as opposed to degradation,
will necessarily be suppositional. Indeed, the set of factors that explain stabil-
ity can range from every element within a system to just a small selection of
them. Indeed, there is no reason to assume that indigenous agrosystems would
inherently possess the seeds of their own destruction, so to speak. Nevertheless,
a few words on the subject seem appropriate.61 Using a philological approach
to indigenous wills (testaments) written in Nahuatl, it seems that early colo-
nial Tlaxcalan agricultural fields were fire-ready and trained to auto-regenerate
after abandonment. Much evidence exists for the presence of long-fallow field
systems that used arboreal and herbaceous regrowth to restore soil nutrients
after the cultivation of maize, a nitrogen-intensive crop, and the staple crop
of central Mexico, then and now. Early colonial indigenous farmers fertilized
soils only in part through the celebrated intercropping method often called the
“three sisters”: that is, beans (which fix nitrogen), squash, and maize. Other
methods included the addition of compost, kitchen refuse, and even “night
soil.” Yet, as anthropologist Teresa Rojas Rabiela convincingly demonstrates, the
basic means of maintaining fertility was through fallowing—in essence, a type
of slash and burn—which allowed wild vegetation to repopulate fields before
burning the fields and thereby releasing the nutrients stored in the accumulated
biomass.
For Tlaxcala, a vocabulary for fallowed land was present. Zacacuemitl referred
to fallow fields, while zacamoa indicated newly recuperated land. A telling
example is provided by a land dispute in the cabecera of Tizatlan from 1568
where a parcel is called yzacamolcuen, which translates literally as “his grass-
cleared-field,” a field recently recovered from the fallow stage. An indigenous
will in Nahuatl from 1580 pertaining to the estate of the indigenous noble-
man don Alonso Juárez lists 25 percent of nonhomestead (callalli) parcels as
zacaquitimani, or fallowed. Some fallowed parcels are associated with trees—
the only such references in the will where trees are mentioned—which further
strengthens the conjecture that said land was in a fallowed state. Tellingly, I have
not found examples of fire-intolerant species such as maguey and alligator juni-
per used as vegetated field boundaries until the end of the seventeenth century.
82 | Chapter 2

As land became more affordable and widely available from one epidemic to
the next, the intensity of cultivation decreased further. The epidemics of 1545
and 1576 initiated not only the “greatest labor shortage in human history” but
an unparalleled surplus of land. The regeneration of vegetation after these epi-
demics constituted an enormous storage of nutrients that were utilized by future
generations. The Cabildo’s recurrent complaints about perilous grasslands con-
ceals the benefits provided by agrarian decompression. Until maguey populated
rural Tlaxcala, fire and Spanish axes could be used to recycle nutrients from
fields that may have lain fallow for more than a generation. The new long-fallow
system is fully demonstrated by a comparison of land availability in pre- and
post-collapse demography. Both Barbara Williams (using pre-collapse Nahuatl
cadastral maps) and Susan Evans (using archaeological field data) assert that
the average land base of pre-collapse central Mexicans was about 1.6 hectares,
constituted by 0.5 hectares of callalli and 1.1 hectares of non-callalli land.62
Comparing this to post-collapse conditions, my examination of late sixteenth-
century indigenous wills shows that the size of the family’s callalli had not
changed, but that now the average family possessed 5.1 hectares of non-callalli
land. With such large tracts of land, there is little doubt that peasant households
utilized a long-fallow system to maintain fertility. This argument agrees with
the hypothesis advanced by Ignacio Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba when he suggested
that indigenous agriculture in Metztitlán, Hidalgo, responded to depopulation
by likely abandoning intensive agriculture for extensive slash-and-burn agricul-
ture.63 His argument rests on the theory advanced by Ester Boserup, who found
a positive correlation between population change and fallow length.64
This brief analysis, which I have expanded in previous works, demonstrates
that when the crises of the mid-sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries struck,
fields responded as rehearsed, regenerating as fallow, without degradation.
Indeed, land abandonment reinforced the long-fallow system and fortified the
auto-regenerative qualities of fields. As such, the perfect storm came and went
without lasting damage to soil and water resources.65

The Rise and Fall of Cochineal

This final section continues the discussion of native plants in native agricul-
ture, forgoing discussions of Spanish estates and Old World biota that have
dominated colonial Mexican agrarian history. This does not mean, however,
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 83

that native plants and native agrosystems remained customary and traditional
after the Spanish conquest. Quite the contrary: the Conquest set in motion
social, political, economic, and biotic forces that made possible new uses of old
plants for new markets. Tlaxcala used its political power to maneuver itself into
a position of leadership in producing for global and regional textile markets.
Most importantly, Tlaxcalteca farmers led New Spain and the world in the
production of cochineal. The venture became so successful that the indige-
nous Cabildo complained that peasants shirked their duties to produce maize,
preferring instead to trade cash crops such as cochineal for grain. This made
famine a likely possibility—according to the Cabildo’s rhetoric—and caused
the granaries to sit empty.66
Tlaxcalteca had produced cochineal in the pre-Conquest period, but output
soared in the 1530s and 1540s owing to a pent-up global demand. Possessing red
textiles indicated power and wealth in many Old World cultures. Old World
red dyes had lacked permanency and remained in short supply, and thus when
Mexican cochineal arrived on world markets, textile manufacturers sought it out
enthusiastically. In short order, the trade in cochineal reached enormous pro-
portions, second in value only to the silver trade. Efforts to transplant cochineal
production outside Mexico persisted until well into the nineteenth century, but
with the exception of a small industry that developed in Peru, such efforts never
paid dividends. As the largest and most quality-conscious producer of cochi-
neal, Tlaxcala attracted the attention of sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers,
who wrote in detail about the Tlaxcalan system of production.67
Dactylopius coccus had many wild counterparts, but the quality and quantity
of the dye produced from these species did not match that of the domesticated
species.68 The insect lives parasitically on various species of the nopal cactus
(Opuntus spp.), usually Opuntus ficus-indica, feeding from the plant’s fluids, or
“blood” (nocheztli) as it is known in Nahuatl. Heavy summer rainfall upset the
insect’s nests on the nopal plant, and winter frost and snowfall could kill off the
insect colonies. Thus, caretakers harvested the insects before June and reserved
a “seed” population for the next year so that when the rainy season subsided,
the insects could be reintroduced to the living cacti. During the dry winter
months, cochineal farmers made two or three seedlings and harvests, taking
care to shield the crops from the nortes that produced freezing temperatures
and sometimes deep snowfall. In Oaxaca, climatic variance between high- and
low-altitude regions made cochineal transhumance possible. The insects made
the trip to the Sierra de Istepeje in May (and back to the valley in October) by
84 | Chapter 2

way of baskets carried by farmers and their families. Cochineal insects had to
be protected from intrusions of farm animals such as turkeys and later chickens,
rodents such as mice and rates, armadillos, and some species of snakes, lizards,
and other insects, such as leeches, grubs, worms, and an unidentified spiderlike
creature.69 After the harvest, the insects required careful processing to preserve
the quality of the dye, and then astute marketing was needed to ensure a prof-
itable return on household labor.
Intensive management of this industry required care of not only insects, but
also the host plants.70 Opuntia ficus-indica exists only as a domesticated species
and must be replanted with slips from the plant. Although the nopal can grow
to heights of four to five meters, those that housed cochineal were kept no taller
than two meters to facilitate extraction and to keep the leaves young and tender.
Nopal plants thrive in soils amended with household waste and ash. Gonzolo
Gómez de Cervantes stated in no uncertain terms that farmers needed to clear
away all competing vegetation from the surrounding soil in order to maintain
soil fertility, limit fungal infections, and keep out pests, such as oxen that ate the
cactus vegetation. Nopal plants needed pruning and support with sticks. More-
over, a healthy cochineal plantation meant constant breeding of plants and ani-
mals. The parasite eventually depletes and kills the host plant, and thus farmers
must consistently plant new hosts and reintroduce the insect to the plants after
the latter have matured, a period of about one and one-half to three years from
planting.71 Such prodigious labor inputs meant that one adult could hope to
manage no more than twenty-five nopal plants.72 All of these considerations—
cultivation, harvesting, replanting, and protection of plants and insects from
cold, rain, pests, and competing vegetation—meant that the ideal cochineal
garden was a very small enterprise of just twenty-five square meters, enclosed
by corn stalks, mud walls, or live fences, and located in the immediate vicinity of
the family’s house, where an abundant supply of familial labor could be found.73
Producers profited immensely from cochineal, and consequently cultivation
spread quickly, providing starting producers with enormous profits. The min-
utes from the Cabildo’s meeting on March 3, 1553, indicate that production
had increased substantially in the previous eight or nine years (i.e., since 1545)
and that farmers from all over Tlaxcala planted nopal and seeded it with cochi-
neal, including in the central and northern regions.74 Southern Tlaxcala and
the neighboring province of Cholula were the most famous producers, but such
fame likely resulted from the large population there, rather than any specific
ecological or economic advantage that the region might have held.75
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 85

In 1553, the Cabildo moved to curtail cochineal production to just ten plants
per person because it said the crop undermined the traditional social hierarchy
(by making the poor rich) and caused widespread immorality (e.g., drunkenness,
fornication, truancy from Sunday mass). The Cabildo also noted food produc-
tion had dropped considerably because farmers focused only on their cochineal
gardens. They deliberated

about how the cochineal cactus, from which cochineal comes, is being planted
all over Tlaxcala. Everyone does nothing but take care of cochineal cactus; no
longer is care taken that maize and other edibles are planted. For food— maize,
chili, and beans— and other things that people need were once not expensive in
Tlaxcala. It is because of this (neglect), the Cabildo members considered, that
all the foods are becoming expensive. The owners of cochineal cactus merely
buy maize, chili, etc., and are much occupied only with their cochineal, by
which their money, cacao beans, and cloth are acquired. They no longer want
to cultivate their fields, but idly neglect them. Because of this, now many fields
are going to grass and famine truly impends.76

Although in December of that year the Cabildo assured that “a very great
quantity of cochineal cactus was destroyed,”77 it made it clear that each per-
son could own ten plants (“nochi tlacatl quivelitac matlactecochtly in piyaloz
nohpalli”),78 a regulation that permitted at least two-fifths of familial labor to
be occupied by cochineal. Even after 1553, cochineal continued to cause a con-
siderable contraction of land use in indigenous farms.79
The boom did not last, and there is strong evidence that climate was the
dominant factor in the decline of cochineal in Tlaxcala. The traditional explana-
tion of the collapse of Tlaxcalan cochineal is demographic. Local officials argued
that Tlaxcalan cochineal production started to fall after the 1576 epidemic, and
despite efforts by Gobernador Alonso de Nava to rejuvenate production in
1585, by 1591 production had dropped by one-half in Tlaxcala.80 Yet cochineal
production expanded greatly after the 1545 epidemic, the worst of all mortality
crises. The collapse of cochineal in the decade after 1576 occurred everywhere
(not just in Tlaxcala).81 Indeed, between 1576 and 1604, Tlaxcala’s population
had fallen from more than 200,000 to 80,000, a nightmarish decline to be
sure, but still much less than the 150,000 who died over two years between
1545 and 1546. Ultimately, Tlaxcalan officials were prescient. Although produc-
tion decreased logically with each epidemic, it failed to rebound at any time
86 | Chapter 2

after 1605. A “memorial” from 1620 declared that cochineal production in the
Tlaxcala and Cholula region amounted to only a small part of the total by 1619
and that the price per unit dropped in Tlaxcala relative to that of the Oaxacan
producers. The problem, ultimately, is not why production fell, but why it never
rebounded in Tlaxcala after these events and then why it continued to fall from
1605 to 1631 even though the Tlaxcalteca population grew during the same
period by about 20 percent.
Geographer R. A. Donkin explains that the movement to Oaxacan domi-
nance in cochineal supply was caused by three factors: (1) meteorological con-
ditions (loss of harvest), (2) Indian mortality (loss of labor), and (3) poor maize
harvests, which drove up maize prices and upset the balance of exchange between
maize and cochineal, effectively driving down the value of the latter.82 His second
point (population collapse) did not have differential impacts in Tlaxcala and
Oaxaca and can be discarded. Yet his first and third points are more intriguing.
Although the memorial of 1620 did not fully clarify the reasons for the col-
lapse of such a rich and socially transformative industry, it suggested strongly
that cold temperatures and excessive rainfall were to blame. Tlaxcala was far
more susceptible to “the bad spells of cold that tended to hurt the harvests” than
was Oaxaca, claimed the memorial.83 Once again, it is important to remember
the susceptibility of Dactylopius coccus to rain (disturbing colonies and washing
insects from the plants) or to cold (the domesticated insects would die or fail
to produce red pigments if they were not protected). Needless to say, snowfall
would be disastrous, not only to Dactylopius coccus, but to the delicate young
plants of Opuntus ficus-indica that were needed to cultivate cochineal. As we
have seen many times already, hydrological conditions in the 1570s and 1580s
reached a maximum, causing not only widespread and recurrent floods in east-
central Mexico, but maybe even contributing to a second round of arenavirus
hemorrhagic fever. The same climatic conditions that made trees grow large and
strong in the 1570s and 1580s proved very difficult for cochineal. Indeed, as drier
conditions set in in the 1590s, cochineal might have rebounded in Tlaxcala if
it had not been for the spate of terrible cold that lasted until roughly 1625. Fall
frosts were more common at this time than during any other period recorded
in the Agroecological Index.
Another surge of cold and wet conditions appeared again between 1604
and 1610. Deep winter snowfall and strong winds in January 1610 killed live-
stock and brought down trees. This storm hit at the peak cochineal period
and undoubtedly ruined cochineal gardens precariously supported by sticks.
 Rising Waters, Perilous Grasslands, and Empty Granaries | 87

Although climate stressed conditions in Oaxaca, too, this region had the dis-
tinct advantage of being able to adapt by moving downslope, to warmer condi-
tions. Dactylopius coccus in Tlaxcala—a mountainous zone with no land below
2,150 meters—had no warmer climes to retreat to.84 After relatively warm times
in the early colonial era, the increasingly cold and damp climate of the later six-
teenth century and early seventeenth century must have convinced Tlaxcalteca
farmers that cochineal was a risky business.

Conclusion

The first hundred years or so after the Spanish conquest of Mexico was nothing
short of transformative, the conjuncture of a millennial-scale climate event (the
Colonial Mexican Pluvial), a biotic exchange of unparalleled significance (the
Columbian Exchange), and a sociopolitical regime change (Spanish imperi-
alism). For this ecological revolution, it would be easy to write a grim history
of death and despair, of lost botanical riches, and of degradation and decline.
I have, however, chosen to focus on interactions between biophysical rhythms,
social practices, and economic markets, particularly the indigenous management
of land and other resources for the production of local, regional, and global
agricultural goods. Mortality and climate crises not only caused hardship, but
forced the hand of some people and opened doors for others.
The other analytical tack that I have taken is to shift our focus from Spanish
to indigenous land use. The story we tell of landscape alteration in Tlaxcala—
and elsewhere—should attempt to describe agrarian processes that speak to the
majority (i.e., the 90–99.9 percent of cultivators who were indigenous) and not
only a small minority of Spaniards. Spanish administrators, Spanish farmers,
and Spanish biota all shaped the responses and outcomes of human reactions
to climatic and demographic change, and yet it is easy to exaggerate Spanish
influence and power in colonial history, especially during this early phase. Tlax-
calan cochineal circulated through global commodity chains made possible by
imperial merchants and their commercial networks.85 Asian pigs were produced
on indigenous farms in the expanded wetlands of the pluvial for regional mar-
kets that emerged with the growth of Spanish silver mining. We find litigation
between native groups using Spanish courts. Two of the three great epidemics of
the sixteenth century originated, it seems, from New World etiological agents
responding to both global climate events and Spanish disturbance of the soil.
88 | Chapter 2

Spanish sheep, pigs, and grains do not seem to have played such an important
role in the sixteenth century, and yet, when they did, indigenous farmers often
had control of them. Asian pigs, native insects, and indigenous land and water
management systems often predominated over European ones.
I do not wish to erase the European presence, but rather to show that natives
and native biota often played leading roles in making the New World new. They
did not inhabit a parallel universe but one where the Tlaxcalteca and other
groups solved new and difficult socioecological problems in creative ways. Old
World agriculture mattered but less because men of Iberian descent owned
farms in the flatlands and more because—as we will see in the next chapter—
Old World plants, animals, and tools fell quickly into the hands of indigenous
farmers. What surprises in this analysis is that such creativity could be found
in such dire times. Raising Asian pigs in native marshes proved a lucrative
business. Cochineal production made peasants rich and threatened the social
order, only to be overturned by some of the coldest decades in the Holocene.
What counted in Tlaxcala, as in Teotihuacán, was that natives maintained an
active, dynamic, and innovative responsiveness to the changing social ecology
that confronted them.
 CHAPTER 3
A Drunken Landscape
Pulque, Mule Trains, and the New Wastelands

U
ntil the middle of the twentieth century, pulque was still king among
the inebriants of central Mexico.1 It was the most popular intoxicant of
pre-Hispanic Mexico and became consumed in ever-greater quantities
in colonial times. It is produced from the sap (neuctli in Nahuatl, aguamiel in
Spanish) extracted from the maguey pulquero, a class of succulents in the agave
family of which the most important species was Agave salmiana (figure 10).2
The geographic extent of this plant is roughly coterminous with the central
Mexican settlement zone (see map 4). Per capita colonial consumption has been
estimated at an astounding 785 liters per year.3
The maguey was domesticated in ancient Mexico and has been integrated
into local agrosystems for thousands of years. Shortly after the Conquest, Friar
Toribio Motolinía noted that “the entire land is full of these maguey.”4 He
characterized the plant as versatile and noble, like iron because “from it are
made and extracted so many things.”5 Not only was the sap used to produce
pulque but was consumed in the raw (nonfermented) by all ages. Mexicans ate
the roasted leaves (called mexcalli), which were also sweet. Sometimes, the leaves
were stuffed with meat and slow roasted, a dish called barbacoa in modern Mex-
ico. The leaves were sometimes dried and then processed for fiber, which was
then used for paper or to spin into thread for cloth, rope, and shoes. Many early
colonial maps were produced on paper made with maguey fibers. The thorns
that line the edges of the leaves (pencas) could be used as nails or needles. Dried
F I G U R E 1 0 Mature maguey pulquero (Agave salmiana). The agave’s spike— as seen
above— indicates that the plant will live for only a few more weeks and its sap will not
be collected. Photo by author, March 2005.
 A Drunken Landscape | 91

leaves were used for cooking fuel or for green compost. The great spike, reaching
ten to twenty feet high, made excellent timbers for building construction. Thus,
while the maguey was deeply integrated into the fabric of everyday life (and
agrosystems), it was not always used—indeed, was often not used—to produce
pulque. Indeed, pre-Hispanic governments strictly regulated where and when
pulque could be drunk.
The Spanish conquest, however, initiated a growth of pulque consumption
and production that, by the middle of the seventeenth century, led to a radical
shift in the place of the maguey in the economy, ecology, and culture of Mexico.
Crown-authorized pulque trade began in and around Mexico City by the late
1580s and continually expanded afterward.6 In the seventeenth century, the
colonial government—fiscally squeezed in difficult times—saw a fiscal upside
to pulque and eased restrictions on its consumption even further. Aided by
climate conditions, viceregal tax reforms, and market incentives, production
soared. By the end of the seventeenth century, the royal treasury profited greatly
from pulque, with annual tax receipts equal to the Indian tribute or the sales
tax (alcabala).7 In the province of Tlaxcala, a royal decree of 1793 declared that
pulque was “the only industry with which [the natives] have sustained and
maintained themselves.”8
Despite pulque’s popularity, its centrality to the viceroyalty’s fiscal solvency,
and its role in creating personal fortunes in colonial Mexico, colonial authori-
ties despised and railed against it. Officials highlighted its role in exacerbating
social ills and condemned pulque cantinas (known as pulquerías) as places of
vice that served only to debase the lower orders. During the epidemic of 1635,
for instance, New Spain’s Viceroy Cerralbo wrote to the king of Spain, iden-
tifying the cause of sickness among the natives to be “the great injury that the
pulque drink does to them.”9 Negative portrayals of the liquor abounded, almost
always as a means to point out the weakness and failings of the popular classes.
Yet drinking pulque was common not only among indigenous peoples and
the plebian classes. It attracted a following among Spaniards and creoles, who
enjoyed a drink of this slightly slimy, sour-tasting beverage. This association was
often made by foreign visitors, such as the great naturalist Alexander von Hum-
boldt. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, he noted that even though
pulque’s “fetid” aroma made it hard to swallow for the newly initiated, it had
won over many Spaniards who came to “prefer pulque to every other liquor.”10
As early as the 1690s, another foreigner, Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Carreri,
documented the taste preference, claiming that “some Spaniards drink as much
92 | Chapter 3

[pulque] as the indios.”11 The association between pulque and Mexican culture
was well established by the wars of independence. A late-colonial image shows
Mayahuel and the Virgen de los Remedios—two female spiritual entities—
rising from the heart of the maguey.12 By the mid-nineteenth century, the drink
had attained a nationalistic overtone. José Agustín Arrieta painted soldiers in
a cantina, surrounded by women who prepared food and served pulque. All
persons in the scene were depicted with fair skin.13 The binding and celebration
of an indigenous past with a Mexican national culture was put on canvas by José
Obregón in 1869 in his indianesque painting The Discovery of Pulque.14
In this chapter, I argue that this thriving liquor market produced more than
the social ills about which some of the Mexican elite complained. Rural pulque
production transformed the central Mexican countryside, triggering environ-
mental impacts that in many places dwarfed the biological revolution set off by
the arrival of Spaniards in the New World. Pulque’s rise made sense in the last
few (very cold) decades of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial. Yet, during the Late
Maunder Minimum climate extreme from the mid-1680s until the 1710s (with
an unmatched extreme between 1696 and 1705), the new agrosystem in which
the maguey starred acted as a catalyst for soil movements of an unprecedented
scale. Important environmental risks accompanied the land-use systems for
cultivating the maguey. Even though central Mexican farmers have used and
manipulated several species of agave for more than nine thousand years, maguey
cultivation in colonial Mexico was radically different from what preceded it. A
large body of evidence points to the rapid expansion of sloping terraces during
the seventeenth century, planted almost exclusively with maguey, a field sys-
tem known as metepantli. This was a novel and risky strategy. Planting hillside
sloping terraces with maguey started to gain popularity at the beginning of the
seventeenth century when pulque markets began to expand rapidly, but reached
its apex in Tlaxcalteca fields only after 1668. The geophysics, biology, and ener-
getics of the new agroecosystem diverged entirely from so-called traditional
indigenous peasant agriculture. The new ecology performed poorly and lacked
resilience in times of stress.
While the evidence presented in this chapter comes exclusively from Tlax-
cala, it is worth pointing out that the maguey pulquero dominated the Teo-
tihuacán Valley as it did the Zahuapan Valley. Indeed, the geographic and
economic dominance of maguey across the Teotihuacán Valley likely exceeded
that of Tlaxcala. Major asientos de pulque (monopolies to market pulque in
defined geographic regions) were located in the valley, specifically at Otumba,
 A Drunken Landscape | 93

Teotihuacán, Nexquipayac, Tecama, Xometla, Atlatongo, and Ixtlahuacan. Most

importantly, the region from Otumba (upper Teotihuacán Valley) to Apam
(outside of the valley, between Otumba and Tlaxcala) was, arguably, the most
important pulque-producing region in all of New Spain, undeniably so if we
consider the delivery of pulque to Mexico City.15 The broad argument presented
below thus applies equally to both regions and, more generally, to the entire
central Mexican pulque region.

The Maguey in Early Colonial Society

Before discussing the new place of the maguey within mid-seventeenth-century

Tlaxcalan society and ecology, it is first necessary to establish the early colonial
baseline. Agave cultivation in Mexico dates back to at least six thousand years
before the present.16 Species grew readily in central Mexican soils, growing best
at elevations between eighteen hundred and three thousand meters, and living
between seven and twenty-five years.17 In deep organic soils with substantial
nutrient stores, the plant matures earlier and dies at a younger age than when
grown in thin, nutrient-deprived, and rocky soils. It is tolerant of frost—even
severe frost—and withstands bouts of hail, drought, and even snowfall.
A collection of forty-one indigenous wills from southern Tlaxcala (1572–
98) demonstrates that farmers, at this time, grew maguey close to their homes.
These primary habitational parcels (also used for cultivation) were called callalli,
“house-land.” Each family also possessed numerous non-callalli plots that were
located at some distance from the house. In almost all cases before 1590, farmers
had planted maguey in the callalli plot or on newly purchased land that had
once been the callalli of another family. Only after 1590 did maguey cultivation
spread out from the callalli parcel, a subject taken up in more detail below.18
Without beasts of burden, pre-Columbian farmers lived close to their fields,
in a dispersed homestead arrangement, with cultivated land separating one
house from another.19 The callalli plots that surrounded the home supplied the
everyday needs of the household, such as fuelwood, medicine, herbs, fruit and
berries, and even provisions for house chores, like cleaning, household repairs,
and even clothing fixes. The callalli parcels possessed excellent land because
they received the greatest investment of labor and soil amendments such as
night soil, compost, ash from the heart, and other household “refuse.” Fertile
soils and the proximity of household labor meant that the callalli parcel focused
94 | Chapter 3

on vegetable and fruit crops and likely contained only small maize plots, a crop
that was planted in the supplementary eccentric parcels. In the cases where
testators declared the dimensions of their plots, the callalli varied in size from
0.1 hectares to 0.8 hectares, with an average of 0.4 hectares.20 Thus, they were
small, intensively cultivated, and frequently harvested.
A large number of uses—in fact, most human uses of the maguey—could
occur simultaneously throughout the life span of the plant, making its incorpo-
ration into the house-garden plot quite rational. The consumption of mexcalli
and the extraction of fibers from leaves could both occur periodically when
the plant had large and healthy leaves. Particularly, the use of maguey fiber
for clothing and rope was a frequent and labor-intensive occupation for many
women, especially in pre-Conquest Tlaxcala when a Mexica embargo had hin-
dered the import of cotton (and other supplies), which stimulated the culti-
vation of maguey for textiles. This complemented the subsequent use of the
spike for lumber, which could occur at the end of the plant’s life, provided that
some leaves remained. Some uses, however, conflicted with others, namely the
collection of aguamiel—for consumption raw or fermented as pulque. When
aguamiel was sought, most leaves needed to be left untouched. Years would
then pass with little benefit to the farmer other than the future consumption of
aguamiel, seven to twenty-five years later.
Biophysically, it also made sense to have the maguey in the callalli plot.
Being able to watch over the maguey also agreed with the maguey’s phys-
iology. Despite its rugged appearance, the plant requires frequent care. It is,
after all, a domesticated plant in which the great efflorescence—which rises
from the heart of the plant a few months before its demise, with a spike about
twenty centimeters in diameter and four or five meters high—produces sterile
seeds. To fuel the rise of this impressive spike, the plant transfers the liquid
stored in leaves to the new growth, a process that depletes and desiccates the
leaves and permits the spike to flower and seed. A strong and well-kept parent
plant of Agave salmiana has broad leaves, reaching a meter or more in length,
that spread concentrically from the plant’s “heart,” resulting in plants with a
diameter of two or three meters and a height slightly less than the diameter.
When cared for, they are truly a spectacular sight. If the plant does not have
any offsets feeding from the many shallow roots, it withers and dies. Similarly,
if the plant has too many offsets that have not been removed from the parent
plant’s roots and growing medium, the offsets deplete the stores of water and
nutrients of the basal rosette and drain the parent plant’s vitality. Eventually,
 A Drunken Landscape | 95

in such competition, both offsets and parent plants weaken and die out, often
replaced by other grasses, shrubs, and trees.21
Given these core household functions of the maguey, and its intensive care,
it made sense that early colonial maguey followed pre-Hispanic patterns. In
these ecological contexts—combined with the political culture of restrained
consumption—maguey were rarely used for pulque. Even in the 1580s, forty
years after Friar Motolinía, Diego Muñoz Camargo dedicated more than a page
to the maguey plant in his Descripción but never once mentioned metepantli
or pulque.22 Instead, the diverse uses made it indispensable to early colonial
lives and kept the maguey close to home, on the best and probably the flattest
land, making use of the proximity of the entire household’s labor to care for
the plants.

Early Commodification of Pulque

As geographer Georgina Endfield has argued, “experience and awareness of

climatic variability fueled a variety of adaptive strategies, innovation, and agrar-
ian experimentation.”23 Given the demise of the Tlaxcalan cochineal industry,
which began to disintegrate by the 1590s and had virtually disappeared by the
1620s, and given an era in which disease outbreaks with high rates of mortality
occurred almost every other year, along with destructive frosts and snowfalls,
it must have seemed prudent to farmers to invest in maguey, a less fickle and
more frost-resistant cash crop. There were other factors, of course, especially
market signals from an increasingly unregulated trade and rising demand in
urban centers, haciendas, and obrajes (textile factories).
As farmers turned away from cochineal, they sought new cash crops to pay
tribute and buy needed household supplies and, moreover, no longer felt bound
to the house-garden system. While house gardens accommodated the initial
surge in pulque demand, peasant Tlaxcalteca wills show that shortly afterward
farmers shifted maguey production to non-callalli plots. Of the five land pur-
chases, all were maguey land (or newly planted with maguey) and four were
non-callalli plots. Only one of those purchased plots had metepantli, and sig-
nificantly, when farmers seeded new land they did so in the orchard arrange-
ment previously used in house gardens. If we widen the focus to include not
only recently purchased plots but also all instances in which farmers identi-
fied the existence of new maguey plantings, the wills show that in all but one
96 | Chapter 3

instance, maguey expansion occurred within orchards in non-callalli land. This

fact demonstrates a trend toward cultivating maguey in lands located farther
away from the house complex, that is, in less fertile, more sloped, outlying par-
cels that demanded greater labor inputs. Thus, the fall of the cochineal industry
in Tlaxcala permitted a new way of organizing land and labor in the country-
side, one in which maguey production quickly consolidated its position as the
dominant cash crop.
Production in Tlaxcala grew simultaneously with rising demand. The wills
also show how farmers responded to increasing demand. Sorting the wills into
two groups—before and after 1590—reveals that testators had planted more
parcels with maguey near the end of their lives. Of those wills written before
1590, 7 percent of land parcels had maguey, while after 1590, the proportion rose
to 16 percent. The same data further reveal that testators relied increasingly on
neuctli extraction to pay for postmortem Catholic masses or to resolve outstand-
ing debts. Before 1590 there was only one such instance; after, there were fourteen.
While indigenous wills give few details about cultivation systems, on the
whole they suggest maguey cultivation expanded by conservative means, with
the essential orchard (meyotoc) format being preserved. The wills mention only
six instances where indigenous farmers planted maguey in the metepantli form,
and four of them occurred in the intensely cultivated callalli. In the other thirty-
six examples, testators used the phrase “meyotoc,” meaning literally “a place full
of (or covered by) maguey.” This is to say that farmers expanded maguey pro-
duction in monocropped perennial orchards, or plantations, and not by integrat-
ing them with annuals such as maize, chilies, wheat, or, as would become normal
by the late seventeenth century, barley. This is significant because, in the peren-
nial garden system, farmers did not break up and cultivate the spaces between
plants. While yields would surely be lower in orchard-style fields—because (as
seen above) metepantli accumulate nutrients and water stores beneath the roots
of maguey, and furthermore, because weeds would reduce the quantity of soil
nutrients available to maguey—the system would nevertheless protect hillside
soils from erosive pluvial forces. In sum, the wills show that in the last decade of
the sixteenth century maguey production was rising, that such production was
increasingly market oriented, and that a conservative orchard system accom-
modated rising demand until at least the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The discontinuation of maguey for purposes other than pulque contributed
to its relocation to the geographic periphery. Other forces in the seventeenth
century, beyond the worsening weather and improving urban pulque markets,
 A Drunken Landscape | 97

contributed to the development of eccentric metepantli. Importantly, the colo-

nial government’s resettlement program achieved greater success in the first
decade of the seventeenth century. This resulted in greater population density
of callalli parcels and diminished the available land for eccentric parcels in
the immediate surroundings. Consequently, distances between the house and
eccentric parcels increased. Other factors might have also contributed to set-
tlement density—factors that intensified throughout the seventeenth century,
such as market integration and household dependencies on products purchased
in town markets. By 1749, the Tlaxcalan Cabildo stated clearly that “natives” had
resettled in communities and abandoned their lands and homes in the “hills and
ravines.” The new centralized settlements reinforced and intensified a center/
periphery, or infield/outfield, pattern of land use in which distant plots held
less economic value than central ones because labor costs rose as one traveled
farther from the settlement.24
The integration of sheep into the local agrosystem made maguey fiber largely
redundant and enabled maguey cultivation to relocate to outlying fields because
women no longer needed frequent access to the plants for fiber.25 Tlaxcala’s
pre-Conquest trade embargo (which restricted cotton imports) ended abruptly
after the defeat of the Mexica in Tenochtitlán, but cotton remained expensive.
The Tlaxcalteca turned to sheep wool to fill their need for clothing manufac-
ture. Even lexicographically, wool edged out maguey and cotton fiber. Nahuatl
speakers called sheep and cotton fiber by the same name (ichcatl), a word that
itself derived from the Nahuatl word for maguey thread (ichtli).26 Marginaliza-
tion of the maguey thus proceeded on a number of fronts: spatially (away from
peasant residences), socially (from women to men), and even linguistically (as
seen immediately above). At the same time, however, the maguey assumed a
highly specialized economic role within the Tlaxcaltecatl household economy.

The Asiento de Pulque

Despite the emergence of maguey as a cash crop located in outlying fields,

until the advent of a new transportation and marketing system in 1668, fam-
ilies continued to market their own pulque, and as a consequence production
likely remained moderate. Husbands looked after the fields and fermented the
neuctli, and wives rushed the product to market before it spoiled (about five days
after the neuctli was extracted).27 In the familial marketing system, fields and
98 | Chapter 3

markets remained by necessity in close proximity, probably within ten to fifteen

kilometers.28 A small minority of farmers took their product to market with
mules, but most walked it to market. According to anthropologist Ross Has-
sig’s calculations, professional porters (tlamamah) carried about twenty-three
kilograms for twenty-one to twenty-eight kilometers per day.29 In this scenario,
family members would likely carry less weight and travel far shorter distances,
especially given that most who carried their pulque to market were non-adult
males who needed enough time to sell their goods, buy new products, and return
home in the same day. Marketing liquids within this familial system restricted
pulque output and curbed ambitions to seed additional land with maguey.
After 1668, marketing pulque congealed into an efficient and formalized
system that in Tlaxcala and the city of Puebla (to the south) separated mar-
keting and production, a situation that enabled pulque producers from much
farther away to participate. In 1668, seeking to increase tax revenue and to
profit from the growing trade in pulque, the colonial government established
the asiento de pulque in Mexico City and shortly after another in the region of
Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Cholula, and yet another in Oaxaca.30 The asentista (or
tax farmer) paid a large, flat rate of tens of thousands of pesos for the exclusive
right to collect the taxes on pulque sales and even maguey plants. The more tax
he collected, the greater he profited. The huge payments that the asentista made
to the Crown treasury indebted him to the colony’s wealthy merchants, which
in turn gave the asentista a vested interest in seeing the pulque industry thrive
and in ensuring that this commodity moved through official markets where it
could be effectively controlled and taxed. The amounts collected by the asentista
will be explored below when I estimate the increase of pulque production and
consumption in Tlaxcala after the installation of the asiento in Puebla.
One method to facilitate and control the trade was the creation of a mule-
train system that stretched into the countryside and picked up pulque. A report
from 1772–73 clarified the method used in the late colonial era, which was prob-
ably quite similar to that a century earlier.31 Pulque-filled sheepskin sacks were
cleaned with an acid wash and then made impermeable by applying numerous
coats of fat to it. The sacks were then loaded on mules and rushed to market

without any loss of time and as delicately as possible, especially when faced
with large distances between ranch and market. They come from as far away as
twenty-five leagues to Mexico City. They travel all night. . . . Even with these
measures, losses cannot be avoided; some pulque ferments, froths, and spews out
 A Drunken Landscape | 99

of the bags, which must be loosened so as to expel a little more. For this reason
and because the muleteers furtively drink or sell some to travelers en route, the
muleteers believe it necessary to top up the bags with water so as not to call
attention to the losses when the bags are weighed and measured on arrival.32

While the details of transport seem relatively clear, the precise modus operandi
of the transport industry is not, and is still more obscure with regard to macehualli
(non-elite farmers with land) production. In Tlaxcala the post-familial pulque
industry divided into three distinct social sectors: a tax-free category of “extractor-
owners of maguey,” and two distinct taxable classes, the “transporters” and the
“pulque-traders.”33 The pulque traders operated the business end of the new system,
contracting and paying farmers for their product, while the “transporters” brought
the product to towns and cities by mule trains. This division of labor indicates very
clearly that farmers no longer transported or marketed their pulque. Undoubtedly,
farmers continued to transport some pulque on their own backs and by contraband
methods. Yet by 1670 a substantial quantity of pulque was already moved by large,
organized loads, not by individual farmers.34 In a case from southern Tlaxcala,
locals fought over access to roads and the damage done by specialized mule trains
that moved pulque and lumber into Puebla, and it is even suggested that the local
indigenous townspeople helped to operate the mule trains.35
Mules revolutionized the pulque industry by reducing transportation costs
and connecting distant lands to urban markets. The fast rate of putrefaction
demanded that pulque move quickly from field to market. Farmers had no
control over how much or when neuctli flowed. Based on the different carrying
capacities outlined above, human porters could carry at most one-half of the
mule’s load and, in most cases, just one-third to one-quarter. The benefits of
mule labor increased substantially for three reasons. First, a single muleteer
led a team of mules to market, not just one or two animals, and thus the load
transported with the labor of a single person was tens of times greater than that
of a human porter. Second, mules traveled longer hours than humans and thus
across much greater distances. Lastly and perhaps more importantly, mules did
not compete with humans for food sources. Farmers could grow hardy grains
that required few nutrients (such as barley) between rows of maguey, which
could then be fed to draught animals and other livestock, leaving the nitrogen-
demanding maize to grow on land that had sources of fertilizer nearby, such
as in ravine, riverine, and floodplain environments. Of course, feeding livestock
cultivated feed (instead of pasturage) meant that more land had to be cultivated.
100 | Chapter 3

Indeed, barley was fed not only to mules but to oxen that would plough the
fields (and build metepantli, as seen below) and also to sheep and pigs. Thus, the
energy requirements for these transportation and agrarian systems demanded
extensive tracts of land and substantial investments of energy. Without the
mules and oxen, pulque consumption would have been more local, more expen-
sive, and more limited in scope and quantity.
In 1688 the Crown ordered that traders transport pulque no more than five
leagues, or about twenty-one kilometers.36 According to Vaclav Smil, a mule
traveling one meter per second over eight hours moved twenty-six kilometers
per day.37 Yet the scientific paper from 1772–73 quoted above notes that mule
trains customarily moved all night and in many cases traveled as many as twenty-
five leagues (100–140 km). Indeed, this point had been made much earlier by
the Duke of Alburquerque in 1709 and even before that in 1680. The decree
issued by the Duke of Alburquerque repeated the 1680 Royal Provision, saying:

Because it is common to move [pulque] by night, the mules that tire are left by
the road and when those who transport the goods return they often discover
that the . . . local authorities have confiscated the animals and in return demand
excessive quantities of money; if not given such sums, they sell or keep the ani-
mals. . . . In order to avoid these problems, the Real Provisión was issued, but
regardless of the origin of this law, such excesses have not yet been remedied.38

Thus, from 1680 onward, the Crown recognized the crucial role played by
mules in the pulque trade and set out rules to protect muleteers and their live-
stock. The efficacy of laws, and in particular the five-league law, remains uncer-
tain. Virtually everyone except consumers benefited from circumventing such
laws, and thus twenty-one kilometers likely indicated the minimal zone of influ-
ence of a market as defined within the confines of the formalized mule-train
system. Map 5 shows the pulque marketing system (asiento) in Mexico, while
map 15 shows the multiple marketing sites in Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán. Legally,
Tlaxcala City incorporated almost the entire Zahuapan River basin except the
towns of Tlaxco (to the north) and Huamantla (to the east), while the city of
Puebla could draw from as far north as San Bernardino Contlan and even Santa
Cruz. In reality, however, pulque could have arrived to the city of Puebla from
anywhere in Tlaxcala. Moreover, it is not unthinkable that Tlaxcala sent pulque
to Mexico City. The area of Apam, just west of Tlaxcala’s borders, sent large
quantities of pulque to Mexico City.39
 A Drunken Landscape | 101

MAP 15 Pulque markets and their regional supply zones in Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán.
The map shows sightlines and distances between the geographic centers of Tlaxcala and
Teotihuacán and the locations of pulque asientos. The province of Tlaxcala controlled its
own pulque marketing, resulting in a dearth of official pulque asientos there and, thereby,
a false perception of a relatively limited number of pulque markets available to that
province. Much pulque was also bought and sold outside of the official asiento system.

Soaring Production of Pulque

The creation of the asiento in 1668 clearly invigorated the pulque trade and
maguey production. Official records of the Crown’s tax revenue from the Puebla
asiento show annual payments of about twenty-one thousand pesos in 1668.40
This appears to have held quite steady until 1692.41 José Hernández estimates
that consumption reached about 310,000 liters annually, but this calculation
102 | Chapter 3

errs by overlooking the legal revenue not reported by the asentista. Hernán-
dez’s estimate includes only the Crown’s tax revenue. The asentista took a large
share of the revenue to pay expenses and make a profit. Moreover, given the
regular annual consumption of pulque per adult (approximately 785 L) and the
population of the city of Puebla in 1675 (at least 68,000), annual consumption
there should equal closer to 53 million liters, 172 times the amount suggested
by Hernández.
An official record from 1670 shows that 142 cargas (loads) of pulque arrived
in the city of Puebla from Tlaxcala over a two-day period. With each load
equivalent to about 136 liters,42 the 1670 document indicates that slightly less
than 10,000 liters moved from Tlaxcala into the city of Puebla every day, which
extrapolates to more than 3.5 million liters each year. This amount includes
only legal (taxed) loads of pulque blanco, which for reasons set out below rep-
resent only about one-half of total exports. Thus, one can project that about
20,000 liters of pulque moved into Puebla from Tlaxcala each day, about 7 mil-
lion liters annually, for which about 1,400 hectares of land (annually) and about
three hundred mules (daily) were dedicated. If Pueblans consumed 53 million
liters annually, then these tax receipts suggest that Tlaxcala supplied about
13  percent of this market, which makes sense given the close proximity of
many other potential suppliers from non-Tlaxcalan indigenous towns near
Puebla. After the uprisings of the 1680s, Tlaxcala paid a flat annual rate of
1,200 pesos to the Puebla asentista. This equates to only 6 percent of royal
revenue for the asiento de pulque of Puebla, just half of what the 1670 tax
revenues indicate. Once again, Tlaxcala had struck quite a good deal with the
Crown, even though it complained bitterly about this imposition and tried
to reduce or eliminate it.43 With this flat rate, Tlaxcala could increase sales to
Puebla without any financial penalty, giving them a competitive advantage in
the Pueblan market.
With such incentives, it is not surprising that pulque production sky-
rocketed. The Puebla asentista capitán don Gabriel de Inchaurriqui reported
in 1692:

In the twenty years since the pulque asiento began, one cannot ponder how
the number of maguey has increased. . . . Many indios who before seeded their
little parcels of land with maize, find better profits and business in maguey
and have [since] occupied themselves with them [to such a degree that] they
do not have nor apply themselves to any other labor and crop other than . . .
 A Drunken Landscape | 103

maguey, neglecting almost completely to cultivate in the said lands maize and
other seeds.44

It is possible to estimate the amount of land needed to produce enough

neuctli for both direct consumption and pulque. Table 1 shows the evolution of
Tlaxcala’s population and that of the city of Puebla.45 The next step is to take
these population figures and calculate the amount of land needed to produce
the neuctli and pulque consumed by colonial families. Given this low popu-
lation density, the amount of land required for neuctli and pulque in Tlaxcala
was small compared to the total area available for indigenous cultivation. The
area cultivated with maguey is shown in table 2, averaging 6,300 hectares, or
roughly 5 percent of arable land (excluding that belonging to Spanish estates).
In absolute terms, 5 percent is hardly significant, but then again, I estimate
that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 80–87  percent
of Tlaxcalteca land remained unused or underused. Thus, 5 percent of total

TABLE 1 Population estimates of Tlaxcala and the city of Puebla.

Pop. Prov. Pop. City Total Pulque

Year Tlaxcalaa of Pueblab Consumersc

1525 250,000 0 250,000

1550 235,000 2,500 237,500
1575 145,000 7,000 152,000
1600 71,000 15,000 86,000
1625 55,000 26,000 81,000
1650 62,000 45,000 107,000
1675 69,000 68,000 137,000
1700 60,000 61,000 121,000
1725 72,000 79,000 151,000
1750 65,000 50,000 115,000
1775 72,000 50,000 122,000
1800 67,000 60,000 127,000

a
Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 138–48; Trautmann, Transformaciones,
anexos 13.2.1 and 13.2.2.
b
Garavaglia and Grosso, “Región de Puebla/Tlaxcala,” 560–62; Gerhard, Guide to the
Historical Geography, 220– 23; Hoekstra, Two Worlds Merging, 73; Vollmer, “Evolución
cuantitativa.”
c
I estimate two pulque consumers per family of four.
104 | Chapter 3

TABLE 2 Area cultivated with maguey.

Pulque Land in
Total Pulque Consumption Maguey Land for Total Land in
Year Popa Consumersb (L/yr)c (ha)d Neuctli (ha)e Maguey (ha)

1525 250,000 125,000 150 1,974 7,204 9,178

1550 237,500 118,750 250 3,125 6,772 9,897
1575 152,000 76,000 350 2,800 4,178 6,978
1600 86,000 43,000 450 2,037 2,046 4,083
1625 78,000 39,000 550 2,258 1,498 3,756
1650 103,000 51,500 650 3,524 1,671 5,195
1675 133,000 66,500 750 5,250 1,873 7,123
1700 117,000 58,500 785 4,834 1,614 6,448
1725 145,000 72,500 785 5,991 1,902 7,893
1750 111,000 55,500 785 4,586 1,758 6,344
1775 103,000 51,500 785 4,256 1,527 5,783
1800 112,000 56,000 785 4,627 1,498 6,126

Note: An area planted exclusively in maguey produces about 9,500 liters of neuctli per
year. Parsons and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 336.
a
Includes the population of Tlaxcala and the city of Puebla.
b
A pulque consumer is defined as any adult.
c
I assume a gradual increase of consumption. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 67.
d
The average productivity of land planted exclusively in maguey is 9,500 L/ha. Parsons
and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 336.
e
Evans, “Productivity of Maguey Terrace Agriculture,” 126.

arable Tlaxcalteca land is much more important than at first glance. Because
a standard family of five required about 1.1 hectares of land to subsist (an area
that accounts for crop rotation and fallowing), the total Tlaxcalteca population
required an average of about 13,000 hectares for maize and other grains during
the seventeenth century. This means that if farmers planted maguey in 6,300
hectares, this crop took up roughly one-third of all indigenous land (cultivated
or fallow) by 1675, whereas in 1525 it amounted to no more than one-seventh.
Put another way, although the Tlaxcalan population fell to just one-sixth of
its pre-Conquest total of three hundred thousand, the area of land planted in
maguey still covered more than half of its original area (of course, in a new field
arrangement). Looked at from this perspective, maguey cultivation stands out
as a critical component of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century agrosystem
in Tlaxcala and a potential cause of the Zahuapan River’s changing behavior.
 A Drunken Landscape | 105

In Tlaxcala, the pulque industry had become so central to peasant livelihoods

during the seventeenth century that Tlaxcalteca maguey farmers staged violent
protests to ensure they did not pay taxes on their maguey fields (which the
asentista sought). The asentista along with the Crown’s “pulque judge” arrived
in Tlaxcala in 1670 to get the Cabildo to pay their tax arrears, arguing that not
only should pulque sales be taxed but also the plants themselves. The Cabildo
based its claim (as it had numerous times in the past regarding other disputes
over tribute and taxation) on the cédulas (royal orders) issued by Charles I, who
ruled from 1516 to 1556 and had exempted Tlaxcala from tax payments (even
though the province had paid various head taxes since the sixteenth century).46
Once again, the indigenous Cabildo located their cédulas and formulated a
petition against the current measures. Regardless, the pulque judge read the
viceregal order and proceeded on the following day to collect consumption
taxes in the Tlaxcala market. Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, the author
of a famous annals series and a member of the Tlaxcala Cabildo, took part in
the diplomatic mission to reverse the taxes, going first to Puebla and then to
the viceregal court in Mexico City to plead their case. Don Juan Buenaventura
claimed that the province was filled with consternation over the pulque tax: “all
over Tlaxcala, in the entire province, it was their worry—the poor, those who
care for maguey and even those who do not but who pay for it [pulque].”47 The
viceroy heard their case, and after five months of deliberation decided in favor
of Tlaxcala, ordering that only consumers would be taxed and producers would
not pay tax on the maguey in their fields. This solution quelled public anger,
suggesting that producers (not consumers) led the original upheaval. As will be
shown below, pilli such as don Juan Buenaventura were beginning to make large
investments in maguey land at this time. Taxes on maguey plants would have
proved prohibitive to further investments, especially because new plantations
took ten to twelve years before producing sap, so that taxes would accumulate
before farmers earned a return on their investment.
When the pulque judge tried once again in 1671 to impose the plant tax,
consternation turned to violent protest. As don Juan declared, the mob “was
going to kill the pulque judge because maguey were going to be taxed.” At this
point Buenaventura ceased to identify with the masses and allied himself with
Mexican officials. He claimed that he and other public officials had done all
they could do; the officials “had taken all the privilegios, cédulas—every doc-
ument [relative to the issue]—they showed it all, spent a month before com-
ing back.” Yet “the masses did not accept this, roused themselves and came to
106 | Chapter 3

confront us, yelling loudly.”48 Popular protest (fueled by the support of the new
“grassroots” ruling class) spread from pulque taxes to tribute in general as the
Tlaxcalteca demanded a cut in the head tax and increased taxation of the rural
estates. Widespread uprisings continued in 1671–72, prompting Buenaventura
to describe the situation as “an actual war . . . in the palace.” Violence erupted
again in 1680 over the pulque issue when the viceregal government decided to
reinforce the taxes on maguey plants.49 On April 17, 1680, farmers from San
Bernardino Contlan held out a clay pot of pulque before authorities and told
the latter that if the tax was enforced, there would be trouble. And there was:
maguey farmers attacked and stoned officials, causing the latter to take shelter
in the church for eight days. Sword-wielding Spaniards arrived from all over
Tlaxcala to guard the church.
The popular uprisings and the Cabildo’s politicking paid off, and Tlaxcalteca
maguey farmers kept their exemption. The Crown later extended the exemption
in 1716 to all products bought and sold within Tlaxcalan markets.50 The pulque
tax exemption resurfaced again in 1793, at which time the Crown reaffirmed
Tlaxcala’s exemption for not only indios but Spaniards and castas (ethnic groups
beyond indio, español, and negro) residing in the province.51 Ultimately, the
hard-fought battle against taxation gave Tlaxcala a competitive advantage in the
pulque industry and invigorated regional production. On the other hand, the
quick and effective response of Tlaxcalteca maguey farmers to taxation suggests
that even before the founding of the asiento and the associated reorganization
of pulque transport and marketing, Tlaxcalteca peasants had staked their future
on pulque.

Macehualli and Altepetl Pulque Production

By the end of the last quarter of the seventeenth century, Tlaxcalteca farmers
considered maguey cultivation absolutely critical to their livelihoods. The indus-
try grew steadily from the 1590s until 1668, and with the creation of the Puebla
asiento in 1668, maguey plantations soon dominated the rural landscape. The
transition to pulque was so thorough and fast-paced that witnesses, remember-
ing the process in 1743, described it occurring in a single night! In 1663, witnesses
declared hardworking indigenous cochineal producers—fed up with high taxes
and unfair treatment from administrators—led a mass eradication of nopal
gardens (on which cochineal was seeded) and replanted them with maguey.
 A Drunken Landscape | 107

Needless to say, the story is apocryphal; the transition could not have occurred
in one night and one doubts that local farmers made such an important eco-
nomic decision as a collective of individual producers. In fact, the witnesses—all
elite Spaniards with little knowledge of the agrarian history of local indigenous
farmers—overlooked the finer details in search of an overarching narrative, one
that could explain the economic and demographic decline that worried residents
of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region in the eighteenth century. For them, the fields of
maguey reflected not only an economic decline from the riches of cochineal,
but cultural degeneration as well. The men looked despairingly around them,
imagining a drunken landscape of maguey, “which [the indios] maintain in a
succulent condition, being the source of their drunken binges.”52
Contrary to popular opinion, both now and then, the transition to pulque
involved a lifetime of hard work, economic investment, and the designing and
executing of a new ecology. Indigenous townspeople appear to have combined
grain production, shepherding, and maguey in hillside metepantli, that is, slop-
ing terraces seeded with maguey (see figures 11 and 12). Farmers constructed
sloping terraces by digging shallow trenches and mounding the excavated earth
into rows (called berms) within which they planted perennials, in this case
maguey. The berms act as hillside check dams and accumulate soils at and ups-
lope from them. The accumulated soils change soil humidity and water dynam-
ics on hillslopes by storing more water at greater depths, thereby increasing
the likelihood that crops will survive midsummer droughts. Farmers walked
the berms, watching for maguey entering the final stage of their life. Once
identified, the farmer returned twice daily for a period of one to two months
to cut, dig, scrape, and collect the sap from maguey, then transporting it to
the “brewery” (octlaliloyan in Nahuatl, or tinacal in Spanish) where the pulque
fermented.53
After the maguey has expired, farmers excise the roots of the dead plant from
the berm—an arduous and time-consuming task—and then reseed the void
with offsets. Failure to reseed risks losing soil to precipitation and enlarging
spaces where the maguey had been. Nutrient accumulation at the berm bene-
fited the pulque farmer by increasing yields per plant and by shortening the life
cycle of the plant, which also increased overall field production. Worse, if left
unchecked, the hillslope devolves to its pre-terraced slope gradient, meaning
that extremely high rates of erosion occur (see figure 13).54 Riskiest of all was
the creation of new metepantli. Studies show that the season’s first rainfall can
completely wash away newly constructed terraces.55
FIGURE 11 Sloping terraces with maguey (metepantli), central Tlaxcala. Photo by Dean
Snow, winter 1964– 65.

F I G U R E 1 2 Sloping terraces with maguey (metepantli) on barren hillslope in central

Tlaxcala. Photo by Dean Snow, winter 1964– 65.
 A Drunken Landscape | 109

FIGURE 13 Deteriorating metepantli on Tezoyotepec Hill. Photo by author, June 2007.

Maintaining soil fertility on terrace treads was an uphill battle. As William

Sanders notes:

Terrace maintenance is an arduous and never-ending task. Erosion is a constant

threat. Although no detailed study was made, there seems to be a very close
relationship between the condition of terraces and the distance from house
to land, population pressure, and degree of dependence of the landowner on
agriculture for subsistence.56

Terrace treads and berms must be kept clear of competing plants. The shal-
low roots of the maguey force the plant to compete with other shallow-rooted
plants that occupy the same space, such as the grasses that are jeopardizing the
maguey in figure 13. Maguey will rob maize or other crops of nutrients within
a 1.5–2.0 meter distance. That the maguey competes for surface nutrients is
illustrated clearly by figure 11. The photograph reveals the extent to which farm-
ers removed all other vegetation to maximize the maguey’s growth potential.
110 | Chapter 3

Soil fertility maintenance involved clearing away competitor species, cleaning

ditches of sediment. The health of hillslope soils depended on continual renewal
of labor investments.
While sloping terraces existed in central Mexico by the classical period (150–
600 CE) and certainly by the late post-classical era (1150–1521 CE), no reliable
evidence confirms the presence of metepantli before the colonial era.57 Current
archaeological methods cannot determine if sloping terraces were populated by
monoculture maguey or had a mixed perennial arrangement on berms. In 2000,
paleoethnobotanist Emily McClung de Tapia summarized recent archaeologi-
cal findings on this subject and sought to emphasize “direct [physical] evidence
available for agricultural systems” versus “anthropological models.”58 Differing
from scholars such as William Sanders and Susan Evans, who postulate wide-
spread use of metepantli, McClung reminds her readers that all relevant evi-
dence of pre-Conquest maguey cultivation pertains only to house plots (callalli).
No direct archaeological evidence exists for non-callalli sloping terraces with
or without maguey.59 Even Sanders admits that such terraces were practically
impossible to detect archaeologically.60 Tellingly, anthropologist Teresa Rojas
Rabiela has only recently turned up the first and perhaps only early colonial
image of a metepantli.61 Aleksander Borejsza, another expert on this subject
who has conducted extensive fieldwork in Tlaxcala, failed to find evidence of
the metepantli before the arrival of Spaniards, suggesting that “they became
widespread only in the colonial period.”62
In any case, by the mid-seventeenth century, references to metepantli are
everywhere in archival documents. In fact, a mixed farming system seems to
have been used. Monoculture berm (cultivated with maguey) provided pulque
to be sold for cash, while the sloping tread often provided animal feed (such
as barley). Sheep and goats grazed around the deeper soils of the berm, which
stored water and nutrients throughout the dry winter season.63 Communities
such as Yauhquemecan and Contlan, located close to markets in Tlaxcala City
and within one day by mule of the city of Puebla, benefited from close prox-
imity to markets and a rather dense settlement pattern. In land located closer
to major pulque markets, metepantli ribbed the hillsides and defined the limits
of properties. In and around San Bernardino Contlan (the community held
responsible for the pulque riots) and just to the north, San Salvador Tzompantz-
inco, the mixed metepantli agrosystem dominated.64 On the other side of the
Zahuapan River, near Yauhquemecan, this same picture emerges during a tour
of the boundaries of the Ahuehuetitlan parcel wherein metepantli established
 A Drunken Landscape | 111

the border on every side and corner of its perimeter except where the road lay.65
Within two thousand meters of the Ahuehuetitlan parcel (mentioned above),
one could find the pueblos of Yauhquemecan, Ocotoxco, Calapan, Tlacuilocan,
Atentzinco, Cuauhtelolpan, and Tochpan.
That land was in short supply is evidenced by the numerous disputes between
these communities and, moreover, between them and noble landowners. There
is evidence from this region that farmers took advantage of growing pulque
markets as early as 1641, but to meet growing demand for this production, they
had little choice but to reinforce the metepantli and hold in nutrients and top
soils. The correlation of sheep grazing and metepantli agriculture remained
strong in Yauhquemecan, an area that had, in 1644, about eight hundred sheep.66
A beautiful map from 1777 of the hillside where Yauhquemecan was located
shows a complex patchwork of land uses in which livestock movements and
feeding habits were carefully managed and livestock walks, or paths, linked
pastures and water sources. Maguey lay between the various pastures, indicating
that livestock probably moved between and within metepantli before being
corralled at night, which had been the law in Tlaxcala since the 1560s.67 The
association of metepantli and sheep, however, appears much weaker in other
areas. As shown by a 1694 list of agrarian capital (see below for further discus-
sion), macehualli fields in the region near Apizaco (about ten kilometers from
Yauhquemecan) supported both sheep and maguey in just over half the cases.
Less than one-quarter of peasant farmers possessed sheep; far more common
was a correlation between oxen and maguey.
A remarkable document from 1694 strongly suggests that even in areas on
the periphery of major pulque markets (twenty to twenty-five kilometers away
from Tlaxcala City and twice that distance from Puebla), maguey dominated the
landscape.68 In the wake of the disease outbreaks of 1692–94, the viceroy forced
Tlaxcalan officials to collect tribute from indigenous communities, and where
cash could not be found, ordered the appropriation and sale of agrarian capi-
tal such as land, livestock, grain, or maguey. Some community officials declared
that “although many have died, they did not leave behind any belongings.” This
repeated declaration is very difficult to believe, especially because officials from a
few communities, such as those from San Cosme Xaloztoc, listed the property of
twenty poor peasant families (where both parents had perished in the epidemic).
Cabildo officials pressed communities to put forward at least some lands and
agricultural capital that could be sold, which the Cabildo could use to demon-
strate to viceregal authorities that they had made their best efforts. The weakest
112 | Chapter 3

communities would likely bend under the Cabildo’s pressure first. Thus, the larger
communities located closer to Tlaxcala City unilaterally declared that the dead had
left nothing behind. For instance, the community of San Salvador Tzompantzinco
(located about five kilometers east of San Bernardino Contlan) declared in 1694
that none of the dead owned land, despite the fact that many other contempo-
rary documents indicate clearly that maguey were planted near the Amomoloc
River and Marsh.69 The scenario proposed by Tzompantzinco officials is highly
implausible, especially given that one of the town’s dead had worked as a builder
of metepantli. Likely, the Cabildo’s 1694 declaration to viceregal authorities is an
accounting of the most politically and economically expendable lands, the most
distant parcels (from peasant homes) in the poorest and weakest communities.
Nevertheless, the 1694 document provides unassailable evidence in support
of a widespread and thoroughly developed maguey and pulque industry in
indigenous peasant lands. One of the defunct peasant families (denoted clearly
with nondescript names: Juan Domingo [father], María Pascuala [mother], and
Juan [son, aged twelve]) reported by officials from Tzompantzinco “did not leave
behind any belongings” other than a mule and ploughshare. Officials listed Juan
Domingo’s occupation as the following: “he lived by making calles y canales,”
evidently with his mule and ploughshare.70 Because colonial documentation
regularly refers to metepantli as calles de magueyes, it is not surprising that similar
documents describe the job of metepantli-maker as a maker of berms (i.e., calles)
and ditches (canales or sanjas).71
More incontrovertibly, the 1694 document provides a more statistical basis
for the widespread existence of metepantli in peasant communities. Leaders
from towns located in the eastern sub-basin of the Zahuapan River (from Tet-
lan, Miztlan, Ocotitlan, and, most importantly, San Cosme Xaloztoc) were more
forthright with their description of land and agrarian capital left behind by the
deceased. Undoubtedly, officials would have been none too eager to disclose
the abandoned parcels. Given the corrupt politics of the time, they likely con-
cealed the best land and agrarian capital for their own benefit and provided the
Cabildo with a list of marginal lands. The plots they disclosed were marginal not
only to the community, but also to the entire pulque marketing system. Getting
pulque to market from any of these communities involved trips of fifteen kilo-
meters to Tlaxcala City and at least thirty to Puebla. Thus, officials realized that
the Cabildo or Crown could not easily find new owners for these properties.
The properties and landesque capital listed by these town officials provide
fascinating details about the nature of peasant agriculture. 72 Town leaders
 A Drunken Landscape | 113

documented thirty properties, more than 75 percent of which contained sig-

nificant stocks of maguey. About one-quarter of families had owned sheep
and exactly half had owned draught animals (mostly oxen). In fact, the rate
of oxen ownership among these deceased peasant farmers compares favorably
to that of Spanish-owned estates with vast property holdings (see figure 14).
Peasant families listed in this document possessed 412 hectares of land and
twenty-four draught animals, resulting in a ratio of about 17 hectares to each
draught animal. Nearby Spanish estates could not always compete with this
level of capital investment. The Cuamancingo estate had 29:1 in 1652, while
the Santa Clara Atzompan estate had 26:1 in 1686. More generally, but also
more accurately, I computed ratios for each of the seven partidos (divisions)
of Tlaxcala for the year 1712. Spanish estates in the region of Apizaco (which
includes the four indigenous towns) had a ratio of 24:1; Tlaxco to the north
had 14:1; Chiyauhtempan to the south also had 14:1; and to the east Huamantla
at 54:1 had much land for very few animals. Lastly, the partidos of Nativitas,
San Felipe, and Hueyotlipan each had a ratio of 8:1, but such regions were

FIGURE 14 Ratio of hectares to draught animals in rural Tlaxcala. The graph is coun-
terintuitive in that higher oxen densities have shorter bars; that is, the fewer hectares
per ox, the more intensely the land was farmed. González Sánchez, Haciendas y ranchos
de Tlaxcala; see the unpaginated tables for each partido. For the estate of San Bartolomé
Cuamancingo, see AGN Tierras, Investigation into missed payments, vol. 3306, exp. 1,
fol. 20r. For Santa Clara Atzompan, see AGT Fondo Histórico, Presentation of docu-
ments, fol. 1v.
114 | Chapter 3

renowned as intensive wheat producers and thus a low ratio of land to draught
animals is not at all surprising. The orphanage document of 1694, then, pro-
vides very strong evidence of two interrelated phenomena: first, rates of peasant
draught animal usage are equal to or better than those found in most Spanish
estates; and second, peasant farmers cultivated maguey in the vast majority of
lands. The presence of high populations of draught animals and maguey shows
the dominance of the peasant metepantli system in even the most peripheral
lands. Moreover, if one supposes that peasant farms made more efficient use
of draught animals than Spanish estates—which seems plausible given that
poor farmers saw the purchase of oxen as a significant investment and because
those who own and work on farms tend to make more efficient use of resources
than do hired laborers—the availability of oxen on macehualli farms appears
even more astounding. Of course, an important difference between indigenous
peasant oxen ownership and that of Spanish estates is that just half of peas-
ants versus all estates owned them. I suspect that similar to Juan Domingo’s
business in constructing metepantli, peasants with draught animals rented out
their services to those who lacked them. From the perspective offered by the
1694 document, peasant investment and innovation in metepantli field systems
seem very impressive.
Peasants increased pulque production primarily through a process of infilling
and conversion of existing field systems rather than expanding into unused
lands. Archaeologists who have studied the origin and morphology of metep-
antli have found that terracing was added in a piecemeal fashion, not as large-
scale state-directed initiatives.73 The Pueblan asentista Inchaurriqui had made
a similar assertion in 1692, saying that maguey farmers had converted their
maize fields. Witnesses from a tribunal into the causes of Puebla’s economic
decline had said much the same thing in 1743, except they indicated that the
transition had been made from cochineal to pulque.74 The economic incentive
of pulque motivated farmers to phase out or remove the less remunerative, but
longer lived, perennial plants such as nopal and fruit trees that grew on berms
and to replace them with maguey, exclusively. Metepantli construction and
maintenance require significant investments of labor and cash to buy land and
offsets, all of which would curb expansionist dreams. Contrary to popular belief,
maguey cultivation and processing requires huge quantities of labor. A field of
thousands of maguey posed a prodigious task, what modern ethnographers have
called a “formidable management project whose complexity increases exponen-
tially with increased scale of production.”75
 A Drunken Landscape | 115

Nevertheless, corporate entities such as the altepetl (ethno-political territo-

rial units in Mesoamerica) could undertake the expansion of maguey cultivation
on a large scale not possible by individual peasants, using town resources, shared
labor, and access to Crown lawyers to fight for and protect agricultural capital.
About twenty kilometers north of Tlaxcala City, farmers from San Lucas Teco-
pilco eventually expanded maguey and pulque production in the Texopan parcel
that they finally acquired in 1709 or 1710.
The land in question had belonged to Miguel de Ortega, a provincial public
notary and private notary of the Cabildo who, from 1699 to 1703, had been
battling local natives (including those of Tecopilco) for another large parcel of
land that lay downstream, adjacent to the Texopan parcel. After Ortega’s death
in 1705, ownership of the Texopan parcel fell to his wife, doña Ana de Nava
Altamirano. Indigenous townsfolk from Tecopilco had long sought this land,
which bordered their community. In 1695, they litigated unsuccessfully against
Captain don Antonio Peres de Oropeza and then again in 1704 against the new
owner, Miguel de Ortega. Just before Ortega’s death, Tecopilco farmers had
unlawfully entered the Texopan land with oxen and wagons, removing seventy-
six cargas of barley and forty of hay. Later that year, the provincial court ordered
them to give it back to his widow, doña Ana.76
Unwilling to let the parcel slip through their fingers, Tecopilco officials
fought once more in 1709 against doña Ana when the Holy Office of the Inqui-
sition opened its long inquiry into the estates of Río de las Vacas (which had at
that time incorporated the Texopan parcel) and Cuamancingo. By the end of the
decade, however, locals of all stripes had conspired against doña Ana, and even-
tually farmers from Tecopilco won, or won back (depending on how far back
in time one looks) the barley-cultivated land. Local priests from San Martín
Xaltocan colluded with Tecopilco farmers and had convinced doña Ana’s sea-
sonal indigenous resident laborers (gañanes) to abandon her estate, which they
did. Such acts of desertion—and the central role played by town officials—had
emerged as a critical concern for Spanish estates in the province during the
eighteenth century. As workers left, they often damaged crops and tools and
took livestock.77 The Cabildo also conspired against doña Ana and mandated
that her estate manager (mayordomo) withdraw his services, which he promptly
did. Without labor and management and with poor weather that destroyed
crops, an outbreak of sickness among either her sheep or pigs, and a misman-
aged estate in the hands of a renter who left the farm without any seed, doña
Ana could no longer pay her debts to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. When
116 | Chapter 3

officials from the Holy Office arrived in 1709, farmers from Tecopilco vigorously
pursued their case and convinced the ecclesiastic judicial body to award them
the Texopan parcel. Doña Ana sold the Río de las Vacas estate (without the
Texopan parcel) to Captain don Joseph Hernández de Lara in 1712, at which
time the latter attempted (unsuccessfully) to repossess the Texopan parcel.
The acquisition of the Texopan parcel suggests a two-pronged plan by these
farmers and town officials to simultaneously expand hillside maguey cultivation
and lowland grain production. Tecopilco began to plant maguey in the Texo-
pan parcel, converting the barley fields into a maguey plantation. By 1727, the
Texopan parcel included thousands of maguey plants and still produced barley
on the terrace treads.78 This was a dramatic transformation; from its inception
around 1605 until 1712, the Río de las Vacas hacienda listed as its primary assets
cattle, pigs, sheep, and barley, and never once maguey.79

Pilli Pulque

Macehualli and altepetl officials were not alone in converting land into mete-
pantli. As seen below, indigenous nobles (teteuctin, or pipiltin, in Nahuatl; caci-
ques, or principales, in Spanish) led the most rapid and extensive expansion of
the metepantli field system in Tlaxcala. In retrospect, their land management
strategy was destructive and wasteful of soils. Nobles in Tlaxcala and elsewhere
east of the Basin of Mexico were great landholders at the time of the Conquest.
Muñoz Camargo described the typical landed estate of a teuctli as comprising
numerous parcels, the best of which he kept for himself, while those of poorer
quality he distributed among his relations and servants, who then provided
the teuctli with produce and labor. He referred to these land/labor complexes
as mayorazgo, but most colonial sources reserve this term for entailed Spanish
estates and use instead the term cacicazgo, or better, teccalli.80 The teccalli system,
however, broke down at the end of the sixteenth century largely because of labor
shortages and the resettlement of indigenous farmers into centralized com-
munities located far from teccalli parcels. Cochineal’s unique (familial) labor
requirements and the collapse of the Tlaxcalteca population undermined the
value of their landed estates. Steadily, power shifted from these elite to pueblo
(altepetl) functionaries. Between 1590 and 1610, caciques sold vast quantities of
land to Spaniards and thereby created a new rural geography that interspersed
Spanish haciendas within indigenous lands. Not all of the teteuctin disappeared
 A Drunken Landscape | 117

completely, and many of those that did staged a renaissance in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. They had lost control of land but still held onto their
rights and privileges.
Caciques responded vigorously to pulque opportunities and used their finan-
cial and political means to accumulate yet more land through purchases or by
repossessing lands for which their family had titles that had not been actively
asserted. Families from Atlihuetzyan pursued this route with great vigor and
caused much hostility between teteuctin and neighboring towns. They roused
suspicions with their claim to tlalmacehualli, or “land of merit,” or more simply,
land grants. Teteuctin from Atlihuetzyan had gained (in 1563) mercedes (royal
grants) to consolidate and build on their teccalli. Most of these concessions were
never kept with the other mercedes, but in later eighteenth-century litigation,
they reappeared within the private records of absentee teteuctin. Thus, in the
1730s, distant relatives of teuctli don Baltasar Cuauhtli presented his will from
1628, which recorded a grant of land near a copal tree (“centetl notlalmacehu-
altzin mani copalcuauhtitlan”) five kilometers distant from Atlihuetzyan, near
Apizaco along the Camino Real.81 The land was now in the control of townsfolk
from Santa Úrsula Citlaltepec, and the relatives of don Baltasar wanted it back.
In 1702, doña Isabel de Castilla y de Galicia (the wife of gobernador and
alcalde don Pascual Ramírez) made similar claims to another teccalli in Atli-
huetzyan, this time fighting for a twenty-four-hectare hillside tlalmacehualli
near the abandoned town of San Baltasar Tochpan, about two kilometers west
of Atlihuetzyan. Community officials from San Simón Tlatlauhquitepec and
San Francisco Tetlanocan (aka Tlacuilocan) had claimed that the extinct com-
munity of San Baltasar had been granted control over the land during the time
of congregación, but then as the town was depopulated, the land lay unused for
generations. In 1702, however, a “corrupt” teuctli (doña Isabel de Castilla y de
Galicia) sold the land to don Diego Hernández (a wealthy indigenous man
from the community), claiming that the land had been given as reward to the
nobility in 1523. Actually, local officials accused don Diego of paying for the
parcel with community funds. He planted winter wheat (trigo aventurero) and
maguey at first and then converted the land to the more common metepantli
system.82 Seeking restitution, town officials and local farmers started to collect
the neuctli themselves, and thus by 1713 the issue landed within the courts.
The judge awarded don Diego possession of the land in 1713. Then, years later
in 1730, in old age and with failing eyesight, don Diego donated the land to
the community so that his children would not have to fight the townsfolk
MAP 16 Towns and disputed teccalli parcels near Atlihuetzyan. Twenty-meter contour
lines are shown, as are the disputed parcels, towns, barrios, and hydrology.
 A Drunken Landscape | 119

any longer.83 Once again, long-lost teuctli rights (this time matched with the
Cabildo’s power) blended conveniently with eager investors who would lead an
economic resurgence with pulque.
The Paredes family from Atlihuetzyan provides the best example of this
process. At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eigh-
teenth, the family reclaimed land that had sat idle for generations, while also
making major investments in new land. In 1686, don Pedro Martín de Paredes
purchased for the large sum of 730 pesos from the Viscaino family (who were
Spaniards) a large piece of land that he called Tecozahuatlan (Place of Yellow
Earth) that Paredes claimed to have been unimproved at the time of purchase.
The land comprised perhaps one hundred hectares, judging by its price. The land
lay outside of the densely settled region near Yauhquemecan, where some of don
Pedro’s other properties were located. He contracted laborers and initiated the
planting of five thousand maguey, to which he attested in 1733.84 Tecozahuatlan
lay at the intersection of the Zahuapan River and the creek Tecozahuatlauhtli,
on the steeply sloped terrain bordering the Zahuapan River between the hills
of Cimatepec and Atlihuetzyan. My calculations derived from 1:50,000 topo-
graphical maps indicate the average slope to be close to 15 percent, what Wilken
describes as “steep.”85 The toponym is a compound noun, incorporating the
elements “tecozahu(itl)-,” “-a(tl)-,” and “-tlan.” Tecozahuitl means yellow ochre,
and according to Williams and Harvey “is a silt loam with high water-retention
capacity and loose consistency, making it easy to work. Of moderate depth
and fertility, these soils probably were cultivated continuously, terraced, and at
least partially irrigated.”86 The other elements give the toponym the meaning of
“place of yellow ochre soil by the water.” This was good land, but quite friable
and on steeply sloped terrain.
In an unequivocal statement about the agrarian system he was designing,
Paredes declared in his will that he “improved it [i.e., the Tecozahuatlan par-
cel] with eleven ditches [sanjas] and planted in it about five thousand maguey,
as when I purchased it, it did not have anything.” The ditches he mentioned
digging (or rather, had had dug) clearly identify the construction of eleven
metepantli, each with approximately five hundred maguey. To construct mete-
pantli, laborers excavated ditches approximately sixty centimeters deep and the
same wide and piled this soil on either the upside or downside of the trench in
order to make the berm. While don Pedro failed to declare the dimensions of
the plot, based on the spaces between maguey used in modern metepantli, the
five thousand maguey would have taken up only fourteen hectares.87 For seven
120 | Chapter 3

hundred pesos, he received a much larger parcel than this, but we do not know
what was done with most of the land.
Far more significant than the area of the Tecozahuatlan parcel is the number
of linear meters of metepantli (fifteen thousand), which permits a calculation
of the number of person-days of labor required to construct the metepantli.
Again, following Wilken’s estimates (based on the Mexican government’s 1972
estimates), a day’s work (for one person) in soft soil would excavate no more
than twenty-five linear meters of ditch, a number that decreases to fifteen for
moderately compacted soil, ten for tepetlatl, and five for rocky terrain.88 Taking
the median value of fifteen as a good estimate for the Tecozahuatlan parcel, it
appears that don Pedro’s metepantli project required no fewer than one thou-
sand person-days of labor. Putting this another way, if he had employed ten
laborers, they would work for one hundred days each, or, taking into consid-
eration the number of Sundays and holidays (which were plentiful in colonial
Mexico), one could assume that ten peons spent almost the entire six-month
dry season digging trenches. Such long hours of backbreaking labor—not to
mention the likely costs of tool breakage and repair, or more importantly, the
work involved in actually planting the maguey offsets—would have deterred all
but the most dedicated metepantli expansionists.
Unfortunately, one cannot determine if don Pedro constructed the metep-
antli in one season or chose to progress in a piecemeal fashion over the forty-
seven years that he owned the plot. Ideally, construction would progress from
bottom row and move upslope so as to catch the considerable quantities of
soils that would have eroded during the first years after construction. A slow
progression, say, over ten years, would reduce the velocity of torrents because
unaltered land would protect soils and permit rainfall to infiltrate the soil. If he
put all metepantli into production at the same time, the first rainfall after the
winter construction phase would have produced strong rilling, gullying, and
then slope wash, followed by massive soil movements. Thus, from an environ-
mental perspective, a slow construction program would have made sense. On
the other hand, economic considerations may have convinced him to proceed
much faster. After all, he paid 730 pesos for the land and would be eager to see a
return on this considerable investment. In the first scenario, somewhere between
year ten and year twelve he would see his first returns, but only on 10 percent of
the land’s potential productive output. Full production would begin only after
twenty years of expenditures, at which time he would start to turn a profit.
Alternatively, if don Pedro constructed all of the necessary metepantli in the
 A Drunken Landscape | 121

first year, he would have turned a profit in year thirteen, and by year twenty he
would have earned an extra two thousand pesos from the land as compared to
the first scenario. Given this comparison, it is logical to assume that don Pedro
would seek to maximize his short-term revenue and would consider erosion as
collateral damage.89
Don Pedro Paredes listed among his property many other marginal land
parcels, each of them worth hundreds of pesos and many planted with maguey.
While his land holdings were certainly extensive and such titles almost never
describe what is actually on the land, it is certainly significant that no less
than five of his plots bordered land that was described as eroded.90 Similarly,
he bought the Tochpan “ranch” that had belonged to Alonso Hernández (a
Spaniard) where the latter had in 1675 planted maguey on an area of about one
square kilometer (600 × 600 brazas). If Hernández had planted the entire area
with maguey, a stocking rate of four hundred maguey per hectare would result
in as many as forty thousand plants in the parcel. An ongoing dispute over the
ranch reveals rare details about the condition of its soils. By 1722 fluvial erosion
had degraded the land, now described as tepetlatl, or hardpan, in which “one
cannot cultivate or even keep up the said maguey.”91
South of Tecopilco and north of Yauhquemecan, the teccalli of Tepeticpac
held by doña Josepha had spent more than three thousand pesos on land hold-
ings that she described as a number of parcels situated on the northern flank of
the Analco Hill (near Cuauhtla, a barrio of Santa Bárbara Acuicuitzcatepec) and
populated by maguey and grazing sheep. Interestingly, the investment derived
from the marriage of doña Josepha with a Spaniard, Matías de Cabrera Celís,
who claimed his family planted the maguey sometime between 1626 and 1686.92
Spaniards also bought maguey plots near Acuicuitzcatepec and the abandoned
town of San Pablo Ollacayocan, where José de Zavala had set up a pulque farm
that at the time of his death in 1694 comprised six thousand maguey, valued at
4,500 pesos, one-half of the value of his entire estate.93 Zavala was not the only
Spaniard pursuing the burgeoning pulque markets.
These few examples do not constitute a complete list of the major maguey
plantations in the upper Zahuapan River basin, but do represent the vigor with
which large landholders pursued this industry.94 The process also shows that as
with other industries in Tlaxcala, indigenous people (both peasant and cacique)
designed and popularized the metepantli system and the production of pulque.
Large producers (often Spaniards) entered the market well after the original
conceptualization of the agrosystem by indigenous peoples. Historian John
122 | Chapter 3

Kicza’s study of the Mexico City pulque trade shows that Spaniards dominated
the industry (from production to sale) in the viceregal capital. Yet in places
such as Oaxaca and Toluca, the indigenous population retained control over
production. Tlaxcala resembles the latter, not the former.
An early eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan census shows few Spaniards partic-
ipated in the pulque industry before the second half of the eighteenth century.
When the new Bourbon Crown consolidated its power in New Spain, it imme-
diately set out to assess the value and capital of all rural estates (for the purpose of
taxation). In Tlaxcala, government officials carried out the census in 1712. Of the
reporting estates (eighty-seven haciendas and fifty-eight ranchos), only a single
one had maguey. The midsize farm (rancho de labor) was located on the slopes of
Malinche (near Santa Ana Chiyauhtempan), composed of eighty-six hectares
(two caballerías) of arable land, possessed eight draught oxen, and was valued at
only one thousand pesos.95 Given these numbers, this rancho had no more than
twelve hundred maguey, exactly the number of maguey that a single farmer could
hope to manage single-handedly.96 Exemplifying the scant nature of Spanish
investment in pulque farms before the middle of the eighteenth century, the
Hacienda de Piedras Negras located near Apizaco (in the Atenco subcatchment
of the Zahuapan River), reported no maguey in 1712 but by 1793 contained fifty-
two thousand.97 In the second half of the eighteenth century, Bethlehemites
from Puebla purchased the estate, built an inn for travelers, and directed the
estate’s resources toward the production of pulque. Indeed, such a transition
from livestock and grain farming proved highly profitable and attractive to many
enlightened estate managers far outside of Tlaxcala’s borders, such as the Jesuits
who controlled the diverse properties of the Santa Lucía Hacienda located on
the northern periphery of Mexico City. Beginning in the 1730s, income from
pulque production on the Jesuit estates drove profits upward. By 1746, the estate’s
managers had planted seventy thousand new maguey plants. By 1767, they had
converted ten thousand hectares of damaged pasture with nearly forty kilometers
of stone fences surrounding the plantations. As Herman Konrad attests:

Livestock production became a less important source of revenue, and this was
reflected in smaller flocks of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses. . . . Cereal crops
continued to be produced, but the source of income from Santa Lucía had
undergone a transformation. During the last years of Jesuit ownership [in 1767],
pulque produced 80 percent of Santa Lucía’s revenues. Santa Lucía had been
converted into a pulque hacienda.98
 A Drunken Landscape | 123

While more research is needed to explore the links between indigenous

pulque plantations and large-scale Spanish or Creole haciendas, Konrad’s study
of the Jesuit-owned Santa Lucía Hacienda suggests that Spaniards followed
the metepantli field system innovated by indigenous farmers. Konrad notes
that “when the Jesuits joined the general trend [of converting land into pulque
plantations], they incorporated existing technology and procedures, adding an
efficient system of administration.”99 Much of the terminology for the age and
type of maguey plant derived from Nahuatl, and the metepantli fields system
predominated. Konrad also suggests that degradation followed in the wake
of expanding pulque production. While “only good land was used, and the
mayordomos who planted maguey in infertile land (tepetate) did so at the risk
of personally paying the labor costs,” the metepantli became associated with
“land too arid or rocky to support livestock, or in a deteriorated state because of
overgrazing.”100 Once again, maguey plantations began on good soil but ended
by clinging to the remnants of soil from a more fertile era.

Collateral Damage

The speed with which these maguey projects were established and the sheer
size of the lands in question lead me to believe that this form of land man-
agement was particularly degrading to the environment. Wealthy farmers and
town projects exposed entire hillsides to erosive forces over the course of a few
short years. Poor maintenance of berms and careless cultivation of treads could
promote erosion. And worse, wholesale field abandonment could result in a
complete failure of the terracing system. After the Mexican Revolution, for
instance, land reform programs offered hillside farmers a chance to cultivate
the much more fertile valley-bottom land, leading to metepantli abandonment
and severe erosion.101
I now follow this hypothesis for the Late Maunder Minimum, a climate-
induced biological crisis that could destabilize agave fields (figure 15). The crisis
began in 1691 when a disastrous frost in the late summer season ruined crops
and left the Tlaxcalteca ill-equipped to deal with the long, hard winter of 1692
that was both cold and snowy. A five-day winter snowstorm that year, beginning
on February 2, dumped so much snow that it killed a large part of the livestock
population. Riots broke out in Mexico City and Tlaxcala in 1692. In the lat-
ter, rioters burned government offices and stoned those whom they deemed
124 | Chapter 3

F I G U R E 1 5 The Late Maunder Minimum crisis in Tlaxcala. Two distinct proxies—

archival documents and tree-ring PDSI in the Correlation Area— attest to an extended
period of cold and drought from 1691 until 1713.

responsible: political officeholders. Tlaxcala’s Spanish governor responded by

hanging and quartering those rebels identified as leaders of the uprising, while
in Mexico City, viceregal authorities banned pulque and other liquors for five
years thereafter.102
Inebriation was a convenient scapegoat for the enormous vulnerability of the
populace. In 1692, the Jesuits had urged the viceroy to “prohibit and prevent—
using all means possible—that anyone gain benefit from, or sell throughout the
viceroyalty, this noxious and scandalous liquor.” (This did not stop the Jesuits
from converting many of their livestock and grain haciendas to pulque estates
in the mid-eighteenth century.)103 The Cabildo of Mexico City declared that
pulque drove indios to

laziness, sodomy, incest, rape of children, sacrilege and adultery. This vice is still
more injurious because congregated in shops where this drink is sold [i.e., pul-
querías] with the endless infamous masses that abound in this city of mestizos,
negros, and mulattos, there is not a wickedness they will not commit, scams and
robberies that do not foment disputes. As such, although your Majesty has this
asiento whose rent benefits the Crown each year, we should assure ourselves
with great Catholic zeal that it is better to annul this rent than to lose to this
drink so many souls and to end with such pernicious consequences that risk
again your Majesty’s reign as it did before.104

Believing that indios were not innately malicious and thus incapable of such
a purposeful inversion of the social hierarchy or, alternatively, wishing to find
 A Drunken Landscape | 125

a scapegoat for the underlying problem of social vulnerability that resulted

when the colonial government failed to store grain and keep food prices low,
authorities identified drunkenness as the cause of the uprising.105 Epidemics,
hunger, and cold weather persisted until 1697. One scholar even claims that
the prolonged crisis exposed the fraudulent nature of the Tlaxcalan indigenous
government, resulting in a full-scale shift from corrupt elite government to
grassroots politics.106
There was a slight reprieve during the next two years, but famine, disease,
and cold winters repeated themselves again between 1695 and 1697. In Mexico
City, epidemics continued in 1699, 1700, 1702, 1704, 1705, 1707, and 1708, mak-
ing these years the worst mortality crisis since at least 1576, and perhaps 1545.
Human mortality was substantial in both 1692 and 1695, with rates of about
20 percent for each episode.107 Five droughts occurred between 1700 and 1705.
In fact, between 1694 and 1711, central Mexico suffered ten years of drought.
Cumulatively, during the last decade, the adult population (i.e., those who could
farm) decreased by one-third. Even if a slight surge in births took place, those
extra mouths to feed added to the difficulty of tending the fields. High mortality
rates helped to increase migration out of the province. The years of hunger drove
many farmers to Mexico City to find food and work, even if the granaries were
empty there too.108
Making matters worse was the Crown’s insistence that Tlaxcala pay its trib-
ute regardless of the crisis.109 Those who stayed in the community found them-
selves responsible to pay not only their own tribute but that of their relatives.
Neuctli and mexcalli had long served as potential sources of energy and nutri-
tion when maize crops failed. Consumption of mexcalli would accelerate the
rate by which maguey disappeared and thereby accelerate the disintegration of
metepantli. Alternatively, the crisis spurred abandonment because, on the one
hand, urban stores of maize attracted rural farmers to cities, while on the other
hand taxes imposed on the remaining farmers tempted them to leave and forgo
maguey sustenance.110
The indigenous Cabildo had great difficulty paying its tribute to the Crown
and complained that against its best wishes, it had been forced to sell off the
fields of maguey owned by peasants. As it said:

in order to be able to pay [the tribute] it had to be taken from the towns and
by the Cabildo selling off their maguey and lands that should have been main-
tained except that no other recourse could be found other than to imprison a
126 | Chapter 3

few people for the shortfall of ’95 that is still owed; many have fled from the
violence to other lands, coming back only to die of hunger and at the same
time compelled to pay up [both] for themselves and for those who died in their
towns, many of which are currently empty of people [desiertos].111

The Cabildo’s threat to confiscate land and maguey was not rhetorical. The
year before, it made good on its promise to carry out the Crown’s cruel demands
and organized a committee to travel throughout the province and collect taxes,
or otherwise, to jail and remove property. The committee’s report indicated
that much maguey land had been abandoned.112 While the Cabildo seized land
and maguey in 1694 from towns such as Xaloztoc, one must ask who was avail-
able or interested in buying it.113 Officially, there had been an outright ban on
pulque sales since 1692, and thus the maguey had no cash value. The Crown
demanded compliance with its law on June 30, 1692, which according to Anto-
nio de Robles’s “Diary of Notable Events” ( July 19, 1692) pertained to all of
New Spain.114 Transgressors were subjected to a fine of two hundred pesos if
they were Spanish, while indios received lashes and hard labor in the obrajes.115
The Crown issued some exemptions to the pulque ban, but none to Tlaxca-
la—or at least none brought to light by colonial documentation. Curiously, the
payments made by Puebla’s asentista de pulque did not dry up altogether during
the ban. He paid the 1692 rent in full (as it was expected of all asentistas116) and
then continued to pay a small part of the rent in 1693 (one-fifth), 1694 (one-
third), and 1695 (three-tenths).117 As mentioned above, Tlaxcala had been paying
twelve hundred pesos for a number of years, and thus the asentista must have
collected tax from other unidentified—although legal—sources.
It is important to note that Spaniards, too, died during the “measles” epi-
demic of 1694, and thus when pulque producers such as José de Zavala passed
away that year, he left an enormous stock of maguey. Land and maguey were
at this time worthless commodities. Imagine the consternation of men like
don Pedro Martín de Paredes who had spent thousands of pesos installing the
hillside metepantli, only to encounter a total ban on pulque at exactly the time
when the plants could finally be harvested and, moreover, to find no laborers to
harvest. Even when the pulque trade was restored in 1697, the industry came
back to life slowly. The transportation system that helped to expand the trade in
1670 and remained essential to the industry had collapsed, apparently because
animals were infertile during the drought that lasted almost two decades.118 The
 A Drunken Landscape | 127

cold winter weather, heavy snowfalls that lasted for a week at times, and the
recurring episodes of drought pushed central Mexican vegetation to its limits,
meaning that grass and other animal feed would be in short supply. Extensive
grazing, one imagines, helped to reduce plant cover during the 1690s and after-
ward, exposing hillside soils and adding to the already severe climate stress on
vegetation.
We do not know how many fields fell victim to the crisis nor how severely
they were affected. Clearly, metepantli did not collapse in all parts of Tlaxcala
during the 1690s; some fields were more susceptible than others. Least vulner-
able were those fields in densely settled areas with many hands and extended
families to carry on the work and with an integrated, complex agrosystem, such
as the corporate town enterprises in and around Yauhquemecan or Tecopilco.
Failures and partial collapses of these metepantli undoubtedly occurred. Long-
term maintenance tasks such as cleaning ditches and redistributing soil and
nutrients to the tread were likely quickly neglected. Maguey undoubtedly sent
out stalks and wasted away, but no matter how difficult the situation became,
peasant farmers would do everything in their power to ensure that breaks did
not open in the metepantli. Networks of families would help to maintain the
very basic upkeep on the farms; the costs of erosion were simply too high for
them to pay. Finally, if any illicit pulque markets remained open throughout the
ban, they would be small and local, best supplied by casual vendors and local
producers with small volumes, the type of operations that dominated before
the pulquería.
There is little to suggest that large maguey plantations could find any relief
during these difficult times. Managing these large plantations during a social
crisis proved difficult. First of all, without a vested interest in the long-term
health of the plants and soils, hired labor does not work as long or as consci-
entiously as those in small, owner-operated farms. Thus, one of the resulting
ironies of the poorly managed metepantli is that in the short term, they grow
faster and yield more neuctli. The accumulation of nutrients at the berm propels
the plants. Thus, many large plantations already suffered from either breaks
in the metepantli or early plant expiration. In fact, if short-term profits took
precedence over the long-term health of the soils, smaller investments of labor
benefited the farmer. In any case, regardless of the pre-1692 management strat-
egies, land management on these plantations deteriorated under a worsening
labor supply. Labor shortages plagued haciendas in Tlaxcala from the 1660s
128 | Chapter 3

onward as competition intensified and Tlaxcalan towns succeeded more often

at attracting and even stealing away indigenous workers.119 Because caciques
expanded maguey production in the late seventeenth century by buying and
establishing “ranches” and “haciendas” that stood apart from their ancestral
lands, they relied on these same shrinking labor markets. Of course, their plight
was made considerably worse by the fact that bureaucrats gave no indication
of when the pulque markets would resume. In a time of miniscule and highly
competitive labor supplies and virtually nonexistent pulque markets, owners of
large maguey plantations undoubtedly found it too difficult and expensive to
maintain their quickly expiring fields. In this scenario, it seems reasonable to
conclude that large maguey enterprises started the 1690s with soils and terraces
more vulnerable to collapse than small, privately owned plots.
If these scenarios are accurate, the crisis of the 1690s almost certainly helped
to accelerate soil depletion. As soils degraded and moved beyond the reach
of the berm, neuctli yields fell. Thus, as pulque sales grew again during the
eighteenth century, plantations with depleted soils and slower growth rates for
maguey experienced declining productivity, which precipitated further expan-
sion and colonization of yet more marginal soils in order to keep up the volume
of sap extraction.

Conclusion

The metepantli was a creative and profitable response to the early Little Ice
Age (i.e., the Colonial Mexican Pluvial), an event that spurred the shift to
drought- and frost-tolerant maguey cultivation. Over the course of the seven-
teenth century, maguey cultivation migrated from infield gardens to marginal,
sloped land using the metepantli field system. The new location of the maguey
in metepantli accommodated the enormous rise in pulque demand in central
New Spain’s cities and towns and represented a narrowing range of uses of the
maguey from an indispensable source of clothing, building materials, and drink,
to a single commodity sold in local and regional markets. The diffusion of Old
World draught animals (namely mules and oxen) was essential to the energetics
of the agrosystem, a shift from somatic to extra-somatic systems that situated
Tlaxcala within a cascading system of nested ecologies whereby changes in one
entity rippled through the rest.
 A Drunken Landscape | 129

If the pluvial was the first act of the Little Ice Age, the Late Maunder Min-
imum was its final curtain call, a traumatic multidecadal extreme that ushered
in a new ecological and political era. It forced the withdrawal of both human
and animal labor, contracted pulque production, and urged the abandonment
of metepantli, precipitating mass soil movements, desiccation/flooding, and
social/agrarian turmoil for decades and even centuries afterward. As fields
were progressively degraded, they produced lower yields and farmers were thus
forced to extend the cultivation system to ever more marginal fields. Counter-
intuitive feedback mechanisms inherent to the metepantli system produced
an unusual, counterintuitive situation in which incipient erosion and nutrient
movements actually increased short-term pulque yields and thus benefited the
most reckless farmers. The degradation of terrace treads, which were cultivated
with plows and seeded with barley and other crops—in the usual metepantli
arrangement—actually fostered nutrient accumulation at the berms. Indeed,
even the degradation of upslope berms, whose soils traveled downslope, ben-
efited the soils of berms and metepantli in the lower flanks. Archaeological
and historical evidence suggests that indigenous farmers had deliberately used
erosion to manage soils, and thus it is not unthinkable that maguey farmers
used such strategies to improve pulque production on metepantli. As Bore-
jsza notes, “while erosion is detrimental to agriculture in the plot where it is
occurring, it often has beneficial effects at some distance downslope. Farmers
recognize and often actively manage this paradox.”120 In the eyes of the farmer,
erosion was not an evil by-product of the metepantli but, when controlled,
a gravity-fed fertilization system. Yet the system could and did also produce
unwanted and uncontrolled soil movements that carried precious hillside soils
beyond the berms and to gullies, river channels, and floodplains. We will
see in the next chapters that the Late Maunder Minimum was not only a
trigger for hydrological and edaphic transformations across central Mexico,
but spurred the transition to a new rural ecology and a more turbulent and
vulnerable society.
Despite connecting indigenous agriculture to the origins of severe degrada-
tion, this is not a declensionist story of ecological “collapse” or social degenera-
tion. The metepantli field system was a brilliant—and enormously profitable—
agricultural system that spread across most of central Mexico and transformed
indigenous communities and economic culture. These profits facilitated, in
the eighteenth century, an adoption of the metepantli system in some of the
130 | Chapter 3

largest and wealthiest estates in Mexico. Thus, the pulque industry did not fail;
production soared to new heights, especially in Spanish estates that bought
out abandoned indigenous maguey plantations. Even in indigenous hands, the
metepantli system returned significant profits. Similarly, as we will see in com-
ing chapters, in the floodplains below that bore the brunt of cataclysmic chaos,
new opportunities arose in the deep alluvium. For those in a position to bran-
dish their powers to control capricious soil and water resources, climate- and
agricultural-induced degradation commenced not a universal fall but a redis-
tribution of shrinking resources and a remaking of the colonial environment. It
is to the aftermath of this crisis that we now turn.
 CHAPTER 4
Embedded Lives
Silt, Water, and Politics

O
n September 20, 1703, nine indigenous officials and a multitude (otros
muchos) of local indigenous farmers from the towns of San Martín Xal-
tocan, Santa Bárbara Acuicuitzcatepec, San Lucas Tecopilco, San Simón
Tlatlauhquitepec, and La Asumpción Huitzcolotepec traveled down from their
hilltop villages to assemble in the fields near the Zahuapan River. They came
to witness and participate in a much-anticipated legal ceremony in which the
provincial court (Audiencia Ordinaria) of Tlaxcala would soon delimit and
declare their ownership of a large tract of land (map 17).1 The acts of delimiting
(amojonamiento) and taking possession (posesión) required the humbling par-
ticipation of the townspeople’s opponents: Spaniards who owned neighboring
haciendas and, more poignantly, members of the Cabildo of the province of
Tlaxcala. The issue pitted not only colonizer against the colonized, but more
directly, native against native or more specifically the highest level of indigenous
government in Tlaxcala (the Cabildo) against local indigenous town officials.
Over the past decade, and even before, the Cabildo had battled this collective
of five towns many times, each time failing to prove its case. The same result
was playing out again in 1703, culminating in a long day spent among intran-
sigent subalterns who no doubt relished this very public manifestation of the
Cabildo’s defeat.
The Cabildo had claimed that the land in question belonged to the “Ejidos
de los Llanos de Atlancatepec,” a tract of land that the provincial government
132 | Chapter 4

MAP 17 Disputed land (altepetlalli or ejido), circa 1703, Tlaxcala.

reserved for the abasto de carne, a legal monopoly to supply meat to the butchers
of Tlaxcala City. The Cabildo had its economic interests to protect. The abasto
contract was lucrative and attracted wealthy Spaniards who paid significant
sums for the exclusive right to supply meat and, moreover, to pasture animals in
the Ejidos. Ultimately, the Cabildo framed its arguments within the discourse
of immemorial rights and freehold tenure, thereby defining itself as a corporate
entity with exclusive interests inconsistent with those of towns and townsfolk.
Feeling squeezed by the growing influence of the local governments, it stood
firm against the demands of the less powerful but more numerous indigenous
town governments.2
However, the five towns had strong titles and had proven their rights many
times over, first in 1672, then again in 1677, 1699, 1701, 1702, and now twice in
1703. The towns proved beyond any doubt that they had possessed the land since
the early seventeenth century when don Gregorio Nacianceno (gobernador of
the Cabildo) gave them title to the land as remuneration for providing food
 Embedded Lives | 133

to the sick during the terrible epidemics of the 1630s.3 Since that time, and
especially since the uprisings of the 1670s, 1680s, and 1690s, local and provincial
politics had become acrimonious.4
Less abstractly, the dispute had become personal. The Ejidos dispute tran-
scended economic and political interests. The issue exposed Tlaxcala’s corrupt
politics and the workings of personal vendetta, especially involving don Pascual
Ramírez, who had recently acceded to the post of indigenous gobernador of
the Cabildo, for the fourth time. He would do so again in 1705, despite the
humiliating defeats at the hands of townsfolk.5
When the provincial court requested don Pascual’s presence in the amo-
jonamiento of the Ejidos on September 20, 1703, don Pascual failed to appear.6
Indeed don Pascual or one of his associates had lost or was losing court battles
with every one of these indigenous communities over land that bordered or was
visible from the Ejidos. To their west lay the Texopan parcel over which the
Cabildo’s notary Miguel de Ortega litigated unsuccessfully with the town of
Tecopilco.7 Ortega—owner of the nearby Río de las Vacas estate—had also been
summoned to the amojonamiento, but as with don Pascual, the Cabildo’s notary
did not appear. Don Pascual’s affairs with these towns ran deeper and more dis-
reputably than his notary’s. To the south not even don Pascual’s position as gov-
ernor and his wife’s noble status had let him assume possession of the Tochpan
parcel from the people of San Simón Tlatlauhquitepec or the Acuauhtla parcel
from the nobles of Santa Bárbara Acuicuitzcatepec.8 In these cases, too, the very
attorney who led the collective litigation for the Ejidos, procurador Antonio de
Baldivieso, had stymied his schemes. Thus, to have spent that afternoon with his
legal tormentor and nine town officials (not to mention the numerous townspeo-
ple who followed the Spanish gobernador throughout his proceedings) would
have publicly confirmed his harrowing and humiliating failures, no less than
would three or four hours of silent ridicule from insolent underlings who had
managed to wrench away this valuable real estate from the Cabildo.
The Ejidos conflict is a rare example where the lines of history cross fre-
quently enough to put cause and effect on the same piece of land and to person-
alize environmental forces that usually lack human agency. Most notable were
the effects of climatic anomalies, for it was a terrible spate of recent droughts
that drove the abasto contractee, don Domingo Calderón, to submit his 1705
petition to the Spanish gobernador. The complainant avowed that apart from
the Ejidos “there was no other place to pasture in the rigors of the dry season”
and that the Ejidos benefited from “the proximity of the river that comes from
134 | Chapter 4

San Agustín Tlaxco [i.e., the Zahuapan River] and that passes through the said
lands.”9 Not only was the decade from 1696 to 1705 the driest of the last six
hundred years, but the last “wet” year (i.e., more than one standard deviation
above normal) occurred in 1681. Indeed, seventeen of the last twenty-four years
had been below normal, and seven of those statistically anomalous. Epizootics
among bovines and equines broke out in 1697 and were still being reported
in 1702. Although the loss of pasture would shrink don Domingo’s supply of
feed for the animals, without water the entire herd risked death. Yet the very
droughts that drove don Domingo to the courts also attracted indigenous farm-
ers to the Ejidos with ploughs, oxen, and the intent to divert water from the
river to their fields. Having just survived a decade of fierce population loss,
the townsfolk fought for the Ejidos not because they lacked land—there was
plenty of it—but because they lacked land as fertile and as well watered as that
of the Ejidos.
Although it took recurrent droughts to bring open conflict to the Ejidos,
farmers had long since prepared the ground. The incursion of cultivation was
but a ripple emanating from a surge of new activity on the surrounding hill-
sides. Many parcels visible from the Ejidos (including all those previously men-
tioned) showed distinctive signs of a new agrarian system that reared the native
maguey plant (Agave spp.) to produce pulque, an alcoholic beverage consumed
in stunning quantities in central Mexico. Within a few hundred meters of the
Ejidos lay many examples of this agrarian system that had recently sprouted: the
aforementioned Texopan, Acuauhtla, and Tochpan parcels; the Tecozahuatlan
parcel to the southeast; and the land owned by José de Zavala to the southwest,
near the abandoned town of San Pablo Ollacayocan.10 Indigenous noblemen
like don Pascual had moved quickly to establish themselves in the burgeoning
industry, even using the political power of the Cabildo to fight against the
viceregal government’s tax on pulque. As we saw in the last chapter, maguey
plantations on fragile hillsides had expanded quite recklessly in the mid- to late
seventeenth century and then, amid a human crisis of a severity matched only by
those during the sixteenth century, deteriorated between 1690 and 1710. In the
mid-1690s, measles and other diseases combined to kill more than 25 percent
of the population in Tlaxcala.
As will be outlined in this chapter, this humanitarian crisis left an indelible
mark on Tlaxcala’s environment. Soil instability in hillside maguey plantations
produced slopewash, deep gullies, sediment ridges, alluvial fans, and deep alluvi-
ation in palustrine and riverine ecosystems. At the beginning of the colonial era,
 Embedded Lives | 135

Tlaxcala had possessed ample grass and water for raising Old World livestock,
and the Ejidos, too, had benefited from the abundant waters of the Zahuapan
River basin. Enormous wetlands had extended over the northwestern portion
of the parcel in question. Indeed, the entire geography of livestock raising had
been established during the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, and now this relic of a
previous climatic era proved quite troublesome in the eighteenth century. Three
years after don Domingo submitted his petition, the Cabildo initiated a full-
scale inquiry into the changing nature of the Zahuapan River and, subsequently,
an unsuccessful century-long effort to restore the equilibrium between water
and society in Tlaxcala.
To reconstruct the changing hydrology, some unconventional historical
methods are used. I reconstruct a chronology of flood events in Tlaxcala and
Teotihuacán, comparing the sequences in each basin to each other and to that of
Mexico City. This multibasin comparative flood analysis explores aspects such
as flood frequencies, climate-flood correlations, cross-basin flood synchronicity,
and the spatial distribution of flood events. This analysis is then put into conver-
sation with other fluvial dynamics, such as wetland extent and spring discharge.
Finally, geomorphic evidence is brought to bear on this problem. Evidence of
erosion and especially alluviation is gathered and, when possible, dated in order
to determine the temporal dynamics of mass soil movements.
After this hydrological analysis, the chapter explores how lives moved with
soil and water. In the wake of the new hydrological regime—characterized by
desiccated wetlands, falling stream flow, a flashflood regime, widespread hillside
erosion, deep valley alluviation, and the creation of elevated stream channels
that bypassed natural water storage in floodplains—humans responded. The
lives of central Mexicans were too deeply embedded in the web of biophysical
and ecological relations to avoid such a fate. We find new land uses, investments
in landesque capital, agrarian expansion, scapegoating, predations on neighbor-
ing properties, and other such creative acts—with unknown payoffs—carried
out within a dynamic human-environment interface. I offer several examples
that build on the altepetlalli case that opened this chapter. An important one
takes us to the heart of the hydrological crisis, to the city of Tlaxcala and its
struggle with its “greatest enemy,” the Zahuapan. Subsequently, examples are
chosen from the lower Teotihuacán Valley to show competition between flood-
plain property owners for the shifting patterns of silt and water, and then (as
a final case) the litigation between the town of Acolman and its own priest,
who sought to move the local parish to a nearby town in order to avoid the
136 | Chapter 4

destructive floods that had left the church in ruins; when that failed, residents
raised arms against the priest and the militia who sought to quell the rebellion.
These examples show both nature’s prodding of human action and the inde-
pendent, creative, and sometimes ill-advised character of these actions. Before
recounting these stories, we look first at the birth of central Mexico’s cataclysmic
landscape.

A New Flood Regime

The patterns of floods in the Zahuapan River basin in Tlaxcala and the San Juan
River basin in the Teotihuacán Valley elucidate the birth of a new hydrological
regime in the eighteenth century. Figure 16 makes clear that the problems expe-
rienced in Tlaxcala City during the eighteenth century do not precede that cen-
tury and that flooding in Teotihuacán surged, too, in the first few decades of the
eighteenth century.11 The first metric is the frequency of floods, which increased
dramatically in the eighteenth century, reaching a peak in both basins in the
1770s. Indeed, flood frequency remained quite constant until the 1690s, with
about one or two floods every twenty-five years. Afterward, between five and
seven events were registered every twenty-five years. The process is delayed by
about three decades in Acolman. In the case of the Valley of Teotihuacán—as
gauged in Acolman—we see a fast and sudden onset to flooding in the 1730s
(1732, 1736, 1737), continuing in the 1740s (1741, 1747), and then taking on a
frequency in the second half of the eighteenth century that matched the peaks
in Tlaxcala of one in every five years.

FIGURE 16 Flood frequency in Tlaxcala City (Tlaxcala) and Acolman Dam (Teotihuacán).
 Embedded Lives | 137

Until 1690, flooding occurred—almost without deviation—during multi-

year periods with high soil humidity. Chapters 1 and 2 already addressed this
climate-flooding correlation for the Colonial Mexican Pluvial, so it need not
be addressed here. Afterward, the tight parallelism continues during the wet
phase from 1643 to 1652 and again—although with less extreme humidity—
from 1670 to 1682. Floods in the 1640s, 1650s, and 1670s follow the logic of the
early colonial era. By the 1690s, however, the climate proxies of soil humidity
no longer match the flood history. Perhaps the extreme cold of the 1690s and
1710s can partially explain the high frequency of floods. Indeed, as we will
see immediately below, flooding was synchronized across multiple watersheds
during this period. Afterward, however, how can we explain that of the doz-
ens of flood events, only one flood—in Tlaxcala, in 1721—occurred when soil
humidity was significantly high?
A third metric is flood synchronicity. By comparing flood events across
three different basins (Tlaxcala, Teotihuacán, and Mexico City), we are able
to discern patterns in the vulnerability of watersheds. The hypothesis here is
that near-simultaneous flooding in multiple watersheds likely were profoundly
influenced by climate, perhaps caused by major multiday precipitation events or
long-term groundwater maxima. In either situation, climate anomalies would
produce floods in more than one basin at a time. Discreet local floods, on the
other hand, suggest that groundwater levels contributed little or not at all to the
floods. Such events indicate that factors other than climate were to blame, such
as localized convective systems with limited geographic extent or less powerful
regional systems. As such, discreet events reveal the high susceptibility of local
watersheds to flooding.
Until the end of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1715), all floods occurred in at least
two basins in the same year or in back-to-back years. With the exception of the
floods between 1697 and 1714, all coincided with wet phases. Indeed, many of
the floods occurred simultaneously in all three basins, demonstrating the very
strong climate forces at play. This synchronicity broke down in the eighteenth
century. Combining data for Tlaxcala or Teotihuacán, we find forty-four flood
events, twenty-eight (64 percent) of which are discrete events (defined here as
years with floods in only one of the three basins in question). There is not a
single year in which all three regions flooded simultaneously. Dividing the colo-
nial era crudely into two halves, we find that in the second half only 25 percent
of floods occurred simultaneously in two or more basins as opposed to about
75 percent in the first half.12
138 | Chapter 4

Finally, a fourth indication of a new hydrological regime is the spatial dis-

tribution of flooding within a particular basin. Given specific local geomorphic
conditions—such as Tlaxcala City or the convent of Acolman—particular sites
should act as hydrological gauges. Indeed, this is the rationale of methodology
followed here. Over the course of the eighteenth century, however, new sites
began to report flooding. In the Teotihuacán Valley, for example, early colonial
flooding affected only the convent. By the 1730s, floods reached farther and far-
ther into the more elevated regions and ultimately within the Manantiales sub-
basin. In 1753, a flood hit El Calvario so hard that people moved about by canoe
for some time afterward.13 In 1763, the town was hit again, as was San Marcos
Tlalnepantla in 1766, forcing a relocation of the town.14 In 1772, floods affected
areas well outside of the dam reservoir at the estate of San José Acolman, farther
upstream in San Juan Teotihuacán, and even in Otumba in the upper valley. In
1781, the town of San Juan and surrounding estates were once again flooded.15
Contemporary observers used a sort of “catch and release” model to explain
the high frequency of floods in the eighteenth century. According to this logic,
flooding was caused by property owners upstream of the flood site who opened
flood gates during high precipitation events. In her study of Guanajuato flood-
ing, for instance, Georgina Endfield notes that “the majority of recorded flood
events . . . were ascribed to human manipulation of the water supply in the
region and may well have been a function of the complex myriad of water diver-
sion channels, dams, and reservoirs.”16 In Tlaxcala, an inspector arrived from
Mexico City in 1707 to investigate the Cabildo’s claims that dams upstream had
caused flooding in the city. The Cabildo had argued that when estates opened
the floodgates to these dams, the subsequent rush of water posed a danger to
downstream users. The inspector rejected the Cabildo’s explanation.17 The “catch
and release” model served well the interests of its advocates. For instance, the
Cabildo’s focus on dams in 1707 and afterward was guided by taxation policy.
The indigenous government sought the ability to impose new taxes on Span-
iards to pay for repairs to the main river channel and its floodplain by Tlaxcala
City. On the other hand, neighboring estates denounced each other because of
struggles over water or longstanding complaints between them.18 Attuned to
the biases of his historical sources, historian James Riley suggests long-term soil
erosion as a more likely cause.19
The four metrics of the changing flood regime examined suggest that the
problem had deeper temporal roots than the dam theory suggests. Over the
course of the eighteenth century, flooding occurred (a) three times more fre-
 Embedded Lives | 139

quently than before, (b) rarely at the same time as climate-driven high humidity,
(c) as increasingly discrete events in only one of the three regions, and (d) at a
growing number of sites within the basins. The trigger of flooding was a wholes-
cale transformation of the geomorphology of the valleys, from hillsides to flood-
plains to the lower valleys. We now turn our attention to this transformation,
looking first at Tlaxcala’s watershed and then that of the Teotihuacán Valley.

Shifting Terrain

There is little doubt that the terrain of central Mexican watersheds had shifted
and that mass soil movements occurred in lockstep with the new flood regime.
Let us begin with the situation in Tlaxcala, which offers a very convincing picture
of a geomorphic transformation. Downstream of Tlaxcala City, an inspection of
the river in 1783 revealed the formation of large sand dunes and a river channel
elevated above the level of the surrounding agricultural fields. Francisco Theo-
doro de Portal, the owner of an estate downstream of the city, noted that in the
forty years since the purchase of the estate, in 1743, the river had alluviated to
such a degree that the river channel had aggraded meters above its original eleva-
tion and actually sat much higher than neighboring terrain. In the 1740s, to divert
water to fields, dams were needed to raise the river. By 1783, diversion canals could
be cut from the embankments of the now-elevated channel. From these cuts,
water would run to his fields, which sat at lower elevations. He described historic
bridges that now lay fully embedded and buried in the accumulated sediment.
Alluvial deposits had thus reached three or four meters deep.20 Deeply aggraded
and raised stream channels of this sort were already found along the banks of the
Río de San Juan, immediately south of the parish church, which facilitated the
deep sedimentation in the village in the eighteenth century.
The alluviation along the banks of the Zahuapan River in the eighteenth
century, as described by de Portal, had been transported there from the upper
basin. The environmental rupture and degradation responsible for this sediment
release into the Zahuapan’s channel lay fully exposed in 1761. In the mid-reach
of the Zahuapan River, roughly halfway between the headwaters of the Sierra
Madre Oriental and Tlaxcala City, the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas
haciendas became the site of a ten-day circumambulation (see map 20). The
circumambulation exposed a total rupture of landscape and a profound degra-
dation of soil and water that occurred suddenly and simultaneously shortly after
140 | Chapter 4

1697. Following the remnants of a meandering wetland called Amalinalco, the

entourage traveled four kilometers along the length of a dry ditch, formerly a
wetland, until massive eskerlike ridges of sand suddenly interrupted the ditch
and spread into the floodplain from the surrounding hillsides. Barren land dom-
inated the valley except for a slip of grassland just to the south of the sand ridges.
The property title did not mention the existence of the sand ridges, which
were declared to be the Xalatlauhco Ravine. The entourage then advanced up
the ravine toward the top of the hill known as Centzoncuauhtipan that bor-
dered the floodplain.21 Once they had ascended the ravine, a full picture of the
state of the environment started to emerge. Massive soil movements had taken
much of the hill’s topsoil into the valley.22 Deciduous oaks had been replaced
by alligator junipers, a drought-tolerant and fire-intolerant tree species.23 The
midslopes had been utterly abandoned in recent decades. Sporadic maguey
plants marked the outlines of what used to be metepantli, rows of maguey used
to stabilize hillside terraces.24
The documents provide a rough timeline for the transformations. The point
of reference for the entourage was the 1698 Posesión de Oropeza, meaning
that any significant environmental changes had occurred after that time. The
existence of long sand ridges (not present in the Posesión) indicates that very
strong currents had predominated in the years shortly following 1698. Tellingly,
by 1761, farmers had just broken new land at the base of the ravine and seeded
it with barley. This indicates that the major sand and water flows had stopped,
slowed, or found new outlets by then.25 Thus, between 1698 and 1761, the hillsides
broke down, eroded, and moved into the floodplain, thereby infilling the marsh.
At the western part of the circumambulations, along the Zahuapan River, they
continued searching for the western bank of Atlancatepec Marsh. The crew found
not a marsh but a river and floodplain continually interrupted by embankments
one-half to two meters tall, some of them irrigation canals while others were past
levees from the same Zahuapan River. The men noted that separate from the river
channel was a barren, oval-shaped, mostly dry quagmire, the scant remnants of
what used to be a thriving wetland. Near the town of Atlancatepec were the rem-
nants of a bridge swept away sometime in the early eighteenth century, a small,
periodically boggy area difficult, but not impossible, to cross by horse.
Don Francisco de Nieto de Almizón, the owner of the estate named La Con-
cepción de Zacatepec, insisted that the river itself had changed location because
of “an impetuous torrent that made it lose its former channel.”26 The river had
charted a new course to the east, creating “an elbow” that isolated the dry lake
 Embedded Lives | 141

bed to the west. The event occurred sometime between 1705 and 1761. Unfor-
tunately for don Francisco, the entourage could not agree on the identification
of the “Old Channel.” By 1761, the floodplain was littered with ridges. Not
one of the men suspected that extensive wetlands had once existed when their
lands were settled. The shifting torrent and the backswamps left in its wake had
destroyed the bridges that sixty years earlier had allowed commercial traffic to
pass to the north of the Atlancatepec Marsh. Now, in 1761, the road passed far
to the south where the river proved more stationary.
It is difficult to ascertain the approximate year in which the new Zahuapan
River breached the Atlancatepec Marsh. A likely scenario is that these events
occurred during the major flood events of either 1735–36 or in the three-year
period from 1742 to 1744. Even if this estimation is correct, there is no reason
to believe that this was the first lateral shift of the Zahuapan River’s channel
in the now Atlancatepec floodplain. As noted, the inspection crew could not
locate the “original” channel and found many channel-like ridges, all of which
indicate that such lateral shifts had occurred many times before.
Indeed, contraction and growth within the Tlaxcalan wetlands are excellent
indicators of alluviation, providing clues to changes in the soil/water balance
before flood frequency increases. While climate-induced dehumidification—
retreating from the Colonial Mexican Pluvial—contributed to desiccation,
alluviation was a critical factor. Evidence of the contraction and disappearance
of the Atzompan Marsh emerges from land sales, rental agreements, and land
titles. Whereas dozens of titles from 1580 until the 1660s describe the Aztom-
pan Marsh as the boundary of estates, by the 1680s estates abutted the “Tlaxco
River” and not the marsh.27 In 1684, the estate’s owner, don Joseph de Brito,
employed indios from the nearby town of Tlaxco to install irrigation works
and break earth in the area of the former marsh.28 The raised stream channel
that cut through the marsh is confirmed by detailed maps from the early and
mid-twentieth century. One such map from 1957 shows the Zahuapan River
was elevated at least two meters above the surrounding floodplain and contained
a pebble bed. Sometime prior to the creation of this map, significant fluvial
forces had carried rough texture sediments across the floodplain. The same map
revealed the Atzompan Spring and Marsh to be disconnected from the hydro-
logical system, while the Atlantepetzinco Marsh had been fully elided from
the landscape. In their place, rivers ran along the periphery of the topographi-
cal depressions and left the wetlands to languish without significant inputs of
water.29 Other documents from the beginning of the twentieth century state
142 | Chapter 4

clearly that the Zahuapan River channel was dry during the winter months and
that significant alluvial fanning had taken place near San Miguel Payocan.30
These wetlands had played a critical role in reducing the likelihood of floods
on the Zahuapan River at Tlaxcala City, acting as reservoirs that prevented
both water and sediment from moving quickly downstream and effectively
cushioning the blow of violent weather events. The mitigating capacity of this
interconnecting series of wetlands was huge. Tlaxcala City’s watershed was
115,000 hectares. The wetlands of the northern Zahuapan River basin—the
marshes of Santa Clara, Atlantepetzinco, and Atlancatepec—intercepted the
flow of 43,000 hectares that lay upland of both the marshes and Tlaxcala City.
This means that 37 percent of all water that flowed to Tlaxcala City passed
through the wetlands of the northern Zahuapan River basin. From a geomor-
phological perspective, it makes sense that the Atzompan Marsh, which lay
upstream of the Atlancatepec Marsh, disappeared first. Its replacement by a
river permitted streams to flow unabated and to enter the lower Atlancatepec
Marsh with increased energy. Following the formation of the new stream, the
Zahuapan River increased its strength (from a fifth- to sixth-order stream) and
newly brought sediment from two major floodplains and more than 44,000
hectares of land to Tlaxcala City’s floodplain.
In contrast to prior conditions, by the end of the first quarter of the eigh-
teenth century, none of these wetlands significantly obstructed water or sed-
iment from flowing quickly downstream to Tlaxcala City. The formation of
a surface water course through the Atzompan and Atlantepetzinco Marshes
constituted a fundamental breaking point of the early Zahuapan River system
and exposed the Atlancatepec Marsh to enormous supplies of sediment and the
energy to move this sediment. Applying the Strahler methodology of stream
orders, the early colonial Tecomatla River appears as a fifth-order stream as
it entered the Atlantepetzinco Marsh, and it brought sediment from an area
of over twenty thousand hectares. The Tlachac River entered the Atzompan
Marsh as a fourth-order stream and contributed sediment from about six thou-
sand hectares of land. The rivers then combined and flowed intermittently as
first- or second-order streams, eventually entering the Atlancatepec Marsh as a
first-order stream. By way of comparison, the early colonial Zahuapan River as
it flowed past Tlaxcala City was also a fifth-order stream. Excluding all those
areas of the basin upstream of the Atlancatepec Marsh (i.e., all those where
sediment stores were effectively withheld from downstream transport by the
existence of floodplain depressions), the area that contributed sediment to the
Tlaxcala City floodplain in the sixteenth century comprised only approximately
 Embedded Lives | 143

sixty-two thousand hectares. Thus, the Tlacomatla River had similar force to the
Zahuapan River and a basin nearly one-third the size of that of Tlaxcala City.
Simply put, an enormous energy and sediment potential lay latent behind the
wetland depressions of the Atzompan and Atlantepetzinco Marshes.
Let us now turn our attention to the situation in the Teotihuacán Valley,
where substantial quantities of sediment had accumulated by the 1730s in the
Acolman Dam reservoir. Alluviation was so severe that the convent and church
of Acolman sit some three meters below the surrounding territory. Juan Joseph
de Alva, a local indigenous elite from the area trained in surveying and architec-
ture (maestro de alarife), noted about 2.5 meters of sediment between 1741 and
1762.31 This estimate was repeated many times by various witnesses in 1762.32
By the early 1740s, new land was being opened where the reservoir had once
existed, and by 1769 the San Antonio Hacienda had, similarly, opened vast
regions to wheat production. The new land, however, took much water for irri-
gation because when allowed to dry, deep cracks opened in the earth. Clearly
this was alluvial clay sediments, described as de mucho migajón (very clayey).33
The same hacienda expanded yet again in 1780, claiming the “rights of alluvium”
(derecho de aluvión).34 To some degree it is not surprising that the reservoir filled
up with soil, although three meters is not a small quantity to explain away.
Evidence of sedimentation in the wetlands in San Juan Teotihuacán (fig-
ure 17) strongly supports the sediment record (both depth and timing) in the
Acolman Dam reservoir seen directly above. The first inundation of the town by
the Río de San Juan was in 1772 when, as noted before, San Juan’s main church
was flooded so severely that bodies were disinterred from the church patio and
brought downstream. Salvage archaeological reports tell us that the river had
been aggrading its stream and had developed a stream channel raised above the
surrounding land (see A on map 18).35 Even today, walking from the church to
the river (about two hundred meters), the land rises about three meters. At letter
B on map 18 was situated the colonial market square (tianguiz), abandoned in
the late colonial era, which salvage reports show to be under 2.5–3.0 meters of
sediment deposited by the Río de San Juan. Some parts were below more than
3.6 meters.36 A modern road (C) runs directly through the extinct and forgotten
wetland in San Juan. Excavations in 2008 revealed this road (built sometime
after 1865) to be on top of one meter of soil deposited alluvially during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.37 Finally, excavations revealed depths of
colonial and post-colonial alluvium of up to five meters at the main church in
San Juan and of up to three meters at the Puxtla church.38 Again, because the
first reported flood in San Juan by the Río de San Juan occurred in 1772, we
144 | Chapter 4

FIGURE 17 Approximate sedimentation in the reservoir of Acolman Dam. Ground-level

elevations measured with handheld Garmin GPS device in November 2012. For illus-
tration purposes, the scale of the vertical dimension is about twenty-three times greater
than the horizontal.

MAP 18 Map of San Juan Teotihuacán (1865).

can refine the archaeological dates and surmise that all of the above-mentioned
sedimentation happened after that late-colonial date.
Wetlands in the Teotihuacán Valley are, unfortunately, too few and too small
to indicate the hydrological health in the valley, which was the methodology fol-
lowed in researching the Zahuapan River basin. The Teotihuacán Valley receives
less precipitation and has much higher rates of evapotranspiration than Tlax-
cala, leaving few areas with standing water. The only significant wetlands were
 Embedded Lives | 145

TABLE 3 Historical output of natural springs in San Juan Teotihuacán.

Year Amount Type of Measurement

1584 18.5 surcos Measured

1684 32 surcos Measured
1715 48, 58, or 75 surcos Measured
1756 A significant increase Estimate
1783 A significant reduction Estimate
1917 1,000– 1,500 L/sec Estimate
1926 588.6 L/sec Measured
1955–58 523 L/sec Measured
1965 Reduction in flow Estimate
1970s A significant reduction Estimate
1991–2012 Dry Oral testimony (2010– 12)

AGN Tierras: Proceedings between Tepexpan, fols. 17v– 28v, 32v– 36v; and Towns of
San Juan and Maquixco, fol. 23r; AHSJT Aguas, Teotihuacán against Hacienda de
San José Acolman; Gamio, Población, vol. 2, “Quinta parte: La población contem-
poránea,” 87; AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales, Regarding the conflict, fol. 469r;
Sanders, Cultural Ecology, 44; Lorenzo, “Clima y agricultura,” 60; Nieves et al., “Tour
of Ahuehuetes and Springs.”

located in San Juan Teotihuacán, at the site of the natural springs, and they were
miniscule in area compared with the great wetlands of Atzoman and Atlancate-
pec. The hydrography of the valley, then, meant that these small wetlands were
poor proxies of soil erosion.
Nevertheless, their historical importance meant that stream flow was care-
fully measured at various times during the colonial era. Table 3 shows the vari-
ations over time of this output. What stands out in the various measurements
is that the river’s volume increased at least threefold from the sixteenth century
to the mid-eighteenth century, and perhaps fivefold. By the late eighteenth cen-
tury, the flow had fallen off substantially. Once again, just as we saw in Tlaxcala,
the timing of sedimentation and changing volume from the springs matches the
chronology of the new flood regime.

Silt and Politics

The Spanish governor of the colonial province of Tlaxcala, Francisco de Lissa,

complained to Spanish king Carlos III in 1787 that the Zahuapan River was
146 | Chapter 4

impeding good governance and had made a wretched mess of his ever-loyal
and once-great polity:

There is nothing better known in this new and old world than the opulence of
Tlaxcala, independent of all its neighbors and respected for its struggle against
its irreconcilable enemy the Mexican empire and there is today no more authen-
tic testament to its lamentable ruin than to see its government buildings almost
completely washed away by the frequent floods of the Zahuapan River.39

An earlier version of Lissa’s text, written in 1785, noted that three-quarters

of the city had been laid to waste by the city’s “greatest enemy . . . the volumi-
nous river that passes nearby called the Zahuapan.” The author of the 1785 text
remembered a first catastrophe in 1713 when 116 houses washed away, leaving
many inhabitants to drown, and a second in 1721 when a popular park known as
El Cielo de la Zagala (Maiden’s Heaven)—that the author described as a prom-
enade filled with flowers and fruit trees—was leveled by a torrent that flooded
the main streets and left ruin in its wake. The second event was particularly bad
because of an earthquake nearly simultaneous with flood that split the earth
and diverted water into new channels.
After 1721, the city’s struggle against this fluvial beast became less sensational
and more despairing: a tale of frequent destruction and progressive colonization
of the urban grid by water, wetlands, and aquatic wildlife. Salamanders were
said to be overrunning the city! An important church collapsed, bridges were
swept away, the main plazas and roads were frequently under water, and the
governor’s house was undercut by the force of water and deemed unsafe and
ordered destroyed. While the province financed new bridges, retaining walls
along the river, dredging and cleaning of channels, and the erection of dikes
and levees, these efforts did little to set straight the errant stream. Thus, build-
ings such as the church and hermitage of San Francisco were abandoned and
moved to another city. Taxes were imposed on woolen textiles (a mainstay of
the Tlaxcala economy) to pay for reparations, which had minimal effect on the
river and still forced producers out of the province and into nearby cities such
as Puebla and Mexico City.
One solution was to think big, to apply engineering techniques to simple
problems, as was being done in Mexico City (with virtually no success) with
regard to the viceregal capital’s monumental drainage project. Engineering plans
were drawn up shortly after 1763, then again in the 1780s, and finally, when the
 Embedded Lives | 147

plans were lost and could not be located, yet again in 1793. The last of these
plans recommended a highly elaborate and ambitious project to divert the river
into a new channel flowing through the center of a nearby hill, which required
not only the excavation of the hill, but also digging a new channel, erecting a
tall kilometer-long retaining wall and building a new bridge. Even if the plan
could work (and there was good reason to doubt its success), who would pay
for it? At the time of Lissa’s letter, seven years of moving earth had passed with
little evidence of progress.
As the project stalled, funds ran dry, and renewed floods ravaged the city
in 1793. Acrimonious debate broke out, especially between the newest propo-
nent of the ambitious plan, engineer don Joseph Rodríguez Bayon, and Gov-
ernor Lissa, who ultimately rejected the subterranean plan, preferring a sim-
ple and cost-effective cleaning and excavation of the existing channel. Bayon’s
position—presented in two letters to the viceroy—was that an excavation of
the existing channel would be useless because renewed flooding would simply
aggrade the riverbed. Indeed, dredging and cleaning of the existing channel
bed had been the focus of nearly a century of failed reparation projects. Indeed,
going further he argued that Lissa’s limited plan would be an irresponsible and
immoral use of backbreaking indigenous labor used to clean and dredge the
channel. Lissa fired back, claiming that Bayon’s foolish plan was the product
of, on the one hand, the engineer’s own ignorance and simplicity, and on the
other, of misguided advice from a local landowner (don Fernando Ruíz), whom
Lissa disparaged as

a perpetual and insubstantial chatterbox, wanting to fix the whole universe and
entertain idle thoughts, expounding discourses that, to [Ruíz’s] ear, qualify him
as erudite when in fact he is a deluded ignoramus, just like the author of both
letters [i.e., don Joseph Bayon].40

As to the question of wasting indigenous lives in the morass of the riverbed,

the Spanish governor responded cold-heartedly, declaring that the suffering of
a few indios should not be allowed to impede the progress of the province and
the benefit of the community at large. Besides, he said, “Jesus will thank them!”
Viceregal officials quickly sided with Lissa’s low-cost plan, replaced Bayon with
“engineer extraordinaire” don Juan Camargo Caballero, and—according to the
disgraced engineer’s heart-wrenching letters written in his own defense—left
Bayon a dishonored and professionally ruined man. Even though provincial
148 | Chapter 4

officials claimed some limited success, in 1806, in curbing damages with con-
tinued dredging and “felling of trees, bushes and brush,” the same problem
remained in 1866.41
Downstream of Tlaxcala, the town of Nativitas was plagued by the unpre-
dictable currents of the Zahuapan, which swept away bridges, flooded nearby
land, and made impassible the principal roadway to and from town—the camino
real that connected Tlaxcala City with Puebla City. The problem was first dis-
cussed in 1733 and went unresolved for decades, with new makeshift bridges
carried away by recurrent floods in subsequent years. Town officials fought with
wealthy Spanish landowners (hacendados) for funds to dredge canals and rebuild
the bridge. The town’s pleas for help highlighted the indignation and immo-
rality wrought by the river: having to ask permission of wealthy Spaniards to
bypass the river via private estates; losing mules and cargo in the torrent; risking
their lives to ford the torrent on the way to church and market. There was the
case, in 1757, when the swollen river disgraced a group of pall bearers, forcing
them to strip nearly naked to ford the torrent and nearly costing one man his
life when he lost his footing. Similarly, in 1782, town officials recounted the
dishonor brought to its women who carried their clothing above their heads
as they forded the Zahuapan. The message to the colonial administrators to
whom provincial and town officials made their cases was that the river had the
potential to be a dangerous and immoral force in public life.

Silt and Agriculture

In the Teotihuacán Valley, a parallel history had been unfolding. Floods had
become more frequent and more destructive over an ever-increasing area, from
the dam site all the way upstream to the village of San Juan Teotihuacán. Over
the course of the eighteenth century between three and four meters of alluvium
settled in the valley, causing the Río de San Juan to shift from one channel to
another (i.e., stream avulsion, just as the Zahuapan had done at the same time
in the Atlancatepec Marsh).
Local communities responded and adapted to the aggraded valley lands.
Success at adaptation varied greatly from one social group to another, certainly
by class, ethnicity, and geographic location (especially relative to the dam site—
above or below the dam, or within or peripheral to the reservoir), but also by the
choice of strategies and tactics employed in increasing or protecting rights to
 Embedded Lives | 149

land and water. It would be hard to characterize the process as “collaborative”

or as cross-ethnic rapprochement, as had been found in other parts of central
Mexico.42 Instead, the examples from the Acolman Dam watershed show us
that dynamic silt and water brought groups into conflict—debating, litigating,
vandalizing, and even raising arms to advance a particular cause.
The floods had reached disastrous proportions already in the 1730s and 1740s.
As the sediment accumulated in the dam’s reservoir, local interests shifted as
each group decided how best to capitalize on, or minimize the effects of, the
changing conditions. The cabecera of Acolman moved quickly to colonize parts
of the reservoir as they became available for cultivation. It should be noted,
however, that their water rights were minuscule compared to others in the
watershed, such as the Jesuit Hacienda de San Antonio, which we will examine
shortly, and amounted to no more than two surcos, shared between the town of
Xometla (dependency of Acolman until 1745), the convent of Acolman (which
had a small orchard and some adjacent lands for cultivation), and the more cen-
tral towns of El Calvario and Santa Catarina. The town of Santiago Atlatongo,
another dependency of Acolman, possessed rights to an independent source of
water called El Tular, while yet another small quantity of water was allotted to
Xometla for cleaning the main canal and for repairs to the Acolman Dam.43
Cultivating these newly opened lands took much care and, even with such
attention, was a risky venture. The years between 1732 and 1736—nearly all of
which saw major flooding in the surrounding communities—did not produce
a single successful harvest of either maize or wheat.44 A report to the audiencia
of the situation in 1736 noted the profound damage brought by the floods:

Although pointing out to them the said damages and other that are notorious
and patent and that they will not end here but in even greater damages, and as
such the floodwaters have left the church of the cabecera, which is completely
exposed, in total ruin, and washes away men, animals, and houses, leaving
behind those people— pitiful, but safe— who can find safety in tree canopies
while its furious waters pass, all because it does not have sufficient channel, and
for four years it has spilled across many areas with the force and rising level of
the waters, and has left behind in these affected areas considerable passageways
[portillos, i.e., new channels] that lead to such pitiful inundations.45

The report noted the difficulty in obtaining funds or labor from local inhab-
itants, even when they were directly and negatively affected by the surging
150 | Chapter 4

water. The floods of 1740 inflicted perhaps the worst damage thus suffered by
the community of Acolman, ruining as much as 12,000 pesos worth of wheat.46
This latest crisis finally drove the community to agree to help remedy the sit-
uation by creating five separate cadres—each representative of two or three
different dependencies of Acolman—that would each trench a 17 × 210 meter
section (20 × 250 varas) of a new channel for the Río de San Juan.47 While the
new canal seemed to have made the situation more manageable in the coming
decades, this success brought with it, on the one hand, new opportunities for
agrarian expansion in the reservoir and, on the other, renewed social conflict
between competing factions in the town.
The cabecera town of Acolman fought tenaciously for the rights to these
small quantities of water, an important point of dissension that ultimately drove
the residents of Xometla to separate from Acolman in 1745. The acrimony
between the towns, however, did not end with secession. Between 1750 and 1753,
farmers from Xometla and Acolman competed for the water, each side setting
out in the dead of night to build makeshift dams made of sand, rubble, brush
(cespedes), or adobe, which then diverted the water to newly trenched canals
more favorable to one or the other town. Often, the first step to establishing
such ad hoc irrigation works involved destroying the existing works created by
the opposing town. While each town claimed immemorial rights to the water,
it appears that their allotment was established only in 1684 and that the lands
to which they diverted water in the 1740s and 1750s were all new. Elders from
the communities (all seventy-five to eighty-five years of age in 1753), noted
that this had previously been a wetland. For instance, eighty-year-old Jacinto
Ruiz, a Spaniard from San Juan Teotihuacán, testified that “the entire valley
that today the indios of Acolman are cultivating and seeding was a wetland
and tular [marshland covered in bulrushes] where there were very deep wells
such that to get to some houses that were in [the town of ] El Calvario it was
necessary to move by canoe, and with the floodwaters of the river it has all been
filled with sediment.”48
While the conflict between Xometla and Acolman shows how the trans-
formed landscape (whose form was structured by the Acolman Dam) caused
riches to be found and tensions to rise in indigenous communities, a second
example shows similar results between Spanish estates. The Jesuits had two
major property holdings in the area: one (Hacienda de San José), located north
of the reservoir and directly west of the town of Atlatongo, had substantial
rights to land and water, while the other (Hacienda de San Antonio), located
 Embedded Lives | 151

at the southwestern edge of the reservoir had, by 1740, purchased enormous

quantities of land and rights to water emanating from the springs in San Juan
Teotihuacán. The San Antonio hacienda had expanded rapidly, buying neigh-
boring haciendas in 1729–30 and two-thirds of the potrero of Acolman in 1730,
the other part divided between the Augustinians of the convent of Acolman
and the town of Acolman.49 The purchase of the potrero showed particular
forethought, because this property, like that of the Hacienda de San Antonio
itself, bordered the dam reservoir. When new land opened in the alluviated and
drained reservoir, the Jesuits claimed the legal right to colonize these new lands
(again, by means of el derecho de aluvión) because they owned adjacent land.50
For the Hacienda de San Antonio, the Acolman Dam had (mostly) outlived
its original purpose. The Jesuits insisted that the dam no longer protected the
Ciudad de México—and went so far as to say that it probably never did serve
such purpose—and that maintaining the integrity of the structure simply made
difficult the cultivation of the alluviated reservoir. Like the towns of Acolman
and Xometla, the Jesuits focused on the most reliable cash crop: wheat. The
wheat varieties planted in colonial Mexico were slow-maturing winter crops,
planted in December or January, and harvested, ideally, before the onset of
summer rainfall in June. This meant that strong and early summer showers—or
a late harvest because of colder and wetter weather in the spring months—
could expose ripening crops to excessive humidity and thereby cause grains to
rot. The Hacienda de San Antonio noted that the key to successfully farming
the reservoir was copious amounts of water applied to well-drained soils. This
meant that not only did it require rights to water, but permission to drain the
reservoir in the autumn before seeding while reserving the right to keep the
floodgates open until the crops were harvested. Indeed, while further alluviation
and summer flooding would fertilize the fields before planting, soil fertility was
not an issue in these new soils and the risk from flooding greatly outweighed the
potential benefits. Indeed, after the Jesuits were exiled in 1767 and their estates
fell into the hands of Crown-appointed administrators, the new mayordomo
requested (and was quickly denied) the key for the Castillo of the dam (i.e.,
the gate).51 Long before 1767, however, Jesuit administrators did not hesitate to
take matters into their own hands by knocking down large sections of the dam
to let water flow past.52
Not only did these new apertures empty the reservoir, but they effectively
rerouted most of the streamflow emanating from the San Juan springs far to the
east of the Castillo, meaning that estate owners and towns who possessed water
152 | Chapter 4

rights immediately downstream (i.e., the Hacienda de San Miguel Coyotepec,

the Hacienda de los Rincones, and the town of Tepexpan) could neither access
the water nor irrigate lands. As to the timing of these changes, it appears that
the dam had been vandalized and rendered ineffective well before the 1740
court case and even before the expansion in 1729–30 of the San Antonio estate.
Indeed, a map from 1727 (figure 18) shows three or four separate channels pass-
ing through the dam, only one of which entered the Castillo and compuerta
complex. The two openings alluded to in this map—one just to the east of the
Castillo and the other far to the east, not quite shown on the map—are actually
the same apertures mentioned thirteen years later in the 1740 court case noted
above. As is the case with all such changes in the land, there was an unin-
tended beneficiary of this diversion of water—the town of Cuanalan, which
then expanded the scope of irrigated lands, although this strained relations
between the neighboring Tepexpan and propelled the two towns into litigation
in 1727.53 Figure 18 shows the terrain in dispute in this case.
Seven years later, in 1747, official viceregal inspectors—led by Joseph Fran-
cisco de Cuevas Aguirre y Espinosa—returned to the dam following the floods
in Mexico City the previous year. De Cuevas found the dam in the same dilapi-
dated condition as described in 1740, with the largest gap equaling one hundred
varas. Most interesting, however, is Cuevas’s description of the downstream side
of the dam: “The exterior wall that faces south, contiguous with the towns of
Cuanalan and Tepexpan, has been impeded by not only a multitude of various
types of trees, but with houses of the natives of these towns, for which the
dam serves as a wall.”54 Contemporary maps, such as that shown in figure 18,
omit this multitude of trees and houses that backed against the dam and no
doubt encouraged its deterioration and depict instead only a small number of
trees—primarily the long-lived ahuehuetes—and a vast quantity of magueys
with significant economic value to local citizens. Land and people, it seems, had
quickly adapted to the changing landscape created by siltation and vandalism.
De Cuevas, reporting for the viceroy (i.e., with the best interests of the capital
in mind and preferring conservative recommendations), strongly supported the
renovation of this “magnificent construction,” which would cost five thousand
pesos and be finished by 1750. De Cuevas ensured that funds would be allotted
not only for renovating the physical structure of the dam, but also for compen-
sation for the houses that were forcibly removed from the backside of the wall.
Yet hostilities between upstream and downstream users only worsened
after renovations were completed in 1750. In September, just days after the
FIGURE 18 Map of Juan del Campo Velarde showing townland of Tepexpan, Cuanalan, and river and dam (1727).
AGN Tierras, Town of Cuanalan, vol. 2515, exp. 1, fol. 76. Archivo General de la Nación, #1477.
154 | Chapter 4

renovations on the dam were complete, a major storm event destroyed the gate
and piled deep sediment around the dam.55 Over the next two years, portions of
the dam were once again knocked down.56 By 1758, the downstream haciendas
resumed their complaints that they could no longer access the water they legally
claimed.57 The dam gate was not repaired until 1770, but this only worsened the
flooding, sending water over top of the dam, which reportedly undermined the
base of the wall. The worsening crisis—for those downstream and, as we will
see, for the convent of Acolman—motivated downstream users to advance the
idea of adding an extra half-vara of height to the wall, a plan never attempted.58

Silt, Religion, and Rebellion

As the silt mounded and floodwaters worsened, the problems became even more
grievous, culminating in a dispute between the riverine community of Acolman
and the local priest of the Augustinian convent in Acolman. The conflict began
in 1762 and quickly required intervention by the viceregal authorities and the
archbishop. The proceedings climaxed in 1766 when indigenous townsfolk led a
successful local revolt first against the local priest and, when that failed, against
the viceregal militia.
The problem for which the community demanded redress was the plan initi-
ated by the local priest, bachelor don Juan de Dios Martínez de Viana, to move
the seat of the parish and cabecera (the local political-administrative center)
from Acolman to the neighboring and rival town of Santa María Magdalena
Tepexpan. According to Martínez’s own testimony, moving the parish would
rectify a long-standing problem: the church and convent were being flooded
with increasing frequency. Indeed, many twentieth-century historians and other
scholars have identified the construction of a dam along the Río de San Juan
in 1630 as the cause of flooding of the church and convent, which were built a
century before on the same floodplain as the dam. To a certain extent they are
right. The dam’s reservoir could indeed inundate a large portion of the lower
valley, but such events did not begin in earnest until 1732, more than a hundred
years after construction.59 Moreover, the convent was fifteen hundred meters
upstream (to the north) of the dam and was often flooded not from the waters
of the reservoir, but by the river itself. In 1762, the water rose about sixty-five
centimeters (three-quarters of a vara) in the church and at least twice that
amount in the cloisters. The confessionals floated out of the church “despite
 Embedded Lives | 155

their weight, as though they were buoys,” and bodies were disinterred from the
church’s patio.
While the town and the priest seemed to agree on the frequency of the
floods, they differed over their severity and the possibility of coping with them.
The town brought forth witnesses to testify that flooding was not, in fact, very
common. In living memory, only one incident could be recalled of a similar
magnitude: the flood of 1736. The priest actually agreed with this statement, but
noted that the floods “need not arrive more than one or more times for it to be
a danger,” adding that he “barely escaped” with his life.60 The priest refused to
withdraw his proposal and soon moved the parish to Tepexpan.
In making their arguments, the two sides supported their cases with maps
that represented the hydrological conditions of the valley. The two images could
not have been more different. The priest’s version, figure 19, makes effective
use of monochromatic ink to show the river breaching the channel banks and
spilling into the church’s environs. The map indicates three breaks (roturas) of
the channel of the Río de San Juan, suggesting that the situation was beyond
reparations. The town of El Calvario is shown completely surrounded by water.
Only the town of Santa Catarina—where the opposing natives lived, mainly—
remained free of harm from the river. In figure 20 we see a very different hydro-
logical context. It is not clear if the natives of Acolman painted this handsome
image themselves or commissioned the work. Regardless, the landscape depicted
reflects their interests: the hydrology of the lower valley was safe and idyllic.
Indeed, the image depicts a productive, prosperous, and well-kept landscape.
Despite the cleverness of the town’s image, it could not do the work of a
threat of physical violence. The population of Acolman resisted the priest’s
actions by threatening his life and then chasing him out of town. The situation
remained stable and relatively calm, however, until word arrived that the priest
planned to relocate a number of sacred objects from the church to Tepexpan.
Hearing this, the villagers claimed that they would sooner have the priest killed
than allow Tepexpan to possess their sacred belongings. Not heeding threats,
the priest started to carry out an inventory of the objects. As he and his helpers
finished their work, women from Acolman entered the church, forcing him to
leave empty-handed, pursued by six hundred men from Acolman, throwing
rocks from the other side of the canal. Enraged by the cleric’s actions and the
dispossession of the sacred objects, the townsfolk emptied the church and con-
vent of its remaining contents and stored them in the tequicalco (administrative
offices), a place the priest described pejoratively as “where they [the indios] hold
FIGURE 19 The lower Teotihuacán Valley as depicted by an Acolman priest (1762). The
drawing illustrates the grave danger posed by the water to the Convento de Acolman.
The map reads: “Por el mes de septiembre del año pasado de 1762, se experimentó la inun-
dacion de la Iglesia de Acolman en este modo; asi por q[ue] la presa empujo las aguas:
como por [h]averse rompido el rio.” [In the month of September of last year, 1762, the
flood of the Acolman Church occurred in this way; as such because the dam pushed [back
against] the waters, as though the river had broken.] Drawn by Juan de Dios Martínez
de Viana, cura propio y juez eclesiástico de Acolman, 43.3 × 33 cm. Archivo General
de la Nación, #4750.1. AGN Bienes Nacionales, Regarding the flooding, fols. 29r– 46v.
FIGURE 20 The lower Teotihuacán Valley as depicted by natives of Acolman (1763). The map shows stately churches and
towns, well-managed waterworks, and a generally idyllic countryside. Painted or commissioned by natives of Acolman,
43 × 47 cm. Archivo General de la Nación, #4750. AGN Bienes Nacionales, Regarding the flooding, fols. 29r– 46v.
158 | Chapter 4

their drunken binges,” adding that “there could not be a worse place for such
sacred objects.”61 Over the course of the next two weeks the uprising was first
pacified by a special troop of soldiers formed by the viceroy and then successfully
mediated by the dean of the Metropolitan Church in Mexico City, who ordered
the objects and the priest to return to Acolman. Humiliated, the priest said
that he “was viewed poorly by the indios,” and, besides, he was too ill to return.
Even though priest and parish were quickly ordered back to Acolman, services
were rarely held in the historic building. In the last fifty years of colonial rule,
the sixteenth-century structure flooded eleven times, forcing the town to build
a new church on higher ground.

The Chinampas Project of 1818

During a brief hiatus in Mexico’s war of independence, and at the end of the
dry season of 1818 before the annual monsoon rains would once again bloat the
wetlands and rivers of the central Mexican highlands, villagers from San Juan
Teotihuacán sunk their legs into the mucky terrain immediately below the vil-
lage’s main church (see map 19). They first felled a forest savannah of the great
ahuehuetes (also known in Spanish as sabino and in English as Montezuma bald
cypress—Taxodium mucronatum) and then took up the arduous task of carving
out ditches from the wetland and mounding the soil into long rectangular cul-
tivation platforms that they called camellones.62 After the trees were removed,
ditches dug, and camellones formed, much work remained for the villagers.
Willows and other trees were planted around the periphery of the plots and,
most importantly, dams, diversion mechanisms, and sluice gates were installed.
Finally, the everyday work of full-time year-round cultivation began. According
to the villagers’ testimony later that year, they had sought to “make chinampas”
(construir chinampas), a colossal undertaking that ultimately extended across as
many as fifty hectares.63
As the ahuehuetes fell and the platforms rose from the wetland, the project
was halted by the court at the behest of the Jesuit order, which possessed an
agricultural estate immediately downstream of the village with substantial rights
to water for irrigation. The Jesuits—recently returned from their expulsion from
the Spanish Empire—sought to stop the project on the grounds that it would
reduce the overall volume of water in the river system and thereby infringe on
their water rights. While the documentation of the litigation is incomplete and
MAP 19 San Juan Teotihuacán chinampas. The extent of the chinampas is derived from
both satellite imagery and the Millon maps. Millon, Teotihuacán Map; INEGI ortofoto
digital, E14B21B3, 1:40,000, March 2005.
160 | Chapter 4

lacks the court’s sentencing, we know the outcome. Sometime after 1818, the risky,
complex, labor-intensive, and contentious chinampas project began to operate as
intended, with a massive payoff for the town. The installation and maintenance
of this intensive agricultural system resulted in some of the most fertile lands in
central Mexico, enabling a market-garden scheme that supplied food to down-
stream cities, especially Mexico City, less than fifty kilometers to the southwest.
Driving the impulse to litigate in 1818 was the Jesuits’ fear of growing aridity.
Citing a variety of important thinkers, the Jesuits had argued that the ahue-
huetes had facilitated the movement of water from subterranean reservoirs to
the surface via the springs. The felling of these trees, by extension, desiccated
the springs and downstream land.64 The theory that linked deforestation with
desiccation was very much in vogue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries, disseminated in Mexico in the 1780s and 1790s by the great polymath José
Antonio Alzate Ramírez.
While the villagers rejected the premise of desiccation theory—calling it
“a very vulgar and popular belief ”—they did not dispute the growing aridity.65
Teotihuacán rejected the logic of desiccation theory and, instead, argued that
intense fires deep in the earth drove humidity to the surface. They suggested
that conditions had been growing drier since the 1770s and 1780s, when the
town began investing in canal improvements, took charge of the cleaning of the
springs, and built their own water-powered grist mill. Output from the springs
began to fall after the 1750s and became a problem by 1783, the last year of the
colonial era in which spring volume was estimated. Historical hydrological and
climatic data suggest that change in groundwater discharge in the valley lags
precipitation trends by approximately forty to fifty years. Thus, it is likely that
the acknowledged water deficit was still significant in 1818.
By these same decades, the lake system around Mexico City (into which the
waters from Teotihuacán drained) had fully desiccated in many parts. Desicca-
tion reached maximum levels during the Year of Hunger in 1785 and 1786 (the
driest back-to-back years on record in the last five hundred years), when falling
groundwater levels in the chinampa zone on the eastern edges of Mexico City
(at Iztacalco) spurred strong capillary action, drawing salts to the surface and
contaminating chinampa soils, a process called atequesquitar, or alkalizar. At the
height of the famine, when bodies were weak and sick, farmers excavated and
hauled away the top forty centimeters of newly salinated soil from their fields.66
Tambora arrived at a very bad time for Mexicans. Drought in 1808 and then
cold, damp conditions in 1809–10 (which followed another significant volcanic
 Embedded Lives | 161

eruption) resulted in very poor harvests. The outbreak of war in 1810 disrupted
markets for the next five years, a situation that was made much worse when
harvests were decimated by effects of Tambora’s eruption in 1815. This made for
a decade of hard times, for obtaining enough food and for those whose crops
were either too difficult to get to market or just failed to grow as expected, not to
mention the active warfare, looting, and arson that ravaged many highland com-
munities, especially around Teotihuacán. Historian Eric Van Young describes
Teotihuacán as one of a few “important theaters of military activity for most
of the insurrectionary period.” Some of the most important battles took place
upstream of Teotihuacán, near the town of Otumba, between royalists (whom
Teotihuacán supported) and the insurgents funded by the owners of the great
pulque estates operating in the region. Its position as a royalist outpost on the
fringe of the greatest sites of insurrection meant that it was a consistent target
for rebels. In August 1811, it fell to a force of well-armed rebels who burned
its archives. Its pulque industry—one of two primary economic engines for the
town—was in tatters, squeezed between royalist authorities in Mexico City
who feared that pulque might draw the townsfolk back into the hands of the
rebels and, on the other side, insurgents who had been attacking competitors
in the Teotihuacán region as retaliation for their support of royalists.67 Amid
this chaos, Teotihuacán initiated the chinampa project, driven by a number of
factors: high food prices, the loss of the village’s pulque industry, favor with the
ruling government, proximity to Mexico City markets, a steady water supply,
and the presence of untapped fertile soils. In crisis could come fortune, at least
for those in the right place, at the right time, and with the right plan.
In the villagers’ testimony of 1818, it is pointed out that the single most
important cause of the diminished flow from the springs was that the Río de
San Juan—which is not naturally connected to the chinampa zone nor to the
springs, but flows immediately to the south, just a few hundred meters away—
had been overspilling its banks and depositing deep layers of sediment over top
of the springs and thereby obstructing them, in-filling the town’s wetland, and
reducing flow downstream. In no uncertain terms, the villagers declared:

Everyone knows the force of the water that comes precipitated from the moun-
taintops, bringing stones, silt, and clay that go tearing everything away with
its current. . . . The first floodwaters . . . actually uncover more springs in their
path, but at the same time they leave the openings of the springs wider, such
that they can receive great amounts of water and silt that are brought in greater
162 | Chapter 4

abundance with the second floodwaters, and they silt up the springs, little by
little, until perhaps plugging them up completely.68

The first indications of these deep alluvial deposits occurred about one hun-
dred years prior, in 1720, when the Jesuits—before their expulsion from the
Spanish Empire—hired locals to clean alluvium from canals and, especially, the
springs. The town’s outdoor market site, located a stone’s throw from the river,
was abandoned due to alluviation. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
up to four meters of unwanted sedimentation was delivered from the upper
basin to the town. The flood of 1772 was so powerful that it swept away soil from
the town cemetery, disinterred bodies, and carried them downstream.
Undeniably, the Teotihuacán chinampa project of 1818 was a remarkable
community achievement, highlighting the brilliant foresight, planning, and exe-
cution of a large-scale environmental engineering project. In fact, until recently,
some archaeologists associated this technical and hydrological marvel with the
great classical era city of Teotihuacán (ca. 100–650 CE), lauded for its sophis-
ticated architecture and urban planning.69 In that period the city had both the
means and need to carry out such a large-scale environmental engineering proj-
ect. The discovery of the 1818 document casts much doubt on that argument and
opens new questions about how local indigenous imperial subjects—lacking
the usual avenues of power and knowledge that enabled other grand engi-
neering schemes such as the drainage of the lakes surrounding Mexico City—
could adeptly handle a project of such technical and hydrological complexity.70
Admittedly, the scale of the desagüe and the chinampas are quite different—
the former was one of the most ambitious projects of the seventeenth century,
anywhere in the world—but the comparison is still apt given that both projects
faced similar technical difficulties to conceptualize and implement a new mor-
phology of land and a radically different flow and distribution of water. In both
cases, the new land-water relationship was a delicate balance, although only the
Teotihuacanos succeeded in both the short and long term.

Conclusion

Returning, for a moment, to the amojonamiento of 1703, it is possible to see

this dispute as a precocious precursor to what would follow. The dry riverbeds,
the livestock deaths, the push to cultivate soils that had—at least since the
 Embedded Lives | 163

beginning of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial—been too wet to cultivate, and the
intensified social conflict that occurred in this rural landscape: these were the
early signs of the birth of a new hydrology and geomorphology. In the next few
years, the Cabildo of Tlaxcala launched the first of many protracted investiga-
tions into the Zahuapan River. Over the next few decades, the silt, sand, and
gravels made their way into the valleys and floodplains below. In fact, the central
cause of this conflict (the ecology of new forms of maguey cultivation and the
grazing lands of the Ejidos) stared down on the group that followed the Spanish
gobernador and townsfolk’s indefatigable lawyer around the perimeter of the
low-lying parcel. Yet it is unlikely that the group of officials who participated in
the amojonamiento of 1703 recognized the underlying forces that had recently
transformed this landscape.
Of course, this complex social world cannot be reduced to a kneejerk reaction
to the great forces of nature. That has not been the point of pairing environ-
mental and social processes in this chapter. As historian Mark Morris reminds
us, local resentment of the high-handed and corrupt politics of the Tlaxcalan
provincial Cabildo had been brewing for decades. “Increasingly ineffectual and
corrupt, the Cabildo’s elite nobility turned more spokesmen for colonial author-
ity than servants of their altepetl and became impotent against colonial demands
for land, labor, and capital.”71 Similarly, in the Teotihuacán Valley, the local
uprising against the parish priest was driven by a multitude of factors, including
Acolman’s acrimonious relationship with the neighboring town of Tepexpan
and the desire of priests to be closer to the social orb of Spaniards, creoles, and
sophisticated urbanites.72
Yet the terrain of everyday life was, undeniably, shifting, and lives were too
deeply embedded in these lands and waters to not be altered by the changing
environment. Responses, nevertheless, were creative and voluntary. While the
1703 amojonamiento—like the acts of sabotage and rebellion in Teotihuacán
or the riparian politics in Tlaxcala—was not a matter of life or death, it was
in some ways an opportunity and in others an unsettling hazard. Either way, it
often could not be ignored, rousing rivalries and propelling action. Representa-
tives from the pueblos and the Cabildo staked their ground and planned their
next moves, but they did not act in desperation. As these short stories tell us, not
only were the mundane affairs of agriculture knee-deep in dirt, but so too were
politics and even religion. The unprecedented movement of water and soil in
the eighteenth century was of concern to multiple ethnicities and classes, across
many social spheres, and many valleys in central Mexico.
164 | Chapter 4

Mexico’s eighteenth century is rightly seen as turbulent and conflictive. His-

torians have even linked the violence and conflict to environmental factors,
most often growing resource scarcity resulting from demographic growth and
inequitable distribution of ecological capital.73 Others have implicated drought
as a primary driver of resource scarcity, which then drove social unrest. In cer-
tain times and places, these factors might have been very disruptive. Yet the
stories recounted here—from the amojonamiento to the chinampa project of
1818—invoke a previously unidentified driver, a basal undercurrent of change: a
hydrological regime change of nearly implausible proportions. Reaching depths
of four meters and leaving deep scars on hillsides that can still be located in cen-
tral Mexico’s craggy wastelands, mass soil movements upended the status quo.
 CHAPTER 5
Memories of a Devious Landscape
The Commissioner’s Report of 1761

O
n the morning of August 26, 1761, doctor don Nuño Núñez de Villavi-
cencio, a commissioner of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, left the
residences of the Hacienda de Cuamancingo estate, located in central
Tlaxcala. He began his journey at the base of a low-lying hill and on the flat ter-
rain beside the Arroyo de Tliliuhquitepec that descended from the eponymous
hill to the north. About five kilometers to the east of the estate, the Arroyo de
Tliliuhquitepec flowed into the Zahuapan River, then known as the Río de
Atlancatepec. Map 20 shows the sites of parts of the commissioner’s circumam-
bulation. Villavicencio was equipped with reams of historical land titles dated
from 1534 to 1753, a compass, a notary to record the findings, an interpreter
to translate from Nahuatl (the local indigenous language) to Spanish, and an
entourage comprising informants and interested persons, mainly representatives
of the properties that surrounded the Cuamancingo estate and the neighboring
estate named Hacienda de Río de las Vacas.1 Together, the owners of these two
estates (don Alejandro Muñoz de Cote and don Luis Athanacio Gil, respec-
tively) owed 8,500 pesos to the royal treasury of the Inquisition for a loan issued
in 1697.2 Of all the documents carried by the commissioner, the most import-
ant was a land title notarized in 1698, known as the “posesión de Oropeza,”
which set the baseline from which the 1761 landscape had deviated. Indeed,
the purpose of the inspection was to reset the boundaries of the two estates in
accordance with the Oropeza title. Neighbors had contested the boundaries of
166 | Chapter 5

MAP 20 Sites of Villavicencio’s circumambulation, 1761.

the estate on the north, east, south, and west—that is, at every possible turn of
the property line. To settle these disputes and secure the financial solvency of
the estate (i.e., to ensure the repayment of the loan), the commissioner carried
out a visual inspection of the estate’s perimeter.
This chapter uses Commissioner Villavicencio’s report to explore memory
and remembrance in the wake of climate-induced environmental catastrophe
between 1698 and 1761. At the heart of the chapter are cognitive gymnastics,
self-delusional interpretations, and outright forgeries that were needed—or at
least wanted—in order to pair the landscape of 1761 with the one that was
supposed to be there, at least from the perspective of the documents and mem-
ories carried with the commissioner and his entourage during their ten-day
circumambulation of properties in August and September of 1761. The tex-
tual description of what they saw and the accompanying texts and images that
substantiated property rights in this landscape offer a glimpse of the creative
construction of landscape through the intersection of physical, cognitive, and
paper archives. Material landscapes served as an indispensable legal archive of
rights and privileges and as a cultural archive of ethnicity, religion, and, more
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 167

generally, social memory. Cognitive, textual, and graphic interpretations imbued

the material landscape with meaning. These three “landscapes” (the material,
conceptual, and paper) continually interacted with each other.3 These three dis-
parate archives shared, moreover, the threat of abrupt loss and transformation,
whether by sudden collapse of human populations (pertinent to the loss of New
World social memory), by flood, fire, or insect infestations (most pertinent to
paper archives), or by cataclysms, earthquakes, accelerated soil movements, or
sudden (dis)appearance of biological communities (processes that affect, mostly,
the environment).
This chapter traces the consequences of sudden environmental change on
social memory, specifically on remembrance—that is, (re)constituting the past
for present purposes, an act replete with both individual and social significance.
Discordant and fraudulent claims by witnesses, along with revelations in the
landscape that seemed unfathomable to commissioner don Núñez de Villavi-
cencio, complicated his task and produced a thick corpus of texts and images:
more than a thousand folios of documentation, along with three fascinating
images—oblique landscape perspective paintings—that are called mapas in the
documentation. A fourth map—with profile perspective, some semblance of
scale, repeated cartographic conventions, and sketched with pen—more closely
resembles a modern map. One cluster of papers in this series—associated with
three oblique-view paintings—is particularly interesting because they were
identified as recent (eighteenth-century) forgeries seeking to pass as sixteenth-
century originals. As attempts to pass as historical truth, they tell us much about
how past and present landscapes were envisioned. All images and associated
text will be examined below.
While the circumambulation is but a historical blip in the early modern
world, it sheds light on two processes that I believe reverberate in the wider
historiography. First, the circumambulation shows that environment was a
dynamic factor in social and cultural history. Climate-induced environmental
change in colonial Mexico troubled remembrance. It buried, extracted, swept
away, or simply reconstituted a landscape populated by culturally, economically,
and politically meaningful landmarks that were cornerstones—sometimes quite
literally—of not only landed properties but local ethnic identities.4 Such abrupt
memory loss was compounded by what Daniel Pauly calls the “shifting baseline
syndrome.”5 Humans tend to reset the clock for environmental change at the
beginning of their lives, argues Pauly, making it difficult to observe change across
generations. Compounding forgetfulness was the perishability, ephemerality,
168 | Chapter 5

and deliberate erasure of materiality in preindustrial organic society. Residential

structures composed of adobe bricks, thatched roofs, living fences, and other
organic materials quickly washed away or collapsed into mounds that grew
over in grass and bushes, soon indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.
Stone and metal building supplies were rare and tended to be repurposed when
no longer of use in the original structure. Rubble and ruins were powerful
agents of memory, which, because of their power to rekindle a pre-colonial past
infused with idolatry, were systematically and deliberately razed by colonial
officials. Most importantly, resettlement of the indigenous population in the
late sixteenth century (reducción, or congregación in the parlance of the time) was
intended to initiate a clear break with the past. In a fascinating and insightful
account of the methods and cultural consequences of this process in sixteenth-
century Bolivia, anthropologist Thomas Abercrombie calls the reducciones of
the 1570s and after “places of amnesia,” an intentional product of Viceroy Tole-
do’s insidious plan to extirpate idolatry and social memory. As Abercrombie
argues, Toledo recognized that what had to be forgotten could not “be easily
described in words, precisely because so much was implicit, habitual, even pre-
conceptual. It could not be explained; it had to be lived.” In the tabula rasa of
the new settlements, colonial conceptualization of history, place, and identity
had a better chance of succeeding.6
Textual and graphic representations of landscape were instrumental in Span-
ish legal practices and were accorded the highest status among the diverse types
of evidence. Yet such paper landscapes of the colonial era were constituted by
chains of landmarks. As Nicholas Howe notes about England, “without a sys-
tem of abstract demarcation, such as the grid of longitude and latitude, places
cannot be mapped with an absolute location but exist instead in a contiguous
and sequential relation to each other.”7 The paper landscape, despite its elevated
status in the courts, relied on practices of visual identification, such as circum-
ambulations, to locate and identify landmarks and, ultimately, to make words
and images material. The quasi-permanent legal archive, then, was insubstan-
tial in and of itself. Its legal force rested on on-the-ground testimony, highly
interpretative acts nested in failing memory, personal motive, and historical
contingency.
On August 21, 1761, the Friday before the circumambulation, the commis-
sioner warned the owners of the neighboring properties that “if some of the
lands covered by the inspection were currently usurped by neighboring property
owners, then [the commissioner would] clear these lands immediately of those
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 169

who are found to have transgressed.”8 This threat of economic loss spurred
neighbors to defend their lands. For personal and political reasons, the stakes
were high. Understanding the primacy of such an archive in the eyes of the
hegemonic Spanish legal apparatus, witnesses seized on the opportunity pro-
vided by abrupt change to realign the paper landscape with the new cognitive
reality of the material and sociopolitical world. The strategies employed by
witnesses reveal a broad attempt to use the circumambulation as a means to
(re)write the “Conquest” landscape: a hybrid landscape that was the foundation
of both legal and cultural mestizaje, which, as the commissioner came to realize,
could only be found in fraudulent documents, misplaced landmarks, and devi-
ous sites of pagan worship. Such interactions of landscape and memory in the
wake of Little Ice Age–induced ecological disaster, as we will see below, reveal
how severe climate anomalies begat more than disaster; they produced ener-
gized and socially constructive attempts to rewrite the past for the purposes of
the present. As witnesses demonstrated through testimony and the submission
of documents, we will see that the transformed landscapes were not “places of
amnesia,” but sites of hyperactive remembrance.

A Local Maelstrom

The Holy Office had chosen a celebrated officer for the acta indagación, or
investigatory process. As a young man, Villavicencio was corregidor of Mex-
ico City at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a member of the Mexico
City elite, attained the position of chaplain in 1734, and rose through both the
judicial and ecclesiastic ranks.9 He obtained the titles of licenciado (university
graduate) and abogado (attorney) and functioned within both the Real Audien-
cia (Royal Court) and the Real Fisco del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de la
Nueva España (Royal Treasury of the Holy Office of the Inquisition of New
Spain) before finally attaining the title of doctor in 1755. Five years before his
death in 1772, he wrote a text of usury and agrarian credit, no doubt a product of
such circumambulations. Otherwise, however, there was little to be gained from
spending ten days on horseback traversing the rural countryside. The country
was very dry in 1761, so severe that livestock died of an unnamed sickness related
to failing pastures and dried-up watering holes. After a very dry spring and
early summer, torrential rainfall arrived later in the summer, with flash floods
recorded in Mexico City, Tlaxcala City, and other regional centers.10
170 | Chapter 5

Perhaps the real reason that the esteemed doctor had been asked to carry
out this judicial inquiry was that he was set on putting an end to unfinished
business. Once before, in 1753, Commissioner Villavicencio had walked the
eastern perimeter of these estates along the Zahuapan River to settle a dispute
between don Francisco Nieto de Almizón, owner of the Rancho la Concepción,
and don Luis Athanacio Gil, the new owner of the Río de las Vacas estate.11 The
commissioner had found that the Zahuapan River, which divided one property
from the other, shifted laterally and played havoc with property rights and, by
extension, with timely repayment of the Holy Office’s loan. The problem of an
inconstant environment continued until 1761, both in that specific location and,
as he was soon to learn, mostly everywhere else along the property perimeter.
The commissioner was determined to resolve a dispute that had lingered for
more than fifty years.
The inspection of 1761, as ordered by the doctor´s superiors, was to be carried
out in the “fullest possible manner.”12 Indeed, the case left few stones unturned.
The inspection crew frequently retraced its steps in order to gather more field
notes and set this information against what was in the land titles they carried
with them. In many instances, the crew would reassemble at the same location
on a number of consecutive days so as to give the commissioner the opportunity
to ask new questions or so that new witnesses could be brought to answer old
ones. He paid close attention to anomalies in the soil and vegetation, recognized
faint traces in the landscape that might identify historic roads and canals, and
even asked members of the entourage to pull out their knives and scrape away
soil to expose embedded landmarks. His notary (Antonio Dávalos) recorded
testimony about the etymology of Nahuatl toponyms that the commissioner
had requested from the indigenous members of the entourage. At one point,
he went so far as to stop a muleteer who happened to be passing by in order to
gather information about the historic road network in the region. In retrospect,
the commissioner’s 1753 investigation seemed straightforward compared to his
current task and, moreover, far more satisfactory to everyone, himself included.
Soon enough, he realized that he had landed himself in a local maelstrom that
would complicate and stymie his efforts and, ultimately, lead to his voluntary
withdrawal from the proceedings purportedly for “medical reasons.”13
The factors that thwarted his investigation had little, if anything, to do with
open local resistance to the commissioner or the Holy Office that he repre-
sented, at least not initially. When the owner of the Hacienda de Cuamanc-
ingo, don Alejandro Muñoz de Cote, defaulted on the loan to the Church, he
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 171

initiated a process that no one wanted, especially not neighboring property

owners, who had clearly transgressed the limits of their rights as set out in the
archival record. Indeed, the paper landscape was, at best, a poor approximation
of the actual uses of the land, concealing a flexible system of property relations
that, while far from perfect, facilitated living with uncertainties about where
boundary lines were located according to the law. It concealed, moreover, his-
torically contingent understandings of land use that permitted habitual bor-
derline transgressions. Local landscapes defied state logic of ownership; titles
and rights of owners overlapped one another and often did not coincide well
with the reality on the ground. Arrangements between neighbors might have
an unwritten, historical dimension that took into account familial and labor
relationships, past and present, that could not be represented easily by text; nor
would neighbors wish to formalize (and make permanent) such arrangements.
In his examination of similar surveys and inspections in nineteenth-century
Mexico, Raymond Craib found that the simplified legal landscape could not
be reproduced on the ground. As he argues, “in trying to simplify and codify
a landscape of overlapping jurisdictions and use rights, of ambiguous borders
and shifting place-names, state officials had to reconcile a profusion of contra-
dictory and competing claims with the few remnants of documents available
in municipal archives.”14
None of the local parties ensnared within the commissioner’s delineatory
agenda wished on themselves the arrival of such Mexico City officials, that is,
unless desperation or an assurance of victory motivated one or another party
to initiate litigation. This was most certainly true of the owners of the two
estates at the center of this dispute: don Alejandro Muñoz de Cote, owner
of the Cuamancingo estate, and don Luis Athanacio Gil, owner of the Río
de las Vacas estate. Despite their complaints about neighbors usurping land,
making the repayment of the Church’s loan difficult, engaging neighbors in
decade-long litigation was clearly plan B. First, the two men tried to wrench
concessions and clemency from the Holy Office, both arguing that the loan
should be inapplicable to his estate because repayment had ceased long before
the purchase of the estate in 1753. Moreover, the Holy Office was reminded that
the mortgaged property had originally included two estates (Cuamancingo and
Río de las Vacas). Now, reduced to one entity, the operations were less fiscally
sound.15 The Holy Office rejected these arguments, demanded either payment
or the forfeiting of the estate, and then eagerly backed don Alejandro’s wish for
a full inspection of the boundaries. This action sparked a full-out mobilization
172 | Chapter 5

of lawyers, notaries, interpreters, archival clerks, and anyone else who could
buttress the argument of one or another side in the dispute.
While their neighbors were assembling hundreds of pages of documen-
tation, the owners of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates had no
documentation other than the 1698 Oropeza possession. Their estate records
had been lost, burned, along with most other documents, by arsonists during
riots in Tlaxcala City in 1692, at the end of anomalously cold weather (frost and
snowfall), flooding, and an epidemic that brought about famine and a general
crisis. Ironically, the late seventeenth-century climate extreme destroyed both
paper and material landscape archives. While the specter of litigation was on
the horizon, and with no documents in hand, it seems that Gil and Muñoz
de Cote must have publicized their despair, asking for knowledge of any doc-
umentation pertaining to their estates. In May or early June 1761, they were
notified by Juan Palafox Rivera, an indigenous official from the nearby town
of Apizaco, that some of their documents had been located by Juan Uriarte,
another Apizaco native, who had actually stolen the papers from the trunk of
Manuela Santos, an india cacique (indigenous noblewoman) from the town
of Huamantla. The two estate owners quickly organized a trip to acquire the
papers. Sixteen pesos bought them ten pages of text in an obscure and delib-
erately opaque Nahuatl. Eight other pages were in Spanish. The pages are
blackened, seemingly deliberately. Three images (called mapas) are included
and, like some of the text, purport to be from the 1530s and 1540s, a remarkably
early era for colonial land documentation. Convinced of their authenticity, on
June 17, 1761, the estate owners brought the text and images to Tlaxcala City,
the seat of the gobernador and council members of the Cabildo.16 Clearly, they
trusted the professionalism of the indigenous government and sought to take
advantage of the Cabildo’s staff of scribes and interpreters to copy and translate
the documents.
On August 25, 1761, the day before the circumambulation, the Cabildo noti-
fied the commissioner that Juan Palafox Rivera was in the provincial jail for the
distribution of fraudulent papers. In total, the Santos trunk had yielded at least
twelve sets of papers sold to ten different Tlaxcalan indigenous communities,
along with those sold to Gil and Muñoz, for over two hundred pesos. Despite
the charges, Palafox would admit only that the documents of two towns were
forgeries. Both Manuela Santos and Juan Uriarte were dead and could not
be questioned. Given the orthography, paper, content, and unusual genre of
the documents, it is quite certain that the papers of Gill and Muñoz were
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 173

fraudulent, meaning that they were not created at the time or by the people that
the purveyors of the documents had claimed. The idea of fraudulence, however,
has many ambiguities. Were the documents reproductions of some original or
of a later colonial reproduction? If so, this would explain the deliberate acts to
make them look more antiquated than they were. Were the documents liberal
interpretations of the past based on local memory and document review? This
would have made them an attempt to recreate the documents of the estates
that were deliberately incinerated by the rebels. As we will see below, the infor-
mation in these “forged” documents speaks to a way of conceiving history and
landscape—although in 1761 rather than 1533—that would be foolish to discard
as historically inaccurate.
Apart from these documents, the commissioner was soon inundated with
documents from the Cabildo; from the towns of San Lucas Tecopilco, San
Simeon Xipetzinco, San Juan Atlancatepec, and San Martín Xaltocan; and from
the owners of large estates named Santiago Buenavista Tepalcatlalpan, Zacate-
pec, Zavala, and San Andrés Buenavista. To take just one of these examples,
the Tepalcatlalpan estate was, at best, a minor player in the affair, bordering
the Cuamancingo estate (and the town of Xipetzinco) at just one small corner
where a large tree had once stood. To buttress their case, the owners submit-
ted, at first, 450 folios of documentation, then later two additional books of
papers.17 When the commissioner and Dávalos retired each afternoon to the
Cuamancingo estate, their dinner and rest must have been cut short by the need
to review documents. When they arrived in the field in the morning, they were
well prepared with highlighted passages from these many tomes.
This was a complex patchwork of properties with a far messier reality on the
ground. The case revealed an intricate web of conflict, primarily between the
two estates in question (Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas) and every neigh-
boring property owner. Such was the case of don Joseph González de Silva,
owner of the San Andrés Buenavista estate, who opposed the commissioner’s
ruling and sued for damages from 1763 to 1765. Conflict also erupted, however,
between the neighboring properties, who seized on the opportunity to even the
score of previous disputes. Certain problems that had been present for years but
not worthy of mention were now considered egregious transgressions of the law.
For instance, the Cabildo revealed in 1761 that don Alejandro Muñoz de Cote,
owner of the Cuamancingo estate, had usurped and farmed land for a period
of seven years.18 The Cabildo crafted for the commissioner a harshly worded
denunciation of the owner of the Cuamancingo estate:
174 | Chapter 5

Learning of this [investigation], this Very Noble City applauds these proceed-
ings, so just and with such a decorated judge like Your Honor, which promise
the end of damages occasioned by don Alejandro Muñoz de Cote, owner of
the Cuamancingo estate. Having benefited [illegally] from the lands of the
Cañada [Amalinalco] that he took over maliciously— which are the property
of this city— he has devised pretexts and plans to lead us all treacherously into
reckless litigation so that, perhaps, by mounting expenses and personal losses
of our chief attorney [procurador mayor], those in Mexico City would eventually
withdraw their assistance from [our attorney] and to be expected . . . abandon
the case and leave [don Alejandro] to carry out his aims.19

The Cabildo’s text implies that the purported abuses had reached unprec-
edented levels before the commissioner and had persisted for much time. Yet
no trace exists in local or national archives that the Cabildo had litigated or
pressed viceregal authorities to correct the alleged infringements. In the Cabil-
do’s pursuit of rights to its Ejido grazing lands (since 1699) and compensation
for damages to the Ejidos committed by a transient herder from northern Mex-
ico, not once in this litigation did it mention conflict with owners of either the
Cuamancingo or Río de las Vacas estates.20 Clearly, once the lawyers were out,
the Cabildo had to work by the letter of the law, announcing a “long-standing”
dispute that had troubled no one until just days before.
In this first of three examples of the strategies and devices used to harness
memory and documents to realign the paper and biophysical environments, I
show that the literal foundation of memory and identity had shifted. Yet the
townsfolk, government officials, and estate owners sought nervously to contain
the fallout and search out the past in the contemporary landscape. To make
sense of environmental change, the players employed a variety of creative strat-
egies, which I classify into three broad categories: reattribution of toponyms in
the material landscape, hybridization of landscape, and disclosure of a hidden
conceptual landscape. Let us begin with the first of these: reattribution.

Reattribution

To the west of the Cuamancingo estate lay the Ejidos de Amalinalco of the
indigenous Cabildo, an expansive pasture land whose eastern boundary was a
broad valley, between the Centzoncuauhtipan Hill to the east and the Techalote-
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 175

pec Hill to the west, that the Cabildo sometimes called the Cañada de Ama-
linalco. In the early colonial era a twisting marshland existed in the valley, and
the Cabildo tried several times to farm it before deciding to reserve its dense
grasslands for sheep and cattle grazing. Technically, laguna de amalinalco means
“lake of place of twisted water,” a toponym that is an awkward hybrid of two
Spanish words (laguna de, meaning “lake of ”) and one Nahuatl word (amali-
nalco, “place of twisted water”). The Cabildo was correct to associate this land
with a place called Amalinalco. The area had been called Amalinalco in 1547,
and in 1553 had been labeled Chicuemalinalco (Place of Eight Twists).21 In
late sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century documentation, some variations of
these words appear: Amalinalpan (Place on the Twisted Water) and Los Llanos
de Amalinalpan (The Flats of Place on Twisted Water).22 In 1749, someone in
the Cabildo’s pay noted that it had once been called Chiyauhmalinalco (Place
of the Twisted Marsh), hypothesizing (correctly) that this name derived from
“the turns that the water used to make in those parts.”23 It is quite evident that
Amalinalco once referred to a long, sinuous, wetland environment.
The Cabildo’s archival records would not let Amalinalco, the toponym and
place, be lost. It needed to be located, or reattributed, in the landscape of 1761.
The Oropeza title stated clearly that the western boundary of the Cuamancingo
estate (i.e., where the Cañada de Amalinalco should be) was a drainage ditch
that connected a lake in the northwestern corner of the property and another
somewhere to the southwest of the estate. The objective of the commissioner
was to follow this drainage ditch to the south until it met up with the Xalat-
lauhco Ravine, a reach of approximately one league. At the height of the rainy
season in September 1761, the commissioner and the representatives from the
various properties that neighbored the Cuamancingo estate found no sign of
the meandering marshland, but only a dry ditch, clearly trenched by human and
animal labor in the 1690s and first decade of the eighteenth century, precisely at
the time of the greatest multidecadal drought since at least 1450 CE.
The entourage paused at the intersection of the ditch and the Xalatlauhco
Ravine, which descended from the Centzoncuauhtipan Hill, which lay to
the east of the legendary Valley of Amalinalco (i.e., the ditch). As discussed
in the previous chapter, they encountered here high sand levees that clearly
had formed in recent decades, descending from the flanks of the Centzoncu-
auhtipan Hill, entrained by extremely powerful runoff events. The sand ridges
impeded flow in the valley, which now lay barren except for a small patch of
grass upstream of the sandy wasteland. The sand impressed and confused the
176 | Chapter 5

members of the entourage. The Oropeza title did not mention this most out-
standing geomorphological feature, even if the Nahuatl name for the ravine
(Xalatlauhco) denoted the natural presence of sand on the hill. At some point
in the last sixty years, unprecedented fluvial storm events had displaced the sand
and remade the valley below. Once the entourage had ascended the hill by way
of the ravine, they found the source of the sand deposits in the valley. The flanks
and plateau land were badly eroded and deforested, while the remnants of failed
metepantli dotted the landscape.24
They then descended the Xalatlauhco Ravine to arrive back in the vast sandy
wasteland cut by a dried-out ditch and a single ribbon of grass. There, in this
desolate location, the governor of the Cabildo launched a protest, claiming this
land to be the “immemorial” property of the Cabildo. The governor laid claim
to the land from the northwestern pond to the ribbon of grass in the south,
erroneously identifying Amalinalco as the northwestern pond. Amalinalco had
never been a circular and relatively deep body of water. Its association with
the 1761 body was impossible, at least based on previous documents that the
Cabildo itself possessed. Given what we know about Amalinalco, it is most
likely that the ditch was Amalinalco, or at least it had been carved from the
sediments that filled the valley. The Cabildo’s assignment (or reassignment) of
the pond with Amalinalco thus gave new life to the “sinuous wetland,” at least
in name, in location (roughly), and on paper by preserving a harmony between
its documents and the landscape.
The search for Amalinalco involved the Cabildo, Alejandro Muñoz de Cote,
owner of the Cuamancingo estate located to the east of the disputed land, and
don Joseph Gonzalez de Silva, owner of the Buenavista estate to the north. The
owner of the Cuamancingo estate voluntarily offered to concede this point to
the Cabildo. On the one hand, the land in question was not large and the sand
deposits made it almost worthless for any agricultural purposes. Muñoz thus
gave up very little. Indeed, by conceding this point to the Cabildo, the Cabildo’s
property lines would all be pushed northward into the domain of the Buenavista
estate, a move that counteracted the strategy of don Joseph who—as revealed
on the first day of the circumambulation, August 26—had sought to draw the
southern perimeter of his estate farther to the south.
Now, seven days later, on Wednesday, September 2, Alejandro was pushing
back. Muñoz’s strategy was to use the Cabildo to help his cause. Don Joseph had
been battling the Cabildo of Tlaxcala in a protracted war of words and pesos
in which he launched deeply insulting accusations against the province and
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 177

sought to shrink the latter’s powers and finances. In 1757, don Joseph had been
appointed diputado (deputy) by the increasingly activist and reformist Bourbon
Crown. The task of the diputado, in this case, was to oversee the accounts of the
Cabildo and to carry out an assessment of titles for rights to land and water, a
task that netted more than six thousand pesos that was mostly returned to the
viceregal government in Mexico City. Don Joseph had begun, by 1761, to med-
dle in the affairs of the city. As described in the previous chapter, a catastrophic
flood regime had developed in the wake of the 1690s that was directly connected
to upstream erosion. The Cabildo had hatched elaborate plans to combat these
increasingly destructive floods that ruined urban architecture and infrastructure,
while don Joseph, on the other hand, had advocated a do-nothing strategy.
According to the Cabildo, “he does not want Tlaxcala [i.e., the indigenous
political administration] to exist.”25 Thus, reattributing Amalinalco to the north
would activate the Cabildo as a force in Muñoz’s favor.

Embodying Landscape

In a recent monograph, geographer Joy Parr builds on historian Pierre Bour-

dieu’s notion of “embodied history” to conceptualize the ways in which his-
torical actors make sense of a rapidly changing environment and, conversely,
how the habits of the mind/body and different social technologies filter what
one perceives in the environment.26 Among these three objects—the habits of
mind/body (or, the “enduring reservoirs of past practice which actively influ-
ence subsequent responses”), technology, and environment—Parr argues for the
presence of a “tuned reciprocity” that results in “specific modes of bodily atten-
tion and perception.”27 Her study and the Bourdieusian approach in general
seek to understand how the material world structures behavior and knowledge
via sensory mechanisms that provide information and shape human experience.
Parr’s approach looks beyond the dominant linguistic paradigm, which tends
to focus first and foremost on the limits of expression and, by extension, of
knowing. This approach to the human experience and perception of environ-
ment makes sense because it rests on historically contingent factors and moves
scholarly discussion away from an interpretation of the discursive strategies
that shape thinking and writing about environment and from the predecessor
of discourse analysis: the study of the innate physiological structuring of per-
ception of the extra-somatic world. For example, the rise of print culture made
178 | Chapter 5

Europeans “less practiced listeners.” Alternatively, in a fascinating example from

post-WWII Canada, Parr shows that the damming of a river whose shores had
been inhabited for more than a century produced unspoken damages:

Changes in the moving water were bodily assaults to residents who had learned
to reckon direction, duration, distance, and depth by embodying the seasonal
movements of the lakes. Commodified water [the dam holds back water used
downstream for power generation], which moved in time with market demand,
was too unpredictable to embody, too quixotic to depend upon as a reference
point for the orientation of self in place.28

While Parr’s examples do not bear directly on Tlaxcalan history, the approach
certainly does, helping to open a window into the strident cognitive dissonance
between the commissioner—an educated, scientific man from the city—and
the locals with whom he interacted and sought to learn from (and then judge).
Indeed, it was the commissioner who could not imagine the rapid erosion of
this environment over his lifetime. The merged materiality of the Old and New
Worlds and the demographic collapse of the New World occurred suddenly
enough to constitute an unparalleled phenomenological catastrophe. Further-
more, the environmental transformation of this region of Tlaxcala from the
mid-seventeenth century until 1761 represents yet another crisis of an “embod-
ied lostscape,” to use Parr’s words.29 In the following section I continue to look
at how persons in colonial Tlaxcala made sense of environmental change. Foun-
dational narratives about past places and the place of ethnic and familial lineages
within those places shaped the way that colonial observers saw, interpreted, and
recorded local landmarks and landscapes.
In one of the more revealing moments of this ten-day tour, Villavicencio and
his entourage traveled along the gently sloping terrain of the northern bound-
ary of the estates. There, Villavicencio followed the faint ruts of the Old Royal
Cart Road—which had once served to transport precious cargo to and from
Mexico City, the port city of Veracruz, and then to Spain—until he reached a
deep, impassable gully. According to the documents available to him, especially
the all-important 1698 Oropeza title that described the land for which the loan
was issued, the gully was not supposed to exist. No maps or textual descriptions
indicated its presence in the late seventeenth-century landscape. More puzzling,
however, was how such an important commercial artery—in operation in 1698
and after—could have been routed through such inhospitable land. The Holy
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 179

Office clearly had outstanding notarial resources at its disposal, as the notary
left a thorough account of the conversation that transpired:

At this point, the commissioner asked which was the crag [mentioned in the
Oropeza text], and the witnesses answered that it was there, in his own shadow
and that its current condition as seen today, denuded and cracked open in many
places, possibly occurred as a result of the earthquakes. And he asked as well
which were the hill and the creek that they had read about, and they responded
that the hill was the same that was just spoken of and the creek was that which
he was currently looking at. And the commissioner said that by the road that he
followed here, northward along the Camino Real de Carros, along which don
Bartolomé de Escobeda guided and pointed out things [to the commissioner],
he tried to cross the ravine [barranca] that had just been read about, and reflect-
ing more on how the carts [carros] could pass through there, being so deep [the
ravine], the aforementioned Escobedo said [in response to the commissioner]
that because those were sloping lands [tierras colgadas], the runoff [avenidas]
deepens the land and with time barrancas are formed [se hacen barrancas], and
that when the carts used to cross there was not that ravine. And from there
they went guiding to where, nearby at the edge of a barley field, they took what
appeared to be vestiges of an old road, and the witnesses went along pointing
out traces of tracks as though the ruts of cart wheels.30

Villavicencio was an outsider to the area and clearly could not comprehend
the catastrophic nature of the landscape, or at least as attested to by witnesses
such as Escobedo and others. Escobedo used a delimited nominal object (tierras
colgadas) and reflexive verb choices (se hace barrancas) to suggest that abrupt
erosion of such magnitude in these types of lands was perfectly normal. Another
witness, a farmworker named Miguel de Villapando, also naturalized the ero-
sion with reflexive verb choices and matter-of-fact language, but then suggested,
ominously, that

in those times there was not that ravine, which formed [se hizo] after the great
sickness of the year of ninety six [1696] . . . that before this barranca was formed
[se hiciera], there was in that place a little water spring that perhaps with its
water and the downpours [aguaceros] and torrents the soil was swept away and
deepened [se fue robando la tierra y profundando] until leaving it in the state that
it is today.31
180 | Chapter 5

The commissioner maintained, or tried to maintain, his scientific stance. For

this purpose, he carried with him a magnetic compass. At the beginning of the
ocular inspection his notary recorded the commissioner’s accurate use of the
tool: “He took the bearing with the compass toward the hillock of Xipetzinco
and keeping it to the east of the said headwaters with a slight declension to the
south.”32 As a sensory technology, the compass revolutionized the visualization
of space and instantly set the commissioner apart from locals. The compass was
the first step toward plotting objects accurately into a geometrically constituted
cartographic grid. He is the first person whom I have found to carry this tool in
a colonial inspection, although judging by the rapid ascent of geometric cartog-
raphy during the eighteenth century, he was not alone. Mapping practices at the
time of his report used scale, longitude, and latitude and often tried to represent
local vegetation with some accuracy. Indeed, others had been tracking across
Tlaxcala in the decades before don Nuño Núñez arrived at the Cuamancingo
estate. Three maps from the Tlaxco region—just north of the commissioner’s
inspection region—from 1741, 1742, and 1743 show the contemporary use of
these scientific technologies of representation and, most certainly, of sense (i.e.,
the compass).33 Thus, the use of the compass marked him as conversant with
these new cartographic traditions sweeping across Mexico.
The local perspective, on the other hand, is portrayed by a map presented
to the Real Audiencia on February 14, 1765, by don Joseph González de Silva,
owner of the San Andrés Buenavista estate (figure 21). Don Joseph’s map was
produced a few years after the circumambulation in response to the commis-
sioner’s findings in the delineatory proceedings. The central region of the map
has four sections of text, each derived from the commissioner’s text and each
delineating a disputed area of land between the two parallel roads that run fully
across the length of the map. The roads structure the entire composition and
were evidently drawn before anything else. For don Joseph, the matter rested on
the identification of roads and, by extension, rates of landscape transformation.
The boundary between the Cuamancingo and Buenavista estates had been,
according to documentation, the Camino Real de Carros, or the Royal Cart
Road, one of the most important roadways in the colony, linking Mexico City
(as well as silver mines such as Pachuca, not far from these proceedings) to the
port of Veracruz, and then to Spain. Because of its low gradients (as compared
to shorter but steeper routes), the road was used mainly to haul goods (i.e., sil-
ver and mining equipment) out of the colony and heavy ballast like wine from
Veracruz into the highlands. On day one of the circumambulation, don Joseph
F I G U R E 2 1 Don Joseph González de Silva’s map, 1765. Two images are shown: don
Joseph González de Silva’s map (left) and a schematic of this map (right). Drawn with
black ink on four sheets of paper. The entire map measures 43 × 104 cm. Black lines
represent rivers and lakes, and gray lines represent roads. The “^” character represents
topographic features. 1. Atlancatepec, 2. Tezoyotepec, 3. Tliliuhquitepec, 4. Cerro de
Cuaxapo, 5. Zoltepec, 6. Tlalayotepec, 7. Mazatepec, 8. Techalotepec, 9. Zacatepec (aka
El Escarpín), 10. La Peña, and 11. Los Cuecillos. Roman numerals correspond to the var-
ious place of human habitation: I. Pueblo de Atlancatepec, II. Hacienda de Buenavista,
III. Hacienda de Zoltepec, IV. Pueblo de Apan, V. Pueblo de Calpulalpan, VI. Ejidos
de Tlaxcala, VII. Hacienda de Techalotepec, VIII. (again) Ejidos de Tlaxcala, IX. Pueblo
de Hueyotlipan, X.  Hacienda de Cuamancingo, XI.  Hacienda del Rio de las Vacas,
XII. Pueblo de Apizaco, XIII. Barrio de Tlalmimilolpan. (AGN Mapoteca #1418, AGN
Tierras, Litigation for land.)
182 | Chapter 5

had made the argument that the road known, in 1761, as the camino real was,
in fact, the camino nuevo, the new road. The camino antiguo, the old road, lay
much farther south, as much as one mile. The basis of his argument was that
the old road had been nearly completely lost to erosion. The commissioner was
so perplexed by this that he spent three days circumambulating the area, with
don Joseph and his mayordomo going along “pointing out to the commissioner
some faint tracks and ruts in the manner of an old road that had been traveled
on, and at one point specifically they got down to show a sign of something like
a road that they said to be the base of the camino real that the carts, themselves,
had cut into by the weight and frequency of the traffic.”34
According to this line of argumentation, the old road had passed just to the
north of the Cuecillos, a site of ceremonial pyramids constructed in the era of
the great classical city of Teotihuacán (ca. AD 100–650). The Cuecillos lay
about seventy-five kilometers away from the great city of Teotihuacán, which
was one of the largest urban complexes in the pre-Hispanic New World—
indeed, in the entire world at the time. More than a thousand years later, the
commissioner—a cultured man of the Spanish elite, working for the Holy
Office of the Inquisition—was curious about the Cuecillos, perhaps thinking
about its idolatrous past and its cultural and religious significance, in 1761, to
those who lived there. More overtly, he commented on the quality of the ancient
road in that area, no doubt comparing it to the woeful state of the colonial
road that was causing him so much trouble, and which opened opportunities
for astute litigants such as the Cabildo and don Joseph. As wrangling ensued
over “old” and “new” roads, or even if there were such possibilities, he could not
come to terms with the speed of landscape change. That barrancas could form
in decades, that roads could be washed away in years, that all vestiges of a world
that had existed sixty-four years prior could be eliminated from his sights, were
too much for the commissioner to accept.
When the Holy Office made its determination on the case the following
year, it sided, not surprisingly, with don Athanacio Gil of the Cuamancingo
estate, thereby preserving, or enlarging, its economic basis. Don Joseph’s argu-
ment was denied, and the property line was pushed back to the north. The
decision enraged don Joseph and prompted him to use his considerable wealth
and power to launch a long, costly, and successful campaign from 1763 to 1770
in the civil courts (audiencia real). One interesting outcome of don Joseph’s civil
litigation was the production and inclusion in the litigation of his own map
and conceptualization of the terrain, a cartographic impression that highlighted
(and annotated) the new and old road network (figure 21).
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 183

Although don Joseph might have commissioned the map from a close asso-
ciate, his wording in the associated text strongly suggests that he drew it himself.
The scale is variable, stretching and contracting depending on the density of
the space represented. The map has roughly three different scales: the central
zone depicted with the largest scale, a second ring that uses a scale equivalent
to roughly 80 percent of that used in the central area, and the third zone (the
corners) that shows distant communities and uses a scale of about 20 percent of
the central zone (see figure 22). The cartographer wrote the appropriate cardinal
directions at each end of the map and, judging by the orientation of the vast

FIGURE 22 Scale and cardinal directions of don Joseph’s map. The four cardinal directions
surrounding the map are those given on the map itself. The map’s scale varies consider-
ably, but is most consistent in the region closest to the Zahuapan River where distances
between known landscape features are consistently accurate within 10 percent. The areas
marked “80 percent” have much more variation of scale, but mostly fall within one-fifth
of the central scale. The “20 percent” zones represent the distant towns of Apan, Cal-
pulalpan, and Apizaco and appear on the map, presumably, to show the end points of
roads mentioned in the commissioner’s report, thereby helping to locate the map within
the regional context. (Adapted from AGN Mapoteca #1418.)
184 | Chapter 5

majority of text, intended readers to lay down the map with south at the top.
With this orientation, don Joseph’s estate is situated at the bottom (i.e., north)
center, giving the illusion that the rest of the map is a panoramic view from
the point of view of his estate. This also helps to explain a forty-five-degree
distortion in the placement of the cardinal directions; the map requires a forty-
five-degree clockwise rotation.
Don Joseph’s map left ample room for the addition of textual elements that
relate to the debates about the location of landscape features significant to
the circumambulation and the associated legal documents. Only topology—
the contiguity of features—is accurate. Scale and direction are inconsistent.
The cartographic decision to relegate the map’s spatial aspects and to privilege
the textual and topological was in line with his primary goal: to convincingly
ascribe historical landmarks to features in the observed landscape. To this effect,
the bulk of the map consists of text. The central areas of the map (shown in
the diagrammatic version) are completely filled with text, much of which is
taken almost verbatim from the testimony. The map focuses mostly on the road
networks and hydrology and represents them quite accurately (excepting the
forty-five-degree rotation needed to correct the orientation). These were key
landmarks in Villavicencio’s report that delimited don Joseph’s estate. Certain
other key elements in the determination of don Joseph’s estate appear on the
map even though they had long since disappeared, such as an inn (“Venta de
Atlangatepeque”), a fluvial channel (“Rio de Atlangatepeque”), a road (“Camino
Viejo”), and a bridge (“Puente de Atlangatepeque”). “Natural” features of the
landscape such as vegetation or topography do not appear unless they are des-
ignated landmarks mentioned in the report.
Furthermore, the map paid close attention to Tlaxcala’s religious architecture
and hierarchy. Churches appear in all towns, but not in the barrio of Tlalmilol-
pan where there was none. Some churches have additional naves, while that of
Apizaco is drawn with arched construction that closely represents the building.
Hills and towns take on a glyphic, even logographic form on the map, especially
the town of Atlancatepec, which is the only town accompanied by a hill and
the only settlement to have the word “hill” (-tepe(tl)-) incorporated in its name.
Again, this is not an attempt to represent topography, but rather to exhibit the
landmarks most critical to don Joseph’s local worldview, not to mention his
economic solvency.
Thus, don Joseph drew the world he knew intimately: a landscape that opened
from the front door of his four-hundred-year-old estate onto plains, grasslands,
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 185

and cultivated fields that he experienced as a constant movement of seasons,

streams, animals, vegetation, neighbors, and so forth. The land from this angle
is both intimately known and yet highly symbolic. Intimate in terms of know-
ing where things are and how they look. Accuracy decreased with distance.
Dominating his map are historical landmarks, some of which had long disap-
peared from the landscape. This was a highly personalized historic landscape,
embedded with memories and symbolized by landmarks, that mixed matters of
identity, wealth, and patrimony within the confines of geography and history. It
has been noted above that such confluences of people, land, and history appear
frequently within the primordial titles genre and, it could be added, in other
indigenous genres, such as sixteenth-century maps, genealogies, and painted
manuscripts.35 Yet this chapter also suggests that such notions are well docu-
mented and demonstrated by the lives and views of non-indigenous persons
too. Living locally, without access to historical or spatial abstractions, tends
to produce such a view. To use Parr’s terminology, locals had embodied these
landscapes. As an outsider, an itinerant officer of the Holy Office, and as a man
of the times who metered both time and space, the commissioner exposed the
subjectivity and narration within the local landscape.

Hybridization

The falsified documents purchased by Alejandro Muñoz de Cote and Athanacio

Gil provide another voice to understand how the landscapes of both the six-
teenth century and of 1761 were reenvisioned in 1761. The documents represent
an anonymous, less politicized voice, what we might see as the social memory
of landscape. Muñoz de Cote and Gil did not draw up the documents, nor
does it seem that either played a role in the conceptualization of them. If they
had, why would they have offered the Cabildo an opportunity, months before
the circumambulation, to vet the documents and maps? The forged documents
present a hybrid view of landscape, mixing past and present with indigenous
and Spanish. Figures 23, 24, and 25 are the three images submitted to the com-
missioner for the purposes of the delineatory investigation.
Whoever created these images and texts knew the landscape and critical
landmarks well. How would these forgers have known to highlight Amalinalco,
the Cuecillos, el Escarpín, and so on—all critical landmarks? Another image
focuses on the puente de Atlangatepeque, a bridge that the commissioner was
FI GURE 2 3 Don Diego Najara y Becerra near Tecopilco and Xipetzinco. The mapa credits authorship to don Diego de
Najara y Becerra. Accompanying documentation asserts they date from 1533. Color on four sheets of common paper,
60 × 85 cm. Note: An error on the online server for the AGN resulted in only about two-thirds of the image reproduced
online. So I offer here a mixed image of the high- and low-resolution versions. Original in color. AGN Mapoteca, #889.
FI GURE 2 4 Peacemaking at Cuamancingo with Malintzin, Cortés, and local noblemen. The mapa credits authorship to don
Diego de Najara y Becerra. Accompanying documentation asserts they date from 1533. Original in color on four sheets of
common paper, 62 × 87 cm. AGN Mapoteca, #890.
FIGURE 25 Cortés and Malintzin await peacemaking near Texopan and Zacatelco. Accompanying documentation dates the
painting to 1533. Original in color on four sheets of common paper, 61 × 85 cm. AGN Mapoteca, #1417.
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 189

keen to locate because it would demonstrate the location of the “old road.”
While it is true that some landmarks such as the contadero and the nopalillo are
not mentioned in the 1761 circumambulation, most are.
Take, for instance, the identification and location of “Amalinalco” in one of
the forged maps. The falsified papers of the Cuamancingo estate make frequent
mention of Amalinalco in the text and depict it clearly in one of the “maps” (see
the center-left of figure 23). The accompanying text describes Amalinalco as “a
lake” situated west of a field of prickly pear cacti (el nopalillo), and as connected
to a drainage ditch that flowed westward. Here, we see a convergence of the
way that the forgeries describe the hydrological feature and the Cabildo’s own
description of it as recorded in on-site testimony during the circumambulations.
Even though the Cabildo denounced the papers and, as one of the administra-
tive bodies with legal power in the province, had held those responsible in jail,
it might have been influenced by the content of the falsified documents. After
all, the council had more than two months with the papers before the circum-
ambulation. Just as the Cabildo had done, the falsified documents reattributed
Amalinalco with the drainage pond to the north.
Similarly, toponyms were altered to better fit the current material reality
of the landscape, a Nahuatl tradition of naming conventions that was carried
into Spanish by the forged papers.36 Hilltop towns were renamed to better fit
the contemporary landscape. Take the examples of the towns of San Simeón
Xipetzinco and San Francisco Zacatelco (another name for the Río de las
Vacas estate). The toponyms had made reference to a “smooth, skinlike” texture
(xipetzinco) and a “place of gathered grass” (zacatelco). In the forged papers,
Xipetzinco was called Tepetlatitlan (“a place near the hardpan”), while Zacatelco
was remembered as Tepetlaticpac (“at the top of the hardpan”).37 The emphasis
on tepetlatl (hardpan) highlighted the ecological degradation that had occurred
on these hills. Chronology, too, was systematically modified in the documents.
The falsified documents referred to historical figures from the sixteenth and
seventeenth century in ways that seem to mix fact and fiction. Real people from
the seventeenth century suddenly appear as actors of the sixteenth. The forged
titles do not account for the evolution of the estates’ properties over time. From
1601 until 1670, the various owners of the two estates continued to add to the
land base of these properties, yet the 1761 documents show this to be a fait
accompli by 1542.38
Ironically, this chronological disorder is what makes the documents so rel-
evant to the current study of memory and landscape. While the sequential
190 | Chapter 5

evolution of the historical property boundaries may be of interest today, chronol-

ogy mattered little to the makers of forged documents.39 This is not to say that
history did not matter. The documents fixate on historical details, although not
in a manner accepted by today’s academic or even popular standards. Remem-
brance of the foundational moments of the estates mattered most to the authors,
not their sequential ordering in an abstract timeline. Estate owners cared little
about when they or their predecessors purchased the various parcels belonging
to their estates, only that they held their legitimate titles and that the Spanish
Crown had approved the terms of acquisition.
Nicholas Howe, a historian of Anglo-Saxon England, shows that inscribing
history within landscape is an ancient practice that turns upside down common
notions of history and geography. In Howe’s examination of Bede’s The Ecclesi-
astical History of the English People, he argues:

Geography serves as the anchoring principle of history when conventions of

chronology have not yet been fixed, when it is easier to define one’s subject as
concerned with what happened there in a given place rather than with what
happened when in a given time. . . . Geography was a way of shaping the history
of [Bede’s] narrative.40

The forged titles of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates manifest
this same principle. Moreover, as documents created by indigenous persons in
the 1760s, it is not surprising that the titles presented to the commissioner seem
to mimic a genre of indigenous corporate land titles that historians have come
to view as primordial titles, or títulos primordiales. Early sixteenth-century land
surveys done by Spaniards provided the títulos with their original content, but
as Lockhart has argued, the títulos seem to be an “independent redaction” or
even “parallel record” of those first surveys. Over time, the titles became infused
or overlaid with information contained in subsequent surveys conducted long
after the Conquest. There is little concern for precise record keeping of dates
or boundaries. The titles also contain an air of orality in that town officials read
versions of them at public gatherings. As Lockhart notes, “the style is declam-
atory, the tone that of advice by elders to present and future generations.”41 One
of the basic attributes of the títulos is their liberal conceptualization of time
and the spatial configuration of that unique historical vision within the param-
eters of a circumambulation of the boundaries of the altepetl. Robert Haskett
reveals an interesting interplay between history and landscape, arguing that the
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 191

landscape becomes an ordering mechanism for memories about politics and

citizenship. As he puts it:

History in the primordial titles is episodic and disordered. It is caught in the

folds of the landscape, recalled when the description of properties pauses for a
moment at a particular landmark. . . . One might picture a procession of town
officers, nobles, and citizens pacing off the boundaries under the hot semi-
tropical sun of Morelos, halting at a cross, the mouth of a cave, or a particular
tree while one of them reads from a title or recites from memory a historical
anecdote associated with the place. The meaning of the incident, rather than its
particular temporal confines, is what is important. Space, not time, determines
its arrangement on the living canvas of the past.42

Of course, the owners of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates
were not indigenous, and it might seem inappropriate to apply the interpretive
framework and nomenclature of the títulos primordiales to their titles. Such
apprehensions overlook the social and cultural (not to mention racial) mixing
that occurred. Racial categories and difference in colonial Tlaxcala remained
fixed within the legal and political sphere, but within the day to day and the
spheres of economy, culture, and even religion, racial boundaries were quite
fluid.43 Remember that the two owners of the estates, don Alejandro and don
Luis, had purchased the documents from Juan Palafox Rivera (who had func-
tioned as an officer of land transactions and titles—ministro de vara—in the
nearby town of Apizaco). The bundle of documents they purchased contained
not only papers relevant to their estate but also others relevant to surrounding
indigenous communities. In one case, don Luis had encountered a title relating
to the nearby town of Santa Bárbara Acuicuitzcatepec and promptly made the
twelve- to fifteen-kilometer journey to hand deliver the paper he presumed
would be of great interest to Acuicuitzcatepec town officials. As mentioned
earlier, they then brought the documents to the Cabildo’s translators to study
and transcribe, again showing a trust in the professionalism of the indigenous
government and involvement in the wider community.
Beyond the context of producing, procuring, and translating the documents,
the content of the estates’ títulos primordiales suggests that conceptions of
identity and historical interactions between indio and español had blurred and
sometimes fused into a single Tlaxcalan narrative. One might even see evidence
of an emerging post-colonial discourse in mid-eighteenth-century Tlaxcala.
192 | Chapter 5

The present and future of the two estates were deeply entwined in the indige-
nous past of the place. Take the name of the estate, San Bartolomé Cuamanc-
ingo. In the 1556 Tlaxcalteca census, written entirely in Nahuatl with alphabetic
script, it is clear that the estate took its name from the central town of “sanc
bartholome oztoticpac”44 (Saint Bartholomew at the place above the Cave),
while its Nahuatl name was taken from one of Oztoticpac’s subordinate wards,
either cuamantlac or cuamantlan,45 both of which have the meaning of “Place
of (the) Standing Tree Trunk(s).”46 The forged documents revive this origin:
the namesake tree is represented on all three of the forged mapas but especially
(top-center) on figure 23. The circumambulation revived the idea of the palo
huérfano, or “orphaned stick,” thus carrying on in eighteenth-century Spanish
legal code the historic name shown in the Nahuatl documents.
In the commissioner’s report, nearly two hundred years after the founding of
the estate, the location of the cave and tree trunk still mattered because the logic
of the names was evidence of an estate’s boundaries. Thus, at the top of Cent-
zoncuauhtipan Hill, a witness for the Cuamancingo estate, a sixty-five-year-
old man of Spanish lineage and long-time resident of Tlaxcala, don Antonio
Hernández de Lara, rekindled memories of the “palo huérfano,” which had for
fifty years been nothing but a slight hollow in the ground where the tree once
stood. The notary paraphrased:

the boundary goes up to the headwaters with another barranca47 named San
Bartolomé where there was [in the past] the “large tree” that the questionnaire
mentions, but which the witness was only able to see the trunk [of ] as a young
man about eighteen to twenty years old, and today not even that exists at pres-
ent but only a trace of the hole from which they pulled it out, which he saw
just eight days ago.48

Even though the indigenous tradition never intended these to be permanent

“names,” the indelible archival record of Spanish legal practices posed an obsta-
cle to ephemeral naming practices in Nahua culture.49 Legal documentation
over two centuries old often contained unsettling reminders of toponyms that
were no longer in use, that nobody could remember using, and whose mean-
ings no longer had resonance in the contemporary landscape. Yet the scripts of
landscape could not be entirely rewritten. Surely there must have been other
methods of remembering which ravine was the barranca de San Bartolomé
other than by the palo huérfano that had been missing for fifty years. Even
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 193

the name of the ravine was taken from a town that had disappeared 150 years
before 1761. These names, however, were inscribed in founding narratives and
then written down centuries after the Conquest. The importance of the palo
huérfano was not that it was seen as a biological spectacle in the countryside.
(One account simply called it “a big oak tree,” hardly significant for the cen-
tral Mexican highlands.) The palo huérfano was remembered by don Antonio
Hernández because it was part of a larger narrative, a story about the founding
of the Cuamancingo estate.
One of the astonishing aspects of the forged documents is just how accu-
rate they can be at times. This fact is outlined in tables 4 and 5. The forged
documents focus on the founding of the estates in the early sixteenth century
and highlight the central role played by don Diego Najara y Becerra and his
brother don Luis in making peace and converting to Christianity. European
town architecture, the Atlancatepec bridge built after the Conquest, and key
landmarks from the 1698 document contextualize the arrival of Spanish political
and religious authority. Figure 23 shows a full-body painting of don Diego in
the center. All three paintings suggest the process of Christian conversion, but
do so only at the margins of the images.

TABLE 4 Founders of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates.

Actual names Remembered names

doña Petronilla Najara Becerra Petronilla Najara Becerra

doña Petronilla Soria Becerra
doña Ana Nava doña Ana Tabales
Ana Tabares Ana Tabales Crus Masata
Pedro Tabares doña Ana Tabales Mazata
el maese de campo Luis García Najara don Luis Najara Becerra
Luis García Najara don Diego Najara Becerra
don Diego Romano Altamirano don Diego Mazata

Note: I have standardized spelling and simplified names by removing “y” and “de,”
which were used inconsistently in the texts. Most of the names in the forgeries actu-
ally belonged to previous owners of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates. In
fact, not only were versions of their names remembered, but memory was kept of these
important people having founded pueblos, which was true, and that their properties
derived directly from Indian nobility, which was also true. Of course, the names of
people had become mixed with others, and the people involved and the stories told are
from the mid-seventeenth century, not the mid-sixteenth century.
TABLE 5 Comparing versions of the origins of the Cuamancingo and Río de las
Vacas estates.

Remembered story Actual story

Three indigenous Nahuatl-speaking In the mid-seventeenth century, a maese

siblings founded the estates and gained
privileges of land and nobility as reward
for their participation in the conquest
of Mexico. The siblings were don
Diego Najara Becerra, don Luis Najara
Becerra, and doña Petronila Najara
Becerra.a
de campo (high-ranking military officer)
brought the two estates together for the
first time.b He and his brother were Span-
iards named el maese de campo don Luis
García de Najara and don Luis García
de Becerra. The former’s wife was doña
Petronilla de Soria. A woman by the same
name, grand-daughter, married don Diego
Romano Altamirano and further enlarged
the two estates.c

Within these lands, don Diego founded
various indigenous towns (pueblos). He
graciously donated land to the Cabildo
and other indigenous noblemen from
the area to settle and plant maguey.
The two brothers also founded the nearby
town of Apizaco (for both Spaniards
and indios) in 1631 by royal consent.d
The Cabildo had rented land to the two
estates.e

In 1551, one of the brothers purchased
rights to the land and labor of a parcel
of land that bordered the northeastern
corner from an indigenous noble-
woman named doña Ana de Tabales.
(“Tabales” would be the Nahuatl ren-
dition of “Tabares.” In Nahuatl speech
and text, there is no sound similar to
the Spanish r; it was thus pronounced
and written as l.f )
In the 1590s, Ana de Tabares sold land in
the northeastern corner of what became
the Río de las Vacas estate to Antonio
Jorge.g Ana was not of nobility, although
she married a wealthy Spaniard. Her
Nahuatl-speaking mother, Agustina Xilotl,
had three children with a Spaniard named
Pedro de Tabares. Agustina had been
married to another unnamed man when
she bore the children. All of this land was,
indeed, derived from indigenous nobility.h

a
AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, mainly fols. 11r– 59v.
b
AGN Tierras, Investigation into missed payments (1663), vol. 3306, fols. 28– 31.
c
AGN Tierras, Investigation into missed payments (1663), vol. 3306, fol. 12r.
d
AGN General de Parte, Verification of Apizaco.
e
AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 63r.
f
Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written, chap. 17.
g
AGN Tierras, Litigation for pesos, fol. 16r.
h
AGT Fondo Histórico, Testament of Pedro de Tabares, fols. 17– 18, 28r.
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 195

In figure 24, the image of Saint Bartholomew is likely a toponymic glyph in

that it is situated on the upper horizon of the image, beside a tree of the same
size (with the shape of an oak—that is, the palo huérfano, the namesake of
the Cuamancingo estate), which is itself beside a third similarly sized object, a
hillock, probably the sacred Otonteotl hill. Thus, in classic indigenous logogra-
phy, the upper plain of the image suggests a reading of “This is San Bartolomé
Cuamancingo, a sacred place.” The lower half of the figure seems to be a con-
tinuation of the picture above; that is, it fits to the right of the upper plain. The
shading and slope of the hill shown top and bottom suggest this interpretation.
In any case, the lower half focuses almost exclusively on the politicization of the
landscape. In the background of the lower plain, Spanish soldiers march from
the left to the center of the image, while indigenous soldiers approach from the
right. In the foreground and in the center of the image, the hands of the indige-
nous translator and diplomat La Malintzin (aka La Malinche, or doña Marina)
and Hernán Cortés reach out to each other. At the same time, Malintzin’s
left hand extends back to grasp that of one of the four indigenous noblemen,
probably don Diego Najara y Becerra, suggested by the map’s inscription: “Map
of don Diego Najara y Becerra of the town of San Bartolomé Cuamancingo.”
With his left hand, don Diego waves the other three noblemen forward and
thereby shows his leadership role in this act of alliance and peacemaking. The
arrangement of the two scenes vertically and not horizontally as a panorama
allowed the painters to highlight the triangular relationship between religion
(e.g., the sacred tree), the indigenous mother (Malintzin), and the Spanish
father (Cortés) and thus to express an underlying point of the forged papers:
the boundaries of español and indio had blurred.
In one story from the forged documents of 1761, it is told that on Novem-
ber 6, 1542, don Diego Najara y Becerra and his brother don Luis Najara y Bec-
erra met (purportedly) with the gobernador of the Cabildo and members from
the communities of Tecopilco, Xipetzinco, Cuamancingo, Texopan, Zacatelco,
and Tlayecac in order to confirm the ownership of a huge tract of land that
would later become the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates. The brothers
“lent a piece of the land [to the townsfolk of Tecopilco] so that they [the com-
moners] could build houses and plant maguey.” The purported legal document
made it clear to the leaders (caciques) of Tecopilco that this was borrowed land
and that the subordinates should “not interfere with the lords [señores] Najaras
Becerras because they could sell or lend away their lands as they wished.”50
Men from all of the communities then assembled and walked the boundaries of
196 | Chapter 5

this parcel of land. This not only confirmed that all members of the assembled
group accepted this arrangement, but it placed don Diego and don Luis within
this community and, in fact, as leaders of it. The text stresses the existence of
maguey plantations, which shows a continuity in landscape between the Con-
quest era and the period when this story was actually told, the mid-eighteenth
century. (By 1761, maguey planted in the Texopan parcel had emerged as a major
source of conflict between villagers and the Cuamancingo estate.) A series of
three images, or maps, memorialized this ceremonial transaction in full detail,
showing critical elements of the region’s hydrology, vegetation, topography, and
settlement geography, as well as the full social and ethnic panorama of elite,
commoner, Spanish, indigenous, and religious sectors of society. La Malintzin,
the archetypal mother of the colony, fused this social contract with her met-
aphorical and physical powers by using her own hands to link the hands of
Hernán Cortés and don Diego Najara y Becerra.
Of course, all of this was a “forgery,” a word whose double meaning is appro-
priate to this situation. It was something crafted or fabricated (in the neutral
sense): an invention, an act of creativity. So, too, it was a fraudulent, spurious
production. Some aspects of this transaction might have occurred in the six-
teenth century, but most of the places, people, and acts represented are anachro-
nisms. An interesting aspect of the presentation, then, is that it attempts to “nat-
uralize” don Diego and don Luis (two seventeenth-century Spaniards), as well
as the maguey plantations (again, a seventeenth-century invention). Moreover,
don Diego and don Luis are depicted as indigenous noblemen. The harmonious
meeting between them and Hernán Cortés—facilitated by La Malintzin—
highlights the merging of these two cultures and thus tries to convey the idea
that the current owners of the Cuamancingo estate, although legally Spanish
(españoles), belonged in Tlaxcala. They had a right to be there and to control
native land.
Finally, all three paintings bring together the past and present in a single
space. It is the narrative of the Conquest that matters in these images. Cultural
and racial miscegenation are themes that resound in the images and texts of
the forged documents. Because they are forgeries, it would be easy to reject
them as products of a conniving mind. Yet the mestizo mind of the authors and
painters of these materials shows indigenous influences, and many of the stories
are so close to fact that they exhibit a sincere attempt to represent the past in a
manner congruent with their creators’ understanding of history. The geography
of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estate enshrined those events, gave
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 197

place to them and embodied them. As a result, the 1761 forgeries speak volumes
about the common tendency in Tlaxcala (and probably across central Mexico)
to emphasize present landmarks in the past and the necessity of keeping alive
the toponymy of a bygone era by assigning it to present landmarks even as the
landscape changed.

Disclosure

We have seen how the case of Amalinalco showed how the paper landscape
of words and toponyms was actively reattributed to new physical landmarks.
Next, the case of the forged documents revealed how social memory in central
Tlaxcala actively blended past and present, Spanish and indigenous, and even
used the modern landscape to reform toponymy. Both broad strategies—of
reattribution and hybridization—were highly successful in the wake of climate-
induced environmental change. So, too, environmental instability opened the
door to rediscovery, or less innocently, disclosure: deliberate attempts to dis-
credit foes by way of remembrance of things forgotten. This is true of the rela-
tionship between the Cabildo and the town of Tecopilco, which was certainly
strained by the circumambulation.
The Cabildo was the only indigenous polity in New Spain to have its own
immense indigenous territory. This power was achieved shortly after the Span-
ish conquest, as reward for Tlaxcala’s alliance with Hernán Cortés during the
conquest of Tenochtitlan. The Tlaxcalteca played an instrumental role in the
Conquest and went on to conquer areas to the north and south of their home-
land. This overarching power led to considerable distrust and outright hostility
between it and small-scale towns. In the region of the circumambulation, the
towns of Tecopilco, Xaltocan, Acuicuitzatepec, Tlatlauhquitepec, Huitzcolote-
pec, Hueyotlipan, and Xipetzinco had formed a constellation of strong eco-
nomic and ethnic power. All had roots in a cultural and linguistic group known
by the dominant Nahua as Otomí. In some ways, these relatively central towns
were the gateway to the predominantly Otomí north of Tlaxcala. Before the
Spanish conquest, these fierce fighters had allied with the Nahuatl-speaking
Tlaxcalteca. After the Conquest, their power was reduced relative to the domi-
nant Nahuatl speakers and, over the generations, acculturated into Nahua soci-
ety. Evidently, this constellation of Otomí polities had not conceded fully to the
central power of the Cabildo. Indeed, a title from 1714 shows that Tecopilco and
198 | Chapter 5

Acuicuitzcatepec formally composed a single polity (altepetl).51 These Otomí

towns had been fighting the Cabildo through litigation, with often humiliating
results for the latter, a fact seen in the previous chapter.
For the Cabildo, the circumambulation served as a good opportunity to
disgrace their adversaries in the village of San Lucas Tecopilco by revealing,
first, landmarks that tied the village to past idolatrous practices, and second,
the inconvenient fact that the same village had been an enemy of Hernando
Cortés and, by extension, of the Spanish state. After the Conquest, the Nahua
succeeded in disseminating histories that eliminated evidence of their resis-
tance to Cortés. Resistance, the Tlaxcalan Nahua alleged, had been the work of
the Otomí living in Tlaxcalan territory. Indeed, the Ejidos, as property of the
Nahuatl-speaking ruling elite from Tlaxcala City, about thirty kilometers to the
south, was one of the spoils of Conquest, a sign of the Otomí’s full subjugation.
The Cabildo was eager to reveal to the commissioner the Otomí past of the
town of Tecopilco (as well as its neighboring village of Xipetzinco). Toponyms
suggesting ritual use of caves had already been mentioned in the previous day’s
circumambulations, but fortunately for those of Tecopilco, the entrance to the
cave site could no longer be found; witnesses reported it had collapsed during a
major earthquake in decades prior. Near the lost cave was the Cuecillos, which
suggested a thousand-year history of idolatry. The commissioner was already
sensitive, then, to the landscape’s idolatrous past.52
Unfortunately for Tecopilco, a crucial landmark in their own titles was the
hillock known as Otonteotl. The commissioner asked for a translation of the
toponym into Spanish. Town officials from Tecopilco were first to respond,
hoping to limit the damage. They said it meant “a divine thing, or of the gods.”
The Cabildo intervened, correcting the translation, saying “the rigorous mean-
ing was idol of the Otomis.” Making matters worse, documents carried with
the commissioner noted that the Otonteotl hill was supposed to have a cross
mounted at its top, but the cross had gone missing, leaving the Christianization
of the hill and of the town in doubt.
The depiction presented by the forged documents was much more concilia-
tory, emphasizing this to be a sacred landscape, but a Christian one. This same
hillock that is home to Otonteotl in the Cabildo’s version is painted and written
about in the forged documents as a land repopulated with Christian beliefs. The
text argues that the San Simeon church was built on land donated by the indig-
enous founder of San Bartolomé Cuamancingo, don Diego de Najara y Becerra.
Now, in 1761, there remained just three stones with the words Jesus, Mary, and
 Memories of a Devious Landscape | 199

Joseph. Indeed, Christianity was fully written into the foundational history of
the town of San Bartolomé Cuamancingo. In two images, churches are mixed
with European-style town architecture. In the other, Saint Bartholomew (por-
trayed with bushy beard, Bible in his left hand, and a raised knife in the right
to symbolize his flaying) stares out from his hilltop mount, which is likely
Otonteotl, given that both the hill and the saint reflected the act of flaying. The
hillock, often called the Cerrito de Xipetzinco, thus highlights the presence of
the flayed god, Xipe. Similarly, Saint Bartholomew’s hagiography says that he
was flayed alive. Borejsza notes that residents of Tecopilco recount a story of “a
‘bewitched’ San Bartolo on the hill,” a legend that carries forward the Otonte-
otl’s spiritual powers and hazards.53 Social memory as presented in the image
also suggests the harmonious relationship between the indigenous of the town
of San Bartolomé Cuamancingo and Hernán Cortés, projecting an image of
mestizaje: the impending embrace of not only Malinche and Hernán Cortés,
but with don Diego Najara y Becerra, the purported founder of the town and
creator of the map. By adding the third member to this alliance between Span-
iard and Indian, the image suggests that not only were locals complicit in this
union, but that they played an essential role in protecting it.

Conclusion

Environmental change was clearly a fact of life in the early modern era consti-
tuted by organic, ephemeral societies: a material existence that was essentially
biodegradable and recyclable. This made change a routine experience, rarely
committed to memory. In a time of severe climate anomalies combined with
rapid cultural change and demographic collapse, change became abrupt and
catastrophic. Clearly, environmental transformations impacted what could or
could not be harvested or extracted from land and water. A lesser known but
equally important aspect of abrupt environmental change, I have tried to argue
here, is its contribution to memory loss. It erased, moved, buried, and morphed
landmarks that were crucial to both property rights and cultural identities. For
the historian, this amnesia becomes apparent in offhand remarks in colonial
archival documentation of, for instance, whole towns having been moved or lost.
In the 1761 circumambulation, a road, a bridge, and an inn used from the mid-
sixteenth century until 1698 (for about 150 years) had been largely forgotten.
In one outstanding case, few could remember where the “old royal road” had
200 | Chapter 5

been, or worse, if it had existed at all. Readers of these societies and environ-
ments must be aware of the false sense of environmental stasis produced by the
endemic social amnesia of past societies.
Just as importantly, however, the mirage of stasis is reproduced by a hyper-
active memory. While such acts of remembrance, forgetting, imagination, and
disclosure form a rich cultural tapestry, they also systematically diminish our
ability, as historians, to observe change. As the material landscape disappeared
or was reshaped, it was quickly populated by memories. By searching out and
by claiming that they had found in the landscape what was no longer there, the
voices in archives made the real world invisible to us. The circumambulation of
1761, like others before and after, both in and outside of Mexico, was a moment
to extend and rethink memory, to highlight what mattered and to forget what no
longer seemed relevant. It brought witnesses with competing interests—from a
diversity of indigenous and Spanish backgrounds—to observe and often explain
away (minimize) the damage. Attempts to rationalize and repopulate—to re-
embody the landscape with meaning—are not necessarily fraudulent acts, but
a means to domesticate a rapidly changing world. Toponyms became mobile,
taking new forms as they did; landmarks of idolatry and disloyalty were brought
back to the surface to delegitimize adversaries. Landscape was reimagined as
inherently mestizo, more congruent with current realities. These realignments
show a dynamic, adaptive, and still contested relationship between memory and
landscape. Freed of inconvenient textual reminders of forgotten landmarks from
bygone eras, the forgers of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas papers had a
unique opportunity to write the history of the estates from their own perspec-
tives. That is, they had a chance to put down on paper the kinds of historical
moments that really counted, in their minds. What mattered to the forgers was
not the tedious and quite meaningless sequencing of time, but the enshrining
in landscape of the foundational moments of the Conquest. Witnesses to the
circumambulation consistently made landscape a canvas for history.
Conclusion

T
he key to this story about colonial cataclysms, climate change, and agrar-
ian adaptation is, I believe, the tracking of the formation of water and the
accumulations of silt, clay, and sand in valleys, floodplains, and colluvial
and alluvial toeslopes (i.e., the lower portions of hillsides). Whereas it is hard
to detect erosional landforms (which is to track the absence of something—no
easy feat), water-saturated environments and deep deposits of sediment always
seemed to attract attention. It is thus significant, I argue, that documents relat-
ing to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries mention water but not sedimen-
tation, while the sedimentation suddenly appears as a subject of much concern
in the eighteenth century, especially by midcentury when deposits had reached
two or more meters deep. Chasing water and dirt, as I call it in the introduction,
can be a productive and empirically sound method.
It is worth pausing for a moment to contemplate and imagine what this
transformation looked like. Archaeological reports in Teotihuacán mention
between two and four meters of silt, depending on where one is in the village’s
old wetland. The present patios of the Acolman convent sit 2.4 meters below the
surrounding area, but the original patios were likely another sixty centimeters
lower, bringing the total to three meters. These numbers, gathered on site in
2012, are nearly identical to the 2.5 meters mentioned by Manuel Gamio in the
1920s.1 Already in 1740, surveys of the silt in the cultivated areas in the valley
(i.e., those areas least affected by silt) described the accumulation of about one to
202 | Conclusion

two meters in ten years.2 In Tlaxcala, there are reports of entire bridges buried in
sand, probably indicating three to four meters of sediment, apparently deposited
between 1740 and 1780.
These quantities are astounding. Imagine yourself sitting in a standard room
with eight-foot ceilings. Look up and visualize dirt filling the room not only
to the top of the ceiling, but part of the next floor as well, reaching somewhere
between the knees and the head of a person standing there. Such sedimentation
was deposited in less than one hundred years. Of course, much sediment never
reached the valley, or did so years afterward, having been caught in the upper
valleys, riverine environments, or along colluvial footslopes. Yet more of the
sediment was washed right through, passing by the valleys and downstream
to either the Tetzcoco Lake or to the Atoyac and Balsas Rivers. The rates of
accumulation were alarming in valleys, reaching about ten to fifteen centimeters
(four to six inches) per year at their peak (ca. 1730–50), although deposition rates
were probably episodic, with accumulations of a foot or more in flood years.
These were cataclysmic times for which I have sought causes, which, in
turn, led me to the definitive role of interactions between land use and climate
extremes. I posit two disparate periods: one an extended Little Ice Age crisis
until 1630 in which there is virtually no geomorphic change, and another with
an acute climate crisis followed by unthinkable degradation and aggradation. I
have tried to explain this. I have also tried to explain what this meant to colonial
societies who lived through these climate-induced crises and who, in the eigh-
teenth century, had to cope with this profound redistribution of dirt.

Water in the Archive

It will be helpful to highlight the methodological underpinnings of what has

been done. Claiming to know something about the environmental undercur-
rents of colonial society raises questions about the reliability of the results of
this study. It might be remembered from the previous chapter that during the
commissioner’s 1761 circumambulation of the Cuamancingo estate, he encoun-
tered outright deception, falsified documents, an ephemeral landscape, changing
toponyms, and a general failure to remember what the past landscape looked
like, all of which made his task difficult and largely impossible to complete. One
wonders if the vision of the past improves with the passing of two and a half
centuries, or if the insurmountable problems encountered by the commissioner
in his circumambulation of 1761 have lessened or disappeared. In short, can a
 Conclusion | 203

history of colonial central Mexico present a reliable picture and explanation of

the pace and extent of environmental change?
Water acts as one of the epistemological lifelines of this book. It was visible
and omnipresent to residents of colonial central Mexico and, because of this,
is visible to us today in the hydrographic archive. It offers a means to gauge
(in the aggregate and in the particular) the extent and timing of degradation
in the countryside and so helps to narrow the discussion of probable causes in
site-specific or event-specific examples. Whereas most historical studies use
multiple individual examples to infer by induction, the river reverses the flow
of logic by delineating the temporal (and to a lesser degree, spatial) contours
of degradation, which then guide subsequent research into the causative fac-
tors. Thus, site-specific evidence of degradation takes on greater meaning when
assessed by the light of the river’s panoramic projection. Moreover, if sufficient
examples can be compiled, the two images of change (i.e., the aggregate and the
composite) help to corroborate each other and thereby make the study’s results
more reliable. This methodology has greatly strengthened the conclusions of
this book. In fact, without the river’s delineation of the temporal contours of
degradation, I would have struggled, and likely failed, to sense the environ-
mental repercussions of agroecological change in colonial Mexico. While this
study shows the importance and potential of colonial sources to reconstruct
(and correlate) indigenous agricultural systems, demographic change, and cli-
matic fluctuations, these historical processes say very little about the general
ecological conditions. No sequential data series other than that of rivers can so
tie together the spatially and temporally disjointed indications of the ecological
consequences of the interaction between land use, climate, demography, and
socioeconomic change. The river—or more precisely, the hydrological system—
acts as a proxy of ecological conditions in the entire basin and, by a tracing of its
evolution, presents a picture of the type and timing of environmental change.
The river and its basin tell a convincing story of environmental change. The
rapid onset of a much-increased likelihood of flooding and the disappearance
of wetlands throughout the basins examined indicate a profound and simul-
taneous transformation of hydrological systems across central Mexico. When
stormwater cut a new fluvial channel through the Atlancatepec Marsh and
joined previously separated river segments, or the Río de San Juan formed
raised channels and deposited four meters of silt in the lower basin, new rivers
were born. I must admit that identifying what happened where and when was
a daunting task, often with many errors that needed to be corrected as research
accumulated—a process aided by the application of GIS methods. Yet little if
204 | Conclusion

any of this hydrological transformation remains uncertain in my mind. Colonial

observers recognized the changing behavior of rivers and the reorganization of
the channel network. They described it relentlessly by way of maps and texts,
often in engineering reports, but also in small-scale litigation. Only the timing
is at all debatable, although I believe I give enough consideration to time lags
of sediment transport to prove a post–Late Maunder Minimum phenomenon.
Timing matters to this story. Knowing when the transformation occurred
enables some confidence about the causes of this large-scale environmental
phenomenon. What is crystal clear is that the Colonial Mexican Pluvial influ-
enced central Mexico’s hydrology in profound and unilateral ways. Indeed, not
only did it directly and single-handedly initiate flooding across the region, it
is also very likely that its dramatic and deleterious social effects—of excess
water—inclined humans to make ill-advised interventions in how water flowed,
thereby preparing the basins for the increasing likelihood of inundation in
future decades. I am thinking, here, about the well-documented and much-
studied case of the wetlands of the Valley of Mexico. In response to the flood of
1629, dam and reservoir infrastructure was built to hold back water during peak
humidity in the lower reaches of many rivers, a process that initiated siltation,
stream avulsion, and flooding above the dam. When siltation reached its maxi-
mum depth allowed by the dam, regions downstream of dams actually suffered
more frequent flooding than prior to the construction of the dams because
the natural wetlands that were eliminated by the new infrastructure no longer
cushioned runoff. Perhaps it is time to reverse the causation in this case, to admit
that wetness drove human action that drove further wetness. This accounting of
natural agency is a small piece of the puzzle, but one that redefines the desagüe
as a desperate act of folly rather than a mad predilection toward dryness.
The hydrographic archive is univocal about the soggy conditions of the plu-
vial. When friar Andrés de San Miguel wrote about the humidity of his era, he
did so accurately but also with an ascetic modesty befitting his station. Rivers
were swollen. Marshes were full. New springs burst forth. Old ones increased
their flow. In the great endorheic basins of the Neovolcanic Axis, the water
often had nowhere to go. It collected in depressions and floodplains. Seasonal
wetlands encroached on towns. San Miguel and like-minded astrologers and
cosmographers struggled to make sense of the pluvial, but they did not despair,
except perhaps Enrico Martínez, who hatched a very ill-advised plan that has
been effectively described by Vera Candiani. The generally well-tempered
and oft-favorable view of the rising waters left to us by the mapmakers and
 Conclusion | 205

chroniclers of the Relaciones geográficas or by the travels of friars, especially those

of Antonio de Ciudad Real, gave us a wonderful collection of water-themed
paintings and rich descriptions of pluvial. The spate of maps for these purposes
and mainly for litigation is truly impressive and was not repeated again until
the mid-eighteenth century, contemporary with the onset of the cataclysmic
landscape. So the worlds of central Mexico that we know make manifest the
periods of extreme humidity and desiccation, the latter resulting from the dual
processes of dehumidification and degradation. There was little incentive to
paint and describe non-extreme hydrological conditions.
The process of dehumidification is the hardest to track because it involves the
slow disappearance of water rather than its materialization or the appearance
of sediment. Moreover, the ephemeral nature of wetlands in the highlands, the
seasonal rise and fall of water, made it difficult to judge when reports of desicca-
tion represented something more than a withdrawal from the pluvial maximum.
There are signs in the wetland of desiccation in the mid-seventeenth century,
exactly when a key paleoclimatological proxy (cave minerals) suggests the devel-
opment of drought conditions. This desiccation occurs nearly parallel with an
upsurge of flooding between 1645 and 1653, which strangely matches high PDSI
values in the region. Two decades later another upsurge in flooding occurred in
the three watersheds. Floods in July (1675) and August (1680) diverged from the
pattern of September/October floods that dominated in subsequent decades.
This might indicate a watershed less able to handle regular summer weather, or
it might indicate a return of cold, wet conditions. After all, early-season floods
were also common at the onset of the pluvial in the mid-sixteenth century.
PDSI values for 1680 and 1681 are, indeed, very high, but the twelve-year period
from 1671 to 1681 is not significantly humid, according to this metric. Perhaps
the onset of the Late Maunder Minimum’s well-documented cold was enough
to spur flooding at this time. Then again, wetlands do not tell the same picture.
In short, hydrological conditions for the period between 1640 and 1690 are
very hard to read. In light of the mixed messages of floods and wetlands in this
period, I recommend focusing on the clear message of the flood series. They
still occurred simultaneously across basins, still in the same old locations (i.e.,
there was not an expansion of the geography of flooding), and still occurred at
similar—if slightly higher—frequencies than the pluvial. The flow from the
springs of San Juan Teotihuacán was as abundant at the end of the seventeenth
century as it was at the end of the sixteenth. Finally, there is no evidence of
extensive slope wash or valley sedimentation at this time.
206 | Conclusion

The third and final stage erupted quite suddenly in the first decade of the
eighteenth century and reached two cataclysmic peaks, once in the 1720s and
another in the 1740s when floods occurred on average every five years. From
this period onward, central Mexican rivers became impetuous fluvial beasts that
moved vast stores of sediment downstream and regularly pushed through and
over their embankments, leaving a complex network of new and defunct stream
channels that mystified observers and played havoc with property boundaries.
The beginning of the eighteenth century produced the most dramatic flooding
even though precipitation patterns remained unexceptional. Rather, the PDSI
values tell us that the extreme drought from 1696 to 1705—the worst in Mex-
ican history—was followed by a return to normal conditions. The simultane-
ous transformation of central Mexican basins became visible, abruptly, in every
available register: desiccation of wetlands, sedimentation, erosion, exceptionally
high flood frequencies, geographic expansion of flood zones, raised barrancas,
stream avulsion, and so on. Left to explain were causes and consequences of the
new hydrological era.

Colonial Ecology

In this book, I have striven to show that nonhuman forces did not unilater-
ally determine social or even environmental outcomes. Rural sociobiological
systems—which I call agroecosystems—possessed characteristics that made
them respond to external stimuli in unique ways. Species diversity, energy flows
(i.e., energetics), and field management (the arrangement and succession of
species, work schedules, fertility maintenance, to mention a few examples)
structured the internal dynamics of agroecosystems. Yet the types, timing, and
severity of environmental forces varied considerably; systems built to with-
stand certain forces failed in other times, with unique and perhaps more severe
environmental hazards. In many cases, there was no way to predict the prover-
bial weak link in complex ecological chains. As one agroecosystem took shape
in the countryside, those whose aggregate efforts brought it into being could
not foresee the potential complications of the system’s susceptibility to climate
fluctuations, demographic pressures (both upward and downward), or even eco-
nomic and political turmoil.
Agroecology of early colonization produced little environmental degrada-
tion, a fact established in chapter 2 against the prevailing counterarguments.
 Conclusion | 207

Spanish estates, which occupied an enormous quantity of land, acted far less
unilaterally and perniciously than is commonly assumed. They generally oper-
ated in flat, less-erodible valley land and tended to employ methods appropriate
to the ecological context. Mixed agrarian enterprises predominated, and stock-
ing rates were appropriate. Large sheep estancias followed the exposed grasses
in seasonally recessed wetlands. Otherwise, shepherding occurred in a mixed-
use and small-scale manner. The ecology of empire, I must conclude, was a good
match for the abundant grasses and waters of the Colonial Mexican Pluvial. Old
World agriculture—led by Old World agriculturalists—was a mostly benign
import to the highlands.
Even so, Spanish colonialism still mattered to native agroecology, but neither
as much nor in the way hitherto modeled. Colonial central Mexican agroeco-
systems were made possible by Old World biotic and political forces, yet they
bore little resemblance to Old World archetypes. Commercial agroecosystems
that dominated Tlaxcala in both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for
instance, featured native Mexican species (primarily Opuntia spp. and Agave
spp.), indigenous farmers, and, generally, the same fields used in pre-Hispanic
cultivation. Yet the emergent agroecosystems were not “traditional” pre-Hispanic
cultivation systems nor simple subsistence plots without commercial incli-
nation. The scale of cultivation, methods of transport, and marketing of the
products made from these species and, more technically, the arrangement and
interdependences of species, the management of soil, soil nutrients and water,
and the scheduling and sources of work (i.e., energy expenditures) made sense
only in the context of Spanish colonialism. These were new and untested agro-
ecosystems. As such, they cannot be understood through the vocabulary of
colonialism, which posits an innate conflict or competition between native and
foreign biotic elements. Terms such as “traditional” versus “neo-European” agri-
culture, “alien,” “invasive,” or “native,” or even the lexis of fusion, syncretism,
or hybridity (e.g., mestizaje ecológico) serve a limited purpose in this study; if
made a central fixture of argumentation, they tend to impede and circumvent
the task of revealing the underlying dynamics of novel colonial agroecosystems,
or in the case of ecological syncretism, serve mainly to state the obvious and
explain nothing.3
Woolen textile and dye (cochineal) production largely dominated the
sixteenth-century agroecosystem, while the following period turned toward
alcohol production and associated maguey cultivation. Although both agro-
ecosystems focused on native Mexican species that had been common and at
208 | Conclusion

times important within pre-Conquest agricultural systems, each had drasti-

cally different repercussions on soil and water regimes. More to the point, both
the degree of resiliency in the first era and the instability/degradation in the
second defy the existing historical models of the “clash” of the Old and New
Worlds. How did this occur? I have argued that the critical difference between
these two agroecosystems—and the underlying determinant of soil stability or
instability—was the type and quantity of energy employed, a factor that condi-
tioned the selection, placement, and management of plant and animal species.
Somatic energy systems in the early colonial period persisted as depopulation
permitted the continuation of traditional soil fertility methods, including fire
to release the nutrients stored in regenerated plant material. Fire integrated
well into both somatic energetics and the callalli field system that kept fire-
intolerant plants near the house and used compost and ash from the hearth
to fertilize them. After burning, pyrophytes quickly repopulated the fallowed
non-callalli parcels.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, socioeconomic, political, cli-
matic, and, importantly, biological conditions had realigned so as to encour-
age a fundamental reorganization of central Mexico’s agroecology to center
on maguey cultivation and, more specifically, pulque production. Regulations
against the production, sale, and consumption of pulque became weaker. Indig-
enous peasants possessed ever more draught animals for the thriving pulque
industry as well as for other agrarian pursuits. By the end of the seventeenth
century, peasants had matched the average ratio of hectares per draught animal
on Spanish estates, an astounding achievement given their meager means and
also an unknown fact of colonial Mexican history revealed by my research. So
important were draught animals to this agroecosystem—and so radically did
they depart from somatic energetics—that it is difficult to overstate their role
in transforming the environment. They ploughed fields, trenched metepantli,
and carried pulque both to the octlaliloyan (brew house) and market. In short,
only Old World draught animals could have carried out the work required for
pulque production at the scale achieved in the colonial economy.
In essence, the previously untested metepantli system was an ingenious cre-
ation composed of New and Old World species and made possible only under a
political regime that compromised (however hesitantly) social for fiscal stability.
Pulque production achieved economic solvency on both the local and viceregal
level, although in retrospect it had deleterious environmental consequences that
nobody fully understood at the time. Erosion followed both growth phases and
 Conclusion | 209

episodes of abandonment. Pulque necessitated growing webs of dependency

with political, economic, and biological entities far outside the local ecosystem,
made possible through a revolutionary transition to extra-somatic energetics.4
It resulted in increased specialization and decreased local biodiversity. Reduced
biodiversity and nested spatial ecological systems made local society and ecology
less stable. When climatic, demographic, economic, or even political disturbances
occurred, either locally or in another of the nested ecosystems, breaches in the
local ecological fabric of hillside soils reverberated across the Tlaxcalan landscape.

Repercussions

I have sought to show that environmental forces shaped and patterned colonial
Mexican society in profound ways. Central Mexico was an essentially agrarian
society with minimal transport capacity to redistribute food staples in times of
need and with few effective medical strategies to combat disease. This society
coped with the most severe climatic shift of the Holocene: the Little Ice Age. The
impacts of disease, famine, cold, drought, or even excessively wet weather trig-
gered social and biological responses that transformed colonial society with little
regard for class, ethnicity, or subregion. The repercussions of ecological change
were wide reaching, generating further responses in agriculture, land tenure, and
the balance of relations between social groups (classes, ethnicities, communities,
and so forth). In short, the shifting terrain of indigenous agriculture sent shock
waves through social, economic, cultural, and political systems. When the ground
that fed and clothed society moved, humans had little choice but to respond.
Farmers and communities litigated for possession of the lower colluvial
slopes and valley lands, essentially following the dirt and recovering assets lost
uphill, decades or generations before. For instance, residents of San Lucas Teco-
pilco fought for the Texopan parcel and Ejidos de Atlancatepec; farmers in
Atlihuetzyan and Yauhquemecan litigated for degraded land near the aban-
doned hillside community of Tochpan and then below in the Ahuehuetitlan
parcel located along the Zahuapan River. Residents of San Simeón Xipetzinco
went after alluvium that had washed out from the hillside to the bottom of the
Xalatlauhco Ravine (Cañada de Tepetate), where cultivation had newly begun
in the eighteenth century. In the Teotihuacán Valley, San Juan fought with
the Jesuits over declining water supplies, which motivated the townsfolk to
make chinampas. In one of the most dramatic cases, Acolman residents rebelled
210 | Conclusion

against the local priest who sought to move the parish away from recurrent
floods. This occurred after thirty years of legal wrangling about the alluvium
that predisposed the Acolman convent to floods.
Recurrent floods in Tlaxcala City damaged buildings, bridges, and other
infrastructure, and swept away houses and caused drownings. The Cabildo
blamed Spanish estate owners in the Chiyauhtempan area, who had (purport-
edly) caused the flooding by opening floodgates on their dams. In hindsight,
however, the accusations seem self-serving (if proven correct, the Cabildo would
have gained permission to levy taxes against the Spanish residents to dredge and
canalize the river immediately upstream of the city) and the result of an inability
to account for large-scale transformations of the basin’s soils. Ultimately, all per-
sons agreed that the underlying problem was sedimentation in the floodplain;
they only disagreed as to how sedimentation occurred and, by extension, who
should pay for repairs.
One of the central and yet largely unrecognized repercussions of environ-
mental change was an instability within textual, graphic, and oral depictions
of how past places looked. The speed and extent of landscape transformation
perplexed human observers. As seemingly permanent fixtures on the landscape
appeared, disappeared, and sometimes reappeared, memories of past places seem
unreliable and often creative, even though they were crucial to successful liti-
gation, property inspections, or less directly in the construction of ethnic and
gender identities. The space of uncertainty that opened as a result of environ-
mental change (among other things) spurred disputes, extended court cases, and
kept humans in harm’s way. Adaptive strategies that dampened or eliminated
the negative impact of natural disasters or weather events, for instance, relied on
remembrance of past experiences. The pervasive memory loss demonstrated by
colonial Tlaxcalteca, then, calls into question Tlaxcala’s ability to respond effec-
tively to environmental change. Georgina Endfield calls this “disaster amnesia”
in that “the social memory of the event might not be sufficient to translate into
a recognized adaptive strategy.”5
Nevertheless, forgotten places and processes created an opportunity to tell
stories about land and people that in a more stable environment would have
been easy to reject forthrightly. In these narratives, humans used the landscape
as more than a backdrop to their stories about the past; the landmarks, boundar-
ies, place-names, and rituals of landscape (usually involving some sort of move-
ment across the landscape) defined the action or actor as having a “place” within
the local history; the event or person belonged there and, by extension, still had
 Conclusion | 211

the right to be there at the time the story was told. Colonial cataclysms initi-
ated a fascinating interplay between physical and imagined places, as perceived,
envisaged, and made sense of by the various parties who pleaded their positions
during the visual inspection of 1761.
The forged documents of the Cuamancingo estate—and indeed, the entire
court case and inspection carried out by the commissioner of the Holy Office
of the Inquisition in 1761—reveal a deep historical irony. Social legitimacy often
rested on the contextualization of significant events in carefully defined places, but
memory failed the test of time. Remembrance of past places produced forgeries:
retrospectives with iconic elements of a perceived past populating an otherwise
present-centered place. Undoubtedly, if the current owners of the Cuamancingo
estate had painted—graphically or textually—a truer portrait of the past that
did not expose their fraudulent methods, they might have gotten away with their
ploy. But they, like those around them—and around us today—did not know
this past place. Despite having lived out their lives in the same place, they did
not remember where the Amalinalco Marsh was, or even if it was a creek or lake.
Nor could the Cabildo’s most knowledgeable men find a suitable answer. The
basic symbol of the Cuamancingo estate—the Old Oak Tree—had disappeared
without any consensus as to when it disappeared or even if it had disappeared at
all. Nobody who assembled at the side of the Zahuapan River seemed to have
any inkling that a marsh once existed there and debated instead if the river had
shifted course and if so where its old channel was. With so much on the line—
property, government revenue, historic landmarks, and even ethnic politics—the
commissioner was left with many dissenting opinions and little hard evidence by
which to judge the case. Whether it was because of the ephemeral nature of land-
scape, the often-indiscernible rates of geomorphic change, or, most intriguingly,
because imaginary past places could better serve the present, memory consistently
failed to accurately represent past places. The past was reenvisioned through a
careful mixing of what the storyteller believed to be true and what s/he assumed
others would find most believable. Often, their present-centeredness says more
about the environment in which the storyteller lived than the past landscape s/
he purported to describe, which can be valuable information.
Nevertheless, this study has, I hope, shown the importance of forging a
new image of landscape that traces the physical and biological world that fed
and clothed these storytellers and that underlines the changing rhythms, rela-
tionships, and contingencies established between humans, environment, and
climate. Historian Serge Gruzinski argues that indigenous elite responded to
212 | Conclusion

colonization with enormous ingenuity and creativity; the image he provides

is not just of cultural resilience, but of essentially constructive innovators of a
new world. The elite were not the only innovators, I add. Peasants built new
agrarian systems to fit rising and falling waters, new taxes, new markets, new
transportation systems, new demographic realities, and even new climates. They
succeeded not only ecologically (by creating original and complex agrosystems),
but economically too.
It is also true, however, that such creativity sometimes produced unexpected
and even unwanted results. Who could have foreseen the great chills of the
pluvial or the riotous conditions of the Late Maunder Minimum? Failure to
recognize the fallibility of indigenous peasant agriculture denies these farmers
an active, creative role in forging their own landscape—their own version of
rural colonialism—out of the bits and pieces of an agrarian world made far
more complex through the meeting of two worlds. This ingenuity did not end
with the metepantli system, but continued as the farmers followed their soil
to the valleys below. Natives from Xaltocan and allied towns celebrated their
acquisition of part of the Cabildo’s Ejidos and relished defeat of Gobernador
Pascual Ramírez and his Spanish ally, who ran the city’s meat supply. As the
example of the 1818 Teotihuacán chinampa project reveals, the soil was an active
agent in local politics, even in the War of Independence, dividing allies ( Jesu-
its and Teotihuacanos) and hardening antagonisms between those upstream
(degrading pulque estates) and those downstream (aggrading chinampa fields).
Of course, the little guy did not always win the litigation battles. Acolman’s
rebellion succeeded in the short run, but was fruitless when the irreversible,
slow-motion tsunami of dirt ultimately proved their spurned priest to be right.
And not surprisingly, the phantom lake—Amalinalco—would never be found,
not in forged documents, not by open lies, and not by naïve misplacements. Yet,
win or lose, the examples we have seen here show that living downstream of
the cataclysms was a prolonged struggle with not only dirt and water, but with
neighbors too, conflicts that helped prepare the ground for future battles, be
they in the lifetime of litigants or in the decades and even centuries afterward
as the earth unleashed by earlier agrarian decisions continued to shape the lives
of subsequent generations.
Appendix A
Reconstructing Colonial Mexico’s Climate

T
he purpose of this appendix is to provide a new assessment of climatic
variability during the period from 1500 to 1850 that complements and
explains the climate reconstruction described in the introduction. It is
time, and perhaps past due, to bring together and interpret with rigor the rel-
evant climate reconstructions for Mexico. I assess a variety of climate sources
from paleoclimatology and historical climatology. A critical interpretation of
new climatological evidence shows that historians have misrepresented Mex-
ico’s Little Ice Age both in terms of periodization and characterization. The
climatic extremes between 1545 and 1705 have been underestimated, while those
of the eighteenth century have been exaggerated. Cold and wet conditions often
surface as equally important to drought, and in many cases, more so.
To understand the influence of climate variability on social and environ-
mental processes during the Spanish colonial era, I have selected sources (i.e.,
proxies) that have the following three characteristics: (a) a long temporal dura-
tion that enables the identification of the frequency and amplitudes of vari-
ability; (b) an annual, subannual, or near-annual resolution (i.e., consistently
identifiable year-by-year or season-by-season change) that permits the cor-
relation of well-dated historical sources with the proxy; and (c) a statistically
proven correlation with a parameter of climate in the study region (e.g., early-
season or annual precipitation, late-summer or winter temperatures, etc.). The
214 | Appendix A

imposition of these criteria reduces the number of proxy types to just two: den-
drochronology (the study of tree growth visible as tree rings) and speleology
(the study of mineral deposits formed by groundwater in caves). Both types of
proxy provide information about past precipitation patterns in colonial Mexico.
Nevertheless, I have compiled, analyzed, and interpreted historical evidence
from Tlaxcala, Teotihuacán, Mexico City, and Cholula in which agroecological
stress (food scarcity) is related to meteorological anomalies (drought, excessive
rainfall, hail, snowfall, frost, and food shortages). I call this the Agroecological
Index.
While the signature of the colonial climate remains reliably present in human
and natural archives, establishing what each of the historical and paleoclimato-
logical proxies says about climatic conditions is far from straightforward. Each
source must be critically analyzed to determine what, precisely, it is measuring
(i.e., the particular climate parameter) and if this measure is reliable and consis-
tent through time. Because each proxy reveals a different aspect of the climate
system, it is possible and desirable to compare and correlate one with another,
not only to validate each other, but just as importantly to compose a layered
picture of climate at a particular time and place, considered at different temporal
and spatial scales. Analysis, correlation, and comparison of the three sources will
set the basis for the interpretation of climate variability in central Mexico from
1500 to 1850, which is offered in the final section of this chapter.

T H E C L I M AT E O F C E N T R A L M E X I C O

Mexico is a highly fractured, mountainous land with a large highland central

plateau stretching from just north of the Valley of Mexico (often referred to
as the Basin of Mexico) into Texas, and lowland regions near coasts, in the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and throughout the Yucatán Peninsula that juts into
the Atlantic Ocean to form the western limit of the Caribbean Sea. The val-
ley lands of the central plateau rise from near sea level in the north to more
than twenty-two hundred meters in the Valley of Mexico. Two long chains of
mountains (the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental) snake
down either side of the central plateau—rather like a double backbone. The
highest mountains are a series of volcanic peaks, known as the Neovolcanic
Axis, that rise to more than five thousand meters and cut across the plateau to
intersect with both chains. The land drops sharply down to the Caribbean and
Pacific coasts from the Valley of Mexico in a series of large steps—the valleys
 Appendix A | 215

of Puebla-Tlaxcala, Cuautla-Matamoros, and Cuernavaca—and culminates in

long stretches of steep-sided hills.
Mexico’s long landmass falls between the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico
to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, putting all regions within four
hundred kilometers of the coast, and narrowing to just two hundred kilome-
ters at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Not surprisingly, the seas are a primary
driver of Mexican climate, but especially so the Caribbean and Gulf. With
the exception of Mexico’s northwestern region, which is strongly influenced by
Pacific climate patterns, Mexico’s precipitation comes from the Atlantic, where
easterly trade winds transport humid air over the continent. As the humid
tropical air cools as it rises over the Sierra Madre Oriental, the air precipitates
as rain, or as snow at the highest altitudes. This mechanism deposits the most
precipitation on peaks and windward flanks, and creates a rain shadow effect
across the central plateau and western cordillera. This rainfall occurs mainly
in the Northern Hemisphere during summer months when the trade winds
encounter a low-pressure, moisture-laden air mass (known as the Intertropical
Convergence Zone—ITCZ) that migrates northward toward the Tropic of
Cancer. From November to May, the ITCZ is south of Mexico and the trade
winds thus blow dry. Because southern Mexico sees the arrival of the ITCZ
earlier than the north, and sees it twice (once during the northern migration and
once on the ITCZ’s southerly return), southern Mexico tends to see greater and
more reliable rainfall than the north. Even the northern and central parts of the
central settlement zone receive less precipitation than in the southern part and
are more likely to suffer period drought. Precipitation patterns in Mexico thus
follow a generalized double gradation: precipitation amounts decline both from
east to west (because of the Sierra Madre Oriental) and from south to north
(because of the ITCZ migration).1
Temperature patterns in Mexico follow a simple dynamic: Altitude exerts a
strong influence on the climate of any particular region, and folk definitions of
the region’s climate were (and are) based on altitude: areas below seven hundred
meters are referred to as tierra caliente (hot land), those lying above this but
below eighteen hundred meters are called tierra templada (temperate land), and
those higher still as tierra fría (cold land). Therefore, despite the fact that they
lie within the tropics, the basin floor and surrounding mountains of the Valley
of Mexico and Tlaxcala fall within the category of tierra fría.
In sum, an annual cycle of warm, wet summer seasons alternating with
cool, dry winter seasons is found over most of Mexico, but there is remarkable
216 | Appendix A

variation over even short distances. Latitude, altitude, and position relative to
mountain chains influence the climate of individual regions. However, the rain-
fall regimes in the south exhibit a greater abundance of precipitation and little
annual variability, whereas the north is characterized by rainfall and greater
variability. The Yucatán Peninsula, for instance, would be much wetter had it not
been a relatively flat limestone shelf. Much of the northern plateau receives less
than sixteen inches per year, while the remainder receives less than twenty-four.
These are arid and semiarid landscapes. By contrast, most of the south receives
more than eighty inches per year.
As a comparison of map 2 and map 3 shows, indigenous settlement pat-
terns have long reflected this rough division of the rainfall and temperature
regime: dense populations of sedentary farmers were found in the regions of
predictable and abundant rainfall, with warm but neither hot nor cold tempera-
tures, whereas mobile agriculturalists and hunters were found in the regions of
unpredictable and sparse rainfall. Most settlement, both before and after the
Conquest, avoided extremes and concentrated in the semihumid and semiarid
regions, which received between twenty-four and forty-eight inches per year,
such as in the region in and around Mexico City.
Central Mexico was, and is, subject to a number of recurring climate haz-
ards, most of which derive from the failed seasonal northward migration of
the ITCZ. Decreased solar radiation and/or above-average warming of the
equatorial Pacific, among other factors, can limit or delay the ITCZ’s northerly
migration, resulting in the late onset of summer rains and overall reductions
in annual precipitation totals. Unseasonal droughts, frosts, and winter storms
(called northers) are common during years with a southerly ITCZ position.
Seventy-three percent of volcanic eruptions with significant global sulfur emis-
sions increase soil humidity to significant levels in either the first or second year
after the eruption.2 ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation), the fluctuation of
equatorial Pacific sea temperatures and migration of its primary warm mass
within the equatorial Pacific, is a critical agent of global climate variability. Yet
the correlation of ENSO with central Mexican climate events such as drought,
pluvials, or frost is not as strong as previous characterizations of the Mexican
climate have avowed. Indeed, dendrochronologist David Stahle and associates
have argued that the link to central Mexico is relatively weak and unpredictable.3
The combination of unseasonal precipitation and cooler fall/winter tempera-
tures can have disastrous effects on agriculture and human health. In other cases,
prolonged rainy seasons with sustained cloud cover and reduced evapotranspi-
 Appendix A | 217

ration resulted in extreme wet periods (known as pluvials) that saturated soils,
flooded rivers, and replenished aquifers, lakes, and wetlands. Not infrequently,
such conditions coincided with crop diseases, harvest failures, and, at times,
hunger. In the tierra fría zone, cold temperatures could cause frost in almost any
month (except June and July, it seems) and could produce very substantial winter
snow accumulations. Finally, hurricanes can track through the Mexican main-
land, causing extreme rainfall events that overwhelm inland watersheds and
devastate urban and rural environments alike. There are, of course, other types
of climate hazards, such as hailstorms, high winds, extreme heat, or any type
of unseasonal conditions that could, and did, produce health and biophysical
dangers. Yet the frequency of these events is low, and evidence of their occur-
rence is scarce or nonexistent before meteorological instruments were common.
None of these climate hazards follows a regular or predictable cycle from
year to year or decade to decade. Significantly, interannual, multidecadal, and
even century-scale variability of the Mexican climate punctuated life in Mex-
ico, inflicting socioecological stress, mortality, and political strife. Such chaotic
variability is sometimes referred to as “climate change,” a term that tends to
suggest a shift from a normal to an abnormal climate. Instead, climate variability
in Mexico, especially in colonial Mexico, tended to involve wild interdecadal
oscillations between wet and dry, cold and warm, seasonal and unseasonal.

DENDROCHRONOLOGY

The growth of some tree species in central Mexico is highly sensitive to soil
moisture conditions in the summer growing season, which is, itself, highly
dependent on precipitation from June to August. Less than two decades ago,
because of the lack of dendrochronological sources in central Mexico, recon-
structed precipitation patterns for this region had to be inferred from tree rings
from northwestern Mexico, a highly flawed methodology given that precipi-
tation patterns and drivers of climate variability in the two regions are highly
disparate. This changed with the discovery and analysis of stands of Douglas
fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), the tree rings of which were first studied by Mat-
thew Therrell in his dissertation (2003) and subsequent articles (2004–6). Only
starting in 2012 did David Stahle begin publishing dendrochronologies and
reconstructed precipitation patterns derived from the Montezuma bald cypress
(Taxodium mucronatum).4 The relevance of other species, notably pine (Pinus
hartwegii), came to light with publications in 2007 and 2015, but cannot match
218 | Appendix A

the former two for length of chronologies or correlation with precipitation in

the Tlaxcala/Teotihuacán regions.5
The availability of tree-ring series located within a thousand kilometers
of the central point of the study area varies by the period studied. There are
fewer available for the deeper past than for more recent times. Eight different
series, derived from three different tree species, cover the period from 1500 CE
onward. By 1600 CE, the number of relevant tree-ring series is sixteen, and by
1700 CE, there are twenty-four, still dominated by the same tree species: Pinus
hartwegii, Pseudotsuga menziesii, and Taxodium mucronatum.
A recent paleoclimatological tool called the Mexican Drought Atlas—
devised by dendrochronologist David Stahle and associates—employs a com-
plex methodology to merge these multiple data sets and to construct a separate
chronology for each point within a grid of 1,501 points, 651 of which are located
in the modern republic of Mexico, dispersed evenly at 0.5 degrees latitude and
longitude. Soil moisture conditions are calculated at each of these 1,501 points
and are expressed as variances from the site-specific mean. Values are expressed
within a seven-point index, ranging from –3 (much drier than normal at the
specific site) to 3 (much wetter than normal at the specific site). This site-
specific index is known as the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index
(herein referred to as PDSI), a standard tool to measure drought.
Ultimately, what makes the Mexican Drought Atlas such a powerful analyt-
ical tool is that it provides a reliable estimate of crop health for any location in
Mexico at any time between 1400 and 2012. Because climate varies so greatly
from one part of Mexico to another, the determination of site-specific climate
conditions is of critical importance to any assessment of historical climate-
society interactions. The Mexican Drought Atlas is a research tool—not just a
paleoclimatological study—that allows users to delimit the proxy output by
place and time. For instance, graphical outputs (i.e., graphs) show soil moisture
variability through time at a certain grid point or as the average of a user-
defined set of grid points. Cartographic outputs show variability through space
at a certain year or as the average of a user-defined set of years. The tool is thus
very powerful and the multi-series data derived from it are far superior to any
single series.6
To construct the chronology for each point, the Mexican Drought Atlas uses
a bimodal analysis. It includes up to eight tree-ring chronologies within five
hundred kilometers and then moves to a larger climatic context, drawing up to
another eight chronologies from within one thousand kilometers. The Mexican
 Appendix A | 219

Drought Atlas excludes tree rings beyond these distances. As can be seen in
map 21, within the 500-kilometer zone, tree rings of Montezuma bald cypress
dominate. In the 1,000-kilometer zone, Douglass fir tree rings dominate. The
tree ring candidates for each grid point are given a power weighting based on
the strength of their correlation to each of the grid’s geographic points. Because
chronologies “turn on” and “turn off ” over the length of full six-hundred-year
reconstruction, the assemblage is reassessed at twenty-five-year increments. This
methodology, called Ensemble Point-by-Point Regression, provides good cor-
relations with twentieth-century instrumental meteorological data in Tlaxcala
and the Valley of Mexico, approximately r = 0.4–0.6.7
It should be noted, however, that the power weighting of some particular
tree-ring chronologies, for some particular grid points, can be very high, caus-
ing the overall variability of PDSI in some places to be strongly determined by
one or more tree-ring chronologies. This is the case for the chronology derived
from core samples taken from Montezuma bald cypress trees at the Barranca de
Amealco, Querétaro (the data set is referred to as BAM), located 140 kilometers
from Mexico City. Because of the strong correlation of BAM with precipitation
in Tlaxcala and the Valley of Mexico, and because the BAM chronology is one
of only a few with data relevant to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
BAM chronology strongly determines PDSI variance in Tlaxcala and the Val-
ley of Mexico. Map 22 reveals power weightings of between 70 and 90 percent
in these regions in the period before 1670 CE. Such dependency on a single
chronology should raise some methodological red flags and, while not forcing
us to discard the Mexican Drought Atlas results, is a reminder of their possible
weakness. A notable, and unexpected, anomaly in the BAM correlation is that it
actually does a poor job at explaining climatic conditions at its own site. Because
the ahuehuetes are riverine and palustrine species, their growth correlates with
groundwater and fluvial base flow, rather than with direct overhead rainfall.
Essentially, they tell us about hydrological conditions in their watershed, which
is why they correlate so strongly with conditions near Mexico City.8
The Mexican Drought Atlas calculates PDSI values for each year for each
grid point. PDSI values estimate the variability of soil moisture conditions,
calculated at each of the grid points. In this case, grid points receive a value
for each year that falls between –4 (extreme drought) and +4 (extreme wet-
ness), depending on the growth of the trees that belong to the multi-member
weighted ensemble of tree rings that is defined for each point.9 Because growth
of both Montezuma bald cypress and Douglas fir species in Mexico has a strong
M A P 2 1 Candidate tree-ring series. This map shows the tree-ring series used in the
Mexican Drought Atlas to reconstruct Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for the
grid point located at W 98.25º, N 19.25º, approximately 7.5 kilometers south of Tlaxcala
City. The legend classifies (by shade) and quantifies (in brackets) the tree-ring series that
were active at each hundred-year interval.
 Appendix A | 221

MAP 22 Correlation of Montezuma bald cypress chronology in central Mexico. This map
shows the correlation between the Montezuma bald cypress chronology from the Bar-
ranca de Amealco (BAM) and reconstructed PDSI values for the years 1521– 1670. Dark
areas without hatching indicate strong positive correlations. Dark areas with hatching
indicate strong negative correlations. The graphic was produced by means of the Map–
Correlation tool on the Mexican Drought Atlas website, comparing BAM tree-ring
variance to reconstructed PDSI. Dorian J. Burnette, personal email communication,
April 20, 2018; Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought Atlas”; Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought
Atlas Signal-Free Tree-Ring Chronologies.”

positive correlation with soil humidity in the summer months, copious rainfall
in June, July, and August produce large rings, and delayed or reduced rains result
in narrow rings.10 Thus, rain seasonality is more important to tree growth than
total rainfall amounts. As David Stahle and associates explain:

In Mexico itself, the radial growth of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and

Montezuma baldcypress (Taxodium mucronatum), two of the principal spe-
cies used in the Mexican Drought Atlas, appears to frequently end during the
canícula or the mid-summer drought that typically occurs in July and August
(Magaña et al., 1999). However, heavy precipitation late in the summer sea-
son, including rainfall associated with landfalling tropical systems, can greatly
enhance warm season totals and is capable of reversing long-term hydrological
drought in some drainage basins (e.g., Nicholas and Battisti, 2008). Unfor-
222 | Appendix A

tunately, these very late season rainfall events are not well represented in the
Mexican tree-ring proxies.11

Thus, central Mexican dendrochronologies are difficult to translate into over-

all precipitation totals. Soil humidity is not primarily affected by total rainfall
amounts but by rates of evapotranspiration (heat, sunshine, cloudiness, wind
velocity, etc.) and the types of rainfall. Light, extended rain will generally result
in higher rates of water infiltration in soils, while hard, short-lived storms might
cause significant overland runoff and less infiltration. This poor correlation with
total precipitation is only a problem if one wishes to understand the total hydro-
logical budget of a region, especially relevant to the analysis of groundwater
recharge and lake/wetland volume/extent. What central Mexican dendrochro-
nologies do extraordinarily well, then, is to estimate soil moisture in the late
spring and early summer, that is, precisely the season when rain-dependent crops
sprout (May–June) and grow ( July–August). Therrell and associates found that
tree growth predicted 69 percent of maize yield variability.12

T H E C O R R E L AT I O N A R E A

Given the significant geographic differentiation of anomalous conditions in

Mexico at any particular moment, this analysis addresses specific climatic con-
ditions in the general region of the Valley of Mexico (where Teotihuacán and
Mexico City are located) and the Zahuapan Basin in Tlaxcala. These are also
two regions in which I have found and analyzed documentary evidence of cli-
mate variability.
Map 2 defines this region using a rectangular polygon to enclose the space
around the basins of Mexico and Zahuapan, a region I call the Correlation Area,
from N 19º to N 20º and from W 98º to W 99.5º. The Correlation Area encom-
passes twelve grid points of the Mexican Drought Atlas. The mean of the twelve
points is then used to compute a year-by-year PDSI series. This PDSI series is
then compared with and correlated with the historical evidence. As map 2 makes
clear, the study region lies at the center of the central settlement zone. Map 3
reveals the Correlation Area to be dominated by a temperate climate, which
extends over much of the area of highest population density in colonial Mexico.13
The resulting graphical output (figure 26) reveals much year-to-year vari-
ability. The Year of Hunger in 1785 to 1786 is represented well, but appears less
severe than the droughts of 1696 and 1702, and roughly equivalent to those
 Appendix A | 223

FIGURE 26 PDSI values for east-central Mexico, 1500– 1850 (i.e., the Correlation Area).
The data used in this graph was extracted from the Mexican Drought Atlas: http://
drought.memphis.edu/MexicanDroughtAtlas/.

of 1528, 1742, and 1750. The three driest years are 1696 (PDIS = –3.97), 1702
(PDIS = –3.20), and 1785 (PDIS = –3.15); the three wettest years are 1552
(PDIS = +3.66), 1816 (PDIS = +3.31), and 1610 (PDIS = +3.25).
Also visible, however, are numerous PDSI trends: a Conquest-era drought,
high humidity from 1540 to 1665—although interrupted by dry conditions from
1625 to 1635—and then a drying trend from 1690 to 1790 that was capped by a
period of high humidity from 1792 to 1816. Such general trends can, and should,
be periodized more formally, so as to avoid shifting definitions of “extremes,”
“eras,” and even “decades.” If a clear and defensible definition of what con-
stitutes a “dry” or “wet” year, or an extended sequence of them, is accepted,
then such anomalies can be altered and fitted to suit the researcher’s argument.
Table 6 shows eleven PDSI “extremes.”14 These are the only PDSI events in the
Correlation Area between 1500 and 1850 that (a) are five or more years in length
and (b) have a minimal average PDSI of one standard deviation (1.28) beyond
the mean PDSI of between 1500 and 1850. Table 6 lists the eleven events in
chronological order and gives their average PDSI.
Another way to reduce the author’s subjectivity in defining events is to impose
a standard duration, in this case ten years. This also facilitates comparison from
one period to another because it eliminates variable duration as a mitigating
TABLE 6 PDSI extremes in Correlation Area.

Chronological Duration Years Severity Average

Sequence Date Beg.–End (Rank) PDSI (Rank)

A 1514– 1528 15 (1) – 1.36 (8)

B 1532– 1539 8 (7) – 1.49 (5)
C 1542– 1554 13 (2) +1.70 (1)
D 1574– 1579 6 (8) +1.56 (4)
E 1604– 1616 13 (3) +1.39 (7)
F 1643– 1652 10 (5) +1.37 (6)
G 1696– 1705 10 (4) – 1.70 (2)
H 1729– 1733 5 (11) – 1.29 (11)
I 1785– 1790 6 (9) – 1.36 (9)
J 1791– 1796 6 (10) +1.35 (10)
K 1809– 1817 9 (6) +1.64 (3)

Note: Basic statistics for the eleven PDSI extremes during the Spanish colonial era.
PDSI values were treated as absolute numbers. Ties in rank (value parity) were
decided by reference to event duration. In the modern era (post-independence), only
the period from 1929 to 1934 would make this list, obtaining a duration rank of 9th
and a severity rank of 5th (– 1.54). I do not rank fifteenth-century extremes because the
data are less trustworthy and show exaggerated variability.

MAP 23 Eleven PDSI extremes during the Spanish imperium. PDSI values are classified
into twelve indexed categories between – 3 (very dry) and +3 (very wet). Areas with white
hatching indicate negative PDSI values. The Correlation Area (indicated by a black
rectangle) is shown for context.
MAP 23 (continued)
MAP 23 (continued)
MAP 23 (continued)
228 | Appendix A

MAP 23 (continued)

TABLE 7 Six extreme decades.

Rank Years PDSI

1 1545– 1554 +1.82

2 1696–1705 –1.70
3 1809– 1818 +1.48
4 1516– 1525 – 1.44
5 1605– 1614 +1.41
6 1643– 1652 +1.37

Note: These six decades are the only ones with an average PDSI exceeding one stan-
dard deviation (1.28). Data origin and processing for these images is replicated from
the previous maps.

factor in defining event severity. Based on absolute PDSI averaged within the
Correlation Area, the ten-year extremes are ranked table 7.

SPELEOLOGY

Two stalagmite series exist for central Mexico: Juxtlahuacan Cave and the Cueva
del Diablo. Map 24 shows the location of the caves relative to Tlaxcala and the
Valley of Mexico and also shows the situation of their physical geography. Both
sites are located along Mexico’s southern mountain chain, the Sierra Madre
 Appendix A | 229

MAP 24 Speleothem locations in central Mexico. Map showing speleothem locations and
proximity to Teotihuacán, Tlaxcala, and Mexico City. Site labels indicate the site name
and temporal extent of stalagmites in the cave. The speleothem from Cueva del Diablo
does not cover the colonial era.

del Sur, an area far less densely settled than the Mexico City region. The sites
are located about 180 to 240 kilometers from the Valley of Mexico. Yet only
stalagmites from the Juxtlahuacan Cave provide data relevant to the colonial
period.
The stalagmites are processed along a growth axis, precisely dated and tested
for oxygen isotope-18 levels at annual increments. Correlation with twentieth-
century annual precipitation totals in Mexico City is strong (r =–0.89), but only
with some “fine tuning” of the stalagmite and meteorological data. Precipita-
tion totals from May to November at the Tacubaya station (1878–1987) were
smoothed over five years, and stalagmite values were offset nine years to account
for a lag time of water traveling through the 160-meter epikarst layer above the
cave.15 Lachniet and associates argue that long-term decreases in precipitation
acted “as a primary control for the drying of springs and other environmental
changes.”16 Although the speleothem records annual data, it fares poorly with
short-term drought episodes, such as the droughts of the 1450s during the
Mexica era. As Lachniet and associates admit, “these events were either not
linked to multidecadal-scale water availability, or were too short to be recorded
by our stalagmite.”17 Considering these factors, then, the Juxtlahuacan data best
230 | Appendix A

represent multidecadal and century-scale trends. Figure 27 shows the long-term

precipitation trends and figure 28 the colonial-scale trends.
The second of these graphs (figure 28) shows dry conditions until 1550, then
a twenty-five-year pluvial followed by normal conditions (ca. 1550–1625), fol-
lowed by a twenty-five-year dry period (1625–1650), followed by a fifty-year
near-normal precipitation period, and conditions from 1700 to 1800 that look
mostly normal, except for pluvials at the beginning and end of the century. Over
the course of these three hundred years, the trend was toward wetness. Note that
the first graph (figure 27) shows a trend toward decreasing rainfall after 1500,
but this only materializes if we begin at the pluvial maximum of 1450 and end
at the height of desiccation in 1920. By shortening the temporal parameters, the
hydrological conditions in the Valley of Mexico actually became more humid,
according to Lachniet and associates.
Interpreting the Juxtlahuacan precipitation chronology is plagued with dif-
ficulties. A simple visual comparison of the trends of this data with those of
the Mexican Drought Atlas presents some broad similarities: a dry Conquest
era followed by a pluvial, followed by a drought centered at around 1630. The
late eighteenth century looks wet, as it does in the Mexican Drought Atlas.
But many other aspects simply do not match up; the period from 1690 to 1720
looks very different, for instance. If we run the Juxtlahuacan data against the

FIGURE 27 Long-term precipitation trends in the Valley of Mexico. Data were accessed
and downloaded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration paleo-
climatological data archive. Lachniet et al., “2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Recon-
struction,” 260.
 Appendix A | 231

FIGURE 28 Annual rainfall from 1500 to 1850 CE reconstructed from Juxtlahuacan spe-
leothem and calibrated for the Valley of Mexico. Data were accessed and downloaded
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration paleoclimatological data
archive. Lachniet et al., “Two Millennia of Mesoamerican Monsoon.”; Lachniet et al.,
“2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction,” https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo
-search/study/21019.

Mexican Drought Atlas data in a formal correlation test—as is represented in

map 25—we find no significant correlation at all (r = 0.035). This statistical
test rejects any correlation at all and thus presents us with a completely parallel
precipitation record.
There is, however, another interpretation. The disparate temporal scales
of these two proxies make it difficult to test one against the other. The Juxt-
lahuacan data are valid only at the multidecadal (quarter-century) scale, and
even the century scale. The Mexican Drought Atlas data are valid at annual,
multi-annual, and multidecadal scale. While the two nominally match up at
the multidecadal scale of variability, the year-by-year statistical testing tool
cannot recognize those longer trends in either data set, thereby generating a
hidden error of timescale incongruence. Another factor complicates this com-
parison. As discussed above, each proxy records a different climate parameter.
Juxtlahuacan measures total annual precipitation, while the Mexican Drought
Atlas reveals early-summer soil moisture. As was seen with the statement from
Stahle, the Mexican Drought Atlas misses out on major rainstorms in the late
summer, often related to large tropical cyclones (i.e., hurricanes). Ultimately, the
approach taken here is to focus mainly on the more refined, and more reliable,
Mexican Drought Atlas–generated PDSI values, while still accepting some of
232 | Appendix A

MAP 25 Mean Pearson correlation coefficients of Juxtlahuacan speleothem and the Mex-
ican Drought Atlas reconstructed PDSI, 1540 to 1809.

the roughly half-century-scale precipitation trends indicated by the Juxtlahua-

can chronology.

HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS

The third and final data set to add, analyze, and compare to the two proxies
already discussed is the Agroecological Index, which I have devised to aggre-
gate reported incidences of meteorological phenomena that adversely affected
agriculture and food production: namely, drought, excessive rainfall, frost,
snow, and hail. To these, I add reported incidences of “sustenance crises” (i.e.,
staple-crop shortages and hunger), which serve methodologically to enhance
the signal of years with crop-damaging meteorological events and the year (or
years) following harvest failures. The 106 discrete flood events recorded from
historical sources were not added to the Agroecological Index because of the
strong possibility of anthropogenic causes. Also recorded, but not included in
the Agroecological Index, are additional indicators of stress in agrosystems, such
as crop diseases, insect and rodent infestations, epidemics, epizootics, and more.
Non–Agroecological Index biophysical phenomena were used to contextualize
and enrich the accounts of years—or clusters of years—that the Agroecological
Index or Mexican Drought Atlas highlight as exceptional. Data range from
 Appendix A | 233

1446 to 1810, although suspicious data lacunae exist from 1457 to 1502 and 1529
to 1540. After 1540, the longest gap is five years, from 1715 to 1719. The Agro-
ecological Index thus begins only with 1540. It ends in 1809, the year before the
Hidalgo revolt broke out.
A simple scoring strategy was used to produce a year-by-year index, with
values ranging between 0 and 5, in which each of the six classes of events (i.e.,
the five meteorological classes along with sustenance crises) could receive a
maximum score of 1 for any particular year, even when multiple regions and/or
multiple sources reported the occurrence of a class event.18 The individual class
scores (equal to either 1 or 0) were thus summed, leading to a maximum possible
score for any particular year of 6. The maximum score actually recorded was
5. Ten years received a count of 4 or 5: 1555, 1615, 1661, 1662, 1663, 1691, 1692,
1694, 1695, and 1697. The 1690s were extraordinarily bad. Between 1540 and
1809, 106 (39 percent) of 270 years did not report any events. In the remainder
of years, there were 285 reported events that, when regional duplications were
eliminated, were reduced to 164 class events. About half of those years had just
one class event.
These data are derived from a variety of archival sources, but mainly indige-
nous annals referencing events in Tlaxcala and Mexico City. Tlaxcala was situ-
ated at the center of an annals tradition that started before the Spanish conquest
and lasted until 1739. The Tlaxcalan annals provide the best and perhaps the
only long, continuous climate series available for colonial Mexico (excluding the
physical sources such as tree rings). The tradition of recording significant annual
events no doubt started in the pre-Columbian period by way of traditional
indigenous writing systems. Annalists transliterated pictorial and ideographic
accounts of “annals” within alphabetic traditions brought by Spaniards.19 The
resolution of annals varies considerably, with some giving very detailed accounts

TABLE 8 Summary of the Agroecological Index class counts.

Total number of years (1540–1809) = 270

where annual class count is 0 = 106

where annual class count is 1 = 81
where annual class count is 2 = 51
where annual class count is 3 = 22
where annual class count is 4 = 8
where annual class count is 5 = 2
234 | Appendix A

of certain years, but mostly, as in the case of the Tlaxcalan series, mentioning
only two or three significant events for an entire year and rarely giving specific
monthly dates on which those events occurred.20 The length of such entries
might be as short as a few words or as long as a few hundred words, with the
vast majority of entries consisting of ten to thirty.
Tlaxcala has the richest tradition of annalists, which Frances Krug and Camilla
Townsend believe might be due to the privileges granted Tlaxcala for allying
with Hernán Cortés in 1519–21. Krug discovered twenty-three annals series
that belonged to what she called the Tlaxcala-Puebla “annals family,” of which
fifteen were original (i.e., not verbatim copies) and of which eight originated
in Tlaxcala. The Tlaxcalteca probably wrote even those from Puebla, given that
most such annals derived from San Juan del Río, a place “where most of the
migrants from Tlaxcala settled.”21
Historians of Tlaxcala can draw from three sources of annals. First, the
National Library of Anthropology and History in Mexico City houses an
important resource for Tlaxcala’s historical climatology (and other environ-
mental history topics) in the form of seven annals in a series identified as the
Anales antiguos de México (AAM), numbered 16–20. The AAM series are not
originals but nineteenth-century Nahuatl copies made by Faustino Galicia Chi-
malpopoca under the auspices of José Fernando Ramírez. Each is accompanied
by a basic Spanish translation made by Chimalpopoca and a short introduction
provided by Ramírez. Camilla Townsend provided a second series with an excel-
lent translation into English.22
As gleaned from figure 29, CTAT is nearly identical to AAM 18.3. All AAM
series and that of CTAT are of unknown authorship. Lastly, the Tlaxcaltecatl
nobleman Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza produced a rich annals series
from about 1660 to the late 1680s, which has been recently translated into
Spanish and published with the Nahuatl text.23 The Zapata y Mendoza annals
series (now preserved in Paris, France) is the richest known Nahuatl series for
Tlaxcala and perhaps for New Spain in general. His annals have a known author
and describe a diversity of events with often personal commentary.
With the exception of a few ad hoc entries in the 1720s and 1730s, the report-
ing of socioecological phenomena in the Tlaxcalan annals ceases after 1697.24
There are no easy explanations for this rupture in the genre, but the events
described in the annals themselves provide clues. As mentioned earlier, the
1690s was a period of unmitigated disaster: 1696 was the driest year on record,
according to the Mexican Drought Atlas; epidemics ravaged the population in
F I G U R E 2 9 Scatter charts of Tlaxcalan annals. Each of the six geometric shapes rep-
resents the occurrence of a specific type of event during one year. “TX FLD” indicates
a reported incidence of flooding of the Zahuapan River at Tlaxcala City. “TX EPD”
refers to any widespread and severe outbreak of disease. “TX FST” and “TX DRT”
indicate agriculturally destructive and widespread frosts and droughts. “TX SST” indi-
cates instances of food shortages in Tlaxcala. “TX SNW” indicates a destructive winter
snowfall event. Acronyms used spell out as: AAM, Anales antiguos de México; CTAT,
Anales de Tlaxcala, transcribed and translated by Camilla Townsend; and HCCT, His-
toria cronológica de la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala by Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza.
236 | Appendix A

FIGURE 29 (continued )

five of six years between 1692 and 1697; and famine developed between 1695
and 1697. Perhaps this demographic turmoil resulted in the death of many
authors and, in a wider sense, contributed to the near dissolution of the genre.
The 1690s might also have been a watershed in municipal governance. Men of
common heritage, not noblemen, often led the Cabildo during the eighteenth
 Appendix A | 237

FIGURE 29 (continued )

century. The intimate link between the annals genre and rulership was thus
broken.25
The annals set a high standard for socioecological information. They were
written by indigenous noblemen holding political office. As officeholders,
they were concerned with events of broad political significance: events that
238 | Appendix A

would need (or needed) a government response. The annals recorded events that
occurred over most of Tlaxcala and that affected a large part of the population.
From a government’s perspective, these were events with high social and fiscal
costs that would affect the financial position of the Cabildo. Remembering
these events would help Cabildo officials construct arguments to fend off the
royal exchequer when the indigenous government could not pay its share of
tribute. This standard bias in the annals makes them an excellent proxy of events
that had widespread and significant impact.
For the eighteenth century onward, the Agroecological Index compiles data
from alternate sources, ideally those that had the same bias of local govern-
ment administrators. This was especially important for references to Mexico
City and beyond. Citations are taken from cabildo (town council) texts while
those derived from “private” texts (agricultural estates or particular people in
litigation, for example). The primary sources for such supplementary materials
is the Desastres agrícolas en México: Catálago histórico, a valuable two-volume
catalog of such events compiled and organized by historical anthropologist
Virginia García Acosta.26 The catalog gives multiple sources for every year,
associating each source with a year, the place or region discussed, a direct
quotation from the source, and keywords indicating which themes (drought,
frost, floods, famine, disease, etc.) are being referenced. The spatialization of
socioecological themes through time is thus one of the primary benefits and
strengths of the source. Some care must be taken in using this resource, how-
ever. One considerable drawback to the Catálogo histórico is its uncritical use of
existing compilations of such events. Many of the citations originate from sec-
ondary sources, not primary ones. For example, it includes many citations from
Elsa Malvido’s 1973 study of Cholulan demography.27 Malvido’s chronology
derives from a wide variety of secondary sources without individual citations.
Those in the Catálogo histórico are sometimes at least twice removed from the
original.28 In many cases, multiple citations of the same event often trace back
to the same primary or secondary source, thus giving a false sense of density
to the Catálogo.
Figure 30 presents a graphical summation of the data. The Agroecological
Index shows a high frequency and severity of class events between 1540 and
1715, especially between 1575 and 1630. The 1690s experienced the most severe
Agroecological Index conditions of any decade of the colonial era. Considering
the peak Agroecological Index event period, from 1540 to 1715, there were some
relatively quiet periods, of ten- to fifteen-year durations, centered at 1570, 1635,
 Appendix A | 239

FIGURE 30 Variability of the Agroecological Index, 1540– 1809.

1655, and 1670. Mostly, however, the average class event count was between 1.3
and 1.0 per annum. From 1715 onward, on the other hand, the Agroecological
Index reports far fewer events. Particularly good times, relatively speaking, were
had between 1715 and 1730, 1755 and 1765, and 1790 to 1805. Over the last hun-
dred years, the average class event count was between 1.0 and 0.8 per annum,
about three-quarters of the rate experienced before 1710.
Even though the SEI cannot be correlated with the instrumental meteoro-
logical record of the twentieth century—because the main body of historical
evidence that it relies on expires with the end of the Spanish colonial admin-
istrative system—there is strong evidence to suggest that the Agroecological
Index database and methodology has produced a reliable and valid chronology.
Perhaps its underlying integrity can best be demonstrated through a carto-
graphic correlation with data from the Mexican Drought Atlas.
Map  26 presents the Pearson correlation coefficients (r) resulting from
the statistical testing of the Agroecological Index data from 1540 to 1809 to
the Mexican Drought Atlas reconstructed PDSI values from the same time
period. The Pearson coefficient for the Correlation Area is 0.535. Not only
is this a strong correlation, but the Pearson coefficient reaches its maximum
precisely within the Correlation Area. The meteorological observations from
Tlaxcala, Mexico City, and elsewhere, then, appear to be a good and accurate
representation of the weather conditions they experienced, or at least the con-
ditions experienced by trees, particularly ahuehuetes. While this is the result
hoped for, it does go a long way to confirm the validity of the Agroecological
Index.
240 | Appendix A

MAP 26 Mean Pearson correlation coefficients of the Agroecological Index. The Agro-
ecological Index is correlated to reconstructed PDSI in the Mexican Drought Atlas for
the period 1540 to 1809

The correlation remains particularly strong along the axis of the Sierra
Madre Oriental, specifically in its rain shadow as the moist gulf air is driven by
the trade winds over the Mexican highlands. Another transect of correlation
stretches to the southeast from Mexico City across the western part of the Mex-
ican state (Estado de México), toward the city of Toluca and the lake region
around the Valle de Bravo. There is a much weaker correlation to the remainder
of the central settlement zone, particularly so in much of Michoacán (western
central Mexico), and statistically insignificant along most of the Pacific coast
and beyond the limits of the central settlement zone.
Figure 31 presents another way of representing this correlation by super-
imposing two line charts, one from the Agroecological Index and the other
from the Mexican Drought Atlas. Note that this chart has altered the Agro-
ecological Index data so as to give it the same polarity (i.e., the same positive
or minus values) as the Mexican Drought Atlas data.29 Of course, this gives a
false impression that the Agroecological Index data has “negative” values, which
it does not.30 The polarity function also gives the impression that the two data
sets have identical, or near-identical, trends, which they do not. (Again, this is
impossible since the Agroecological Index does not have negative-value events,
only positive one.) The key to reading the chart, then, is to compare the depth
of anomalies in the two data sets. In particular, depths that have incongruences
of 0.5 points or more demand attention. With this in mind, we see generally
 Appendix A | 241

FIGURE 31 Comparison of Agroecological Index and Mexican Drought Atlas data, using
the polarity of the Mexican Drought Atlas data.

congruent amplitudes, although dissimilarities can be seen circa 1570, 1650,

and 1790.
A climate-induced crisis can be deduced from the Agroecological Index data
just as it had been for the Mexican Drought Atlas data. For this purpose, I define
an Agroecological Index crisis as any period possessing a five-year sequence of
adverse conditions (Agroecological Index ≥ 1.1, which is the 50th percentile or
higher), interrupted by a maximum of one year less than 1.1.31 Table 9 shows
the eight Agroecological Index eras that emerge from these criteria. It is a
testament to the severe weather of this time that 63 percent of Agroecological
Index values for years between 1540 and 1705 fell within the 50th percentile or
higher. Between 1705 and 1809, the proportion of worse-than-normal years fell
to 23 percent. Once again, the late seventeenth century—a period often called
the Late Maunder Minimum—stands out as exceptional: thirty-one years with
a stress index ranked only behind the much shorter (seven-year) event of the
mid-seventeenth century. Again, the late eighteenth-century crises are revealed
as shorter, less severe, and less frequent than those before 1705.
The last aspect of the Agroecological Index data series that should be
addressed is the temperature parameter that it measures, a subset of the larger
Agroecological Index database. Historical climatology derived from historical
documents is the only method available for reconstructing temperature vari-
ability in central Mexico. Temperature variability is especially visible in the
Tlaxcalan data; Mexico City, on the other hand, is significantly more sensitive
242 | Appendix A

TABLE 9 Eight Agroecological Index anomalies.

Avg.
Duration Agroecological Agroecological
Begin Year End Year (years) Index Index Rank

1542 1556 15 1.457 5

1582 1602 21 1.442 6
1612 1630 19 1.594 3
1638 1645 8 1.518 4
1659 1665 7 1.939 1
1675 1705 31 1.715 2
1747 1751 5 1.143 8
1769 1774 6 1.357 7

Note: The anomalies derived from the Agroecological Index were calculated with data
smoothed by a seven-year running mean. The criteria for an anomaly was a minimum
five-year period with a mean Agroecological Index of at least 1.1 (the 50th percentile
of years). An anomaly could include no more than one year with a value below 1.1.

to drought than is Tlaxcala. While the two cities have almost identical average
temperature maxima during their warmest months, Tlaxcala’s coldest month
( January) is two degrees Celsius cooler than Mexico City’s. Moreover, Tlax-
calan temperatures frequently went below freezing, causing between forty and
one hundred frost days per year versus Mexico City’s twenty to twenty-four
frost days.32 Admittedly, the type of temperature parameter that is measured
by the Agroecological Index will not enable the reconstruction of mean annual
temperature or any other such quantitative variable. Yet incidences of maize-
killing frost and winter snow events (particularly in Tlaxcala) reveal cold trends.
By contrast, all paleoclimatological proxies relevant to central Mexico provide a
precipitation signal. The Agroecological Index is thus unique and important in
this respect. Figure 32 shows cold reporting events in the Agroecological Index
database and fits a smoothed line to the annual events in order to compare
temperature variability in the Correlation Area.
These cold periods identified by the Agroecological Index are, mostly, repro-
duced in Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions. The newest such
reconstruction identifies the three coldest decades of the last thousand years as
the 1640s, 1601–1610, and the 1580s (ordered by severity, beginning with the
coldest).33 Another study finds decadal-scale nadirs at 1815, 1455, 1695, 1605,
and 1640 (again, ordered by severity beginning with the lowest).34 A third such
 Appendix A | 243

FIGURE 32 Agroecological Index cold variability, 1540– 1809. Agroecological Index cold
events can be frost or snow events. The graph represents Agroecological Index cold
reports in two ways: The light gray columns represent a year with either frost or snow
(receiving a value of 1) or a year with both frost and snow (receiving a value of 2). The
black line smooths this data. It uses Agroecological Index data at ten-year increments
(1540, 1550, etc.) in which values are averaged over a thirteen-year period. It then uses a
cubic spline interpolation function to predict values between increments, thus resulting
in a smoothed line.

multiproxy temperature reconstruction, by Ljundqvist and associates, finds three

nadirs: in the 1690s, 1640s, and 1601–1610. Each nadir significantly exceeds
all others in the last two millennia, with only the second half of the fifteenth
century at all comparable with those of the seventeenth century.35 Ljundqvist
and associates also compared their coldest decade with that of three other such
studies. Their study and another identified the coldest temperatures in the 1690s
(precisely, 1690–99 and 1692–1701); another highlighted 1641–50; and the
fourth study recognized the decade from 1576 to 1585.36 Given this discussion
of proxy data, it appears that the results of Northern Hemisphere temperature
reconstructions published in the last fifteen years have converged, highlighting
over and over the same five decades as significantly colder than all others, with
only variations in their order.
Reports of cold in the Agroecological Index concur with paleo proxies regard-
ing the outstanding cold in central Mexico in the 1690s and the first decades of
the seventeenth century. As in most reconstructions, those two periods—in that
order—are the coldest on record. The third coldest in the Agroecological Index
244 | Appendix A

database, however, is the mid-sixteenth century. This is also the most significant
anomaly in the Mexican Drought Atlas reconstruction, ranking first in severity
and second in length. It should be noted that the Ljundqvist and associates
reconstruction also qualifies the mid-sixteenth century as probably the fifth or
sixth coolest period, although its severity appears diminished because it comes
between two of the deepest nadirs on record: the mid-fifteenth century and the
early seventeenth century. If the Agroecological Index cold period in the mid-
sixteenth century is not an outlier among proxies, the mid-seventeenth century
is a more significant departure. Both the Agroecological Index and the Mexican
Drought Atlas suggest the development of only a moderate cold/wet phase in
the 1640s, although the Lachniet speleothem suggests a significant drought.
This indicates that the 1640s—a period made infamous by Parker’s accounts of
the global crisis at this time—had much less significance in central Mexico.37
Mostly, however, the Agroecological Index cold reconstruction exhibits broad
parallelism with other temperature proxies.
We can also compare these reported events of cold and precipitation in the
Agroecological Index. Figure 33 offers such a comparison. To facilitate this
analysis, the graph shows cold events classified into fifteen-year bin columns,
from 1540 to 1809. Precipitation is shown as a single undulating line. Generally,
the two data sets present the same trends, with six peaks (the highest of which

FIGURE 33 Reported anomalies of cold and precipitation in the Agroecological Index,

1540– 1809. The scale of the two vertical axes is 1:2, reflecting the 1:2 ratio of the average
reporting frequencies of the two data sets.
 Appendix A | 245

occurs during the 1690–1704 period) and an extended nadir from at least 1705
to 1764. What stands out, however, is the nearly one hundred years of frequent
cold anomalies from 1540 to 1645 in which only the period from 1570 to 1584
lacked exceptional cold. The forty-five-year period from 1585 to 1629 produced
fifteen unique cold class events, occurring in fourteen years; thus, nearly one
in three years had occurrences of exceptional cold. After the peak fifteen-year
period from 1690 to 1704, the cold returned very infrequently.
A comparison of the trends of the two parameters of the Agroecological
Index also clarifies the uniqueness of the various climate periods. In order to
facilitate this comparison, the scale of the two vertical axes was set at 1:2, reflect-
ing the different value of total reported frequencies of cold and precipitation
(57 vs. 120, respectively) over the entire period from 1540 to 1809. We find a
four-stage division of the compared trends. Between 1540 and 1629, reports of
cold anomalies were more frequent than reports of precipitation anomalies. In
the second stage, from 1630 to 1705, the relative reporting of anomalies of the
two parameters appears to be synchronized. In the third stage, from 1705 to
1780, reports of both types of anomalies fade out, although the rate of decrease
in the temperature series far exceeds that of precipitation. Finally, beginning in
the 1780 to 1794 period, and extending into the following fifteen-year period,
appears a possible fourth stage in which the relative rates of the two sets con-
verge once again. This trend would likely continue into the period from 1810 to
1824, which was strongly affected by volcanic activity, similar to conditions in
the early seventeenth century.
Appendix B
A Framework of Soil-Water Dynamics

T
he purpose of this appendix is to offer a framework of soil-water dynam-
ics. Connecting mass soil movements with either climatic or human pro-
cesses requires a clarification of their scale, their timing, and their spatial
dynamics. Previous studies of environmental change have implicated hydro-
logical and geomorphic transformations as proof of cause and effect without
offering well-dated and well-located evidence.1 While chapter 4 provides such
evidence, it leaves open many crucial questions about how—and how fast—
soil is entrained, transported, and deposited at new sites. What is offered here,
then, is not more evidence of changing flows of soil and water, but a model to
understand erosion and sedimentation.
Water does not simply move through or over the river basin; the two move
together. Fluvial currents suspend enormous quantities of biotic and nonbiotic
matter. Turbulent flows create a dynamic interplay and exchange of kinetic
energy between suspended (moving) materials and stationary sediment of the
channel or other soil surfaces over which water flows. The entrainment and
transport of sediment modifies water flow, which in turn changes how and how
much sediment moves. In what follows, I relate geomorphological principles of
sediment transport and fluvial dynamics to the actual soil and water character-
istics of the basins of the two study regions. I model hydrological change and
identify the internal thresholds that can produce sudden and dramatic changes
 Appendix B | 247

in the hydrological network and fluvial regime. This model helps to interpret
historical sources that speak to hydrological change.

THE EDAPHIC CONTEXT

The long history of volcanism in central Mexico has fundamentally shaped the
soils in both Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán, leaving behind sedimentary deposits
that at times measure fifty meters. Since the late Oligocene (approximately
thirty million years ago) volcanic eruptions have occurred in this part of Mexico.
The most visible signs of volcanism are the giant strato cones of La Malinche,
Tlaloc, Itzaccihuatl, Popocatepetl, and Pico de Orizaba, all of which have peaks
between 4,000 and 5,700 meters above sea level. Less obvious, but perhaps more
important, are the numerous long-extinct cinder cones that dot the landscape:
especially those that follow a transect from Teotihuacán through Tlaxcala, the
so-called Teotihuacán Corridor. The Cerro Gordo, for instance, located near
the pyramids of Teotihuacán, is one of the largest such extinct cones along this
transect, reaching about 3,000 meters. In many cases these ancient cinder cones
still preserve their conical shape, but rise to only a few hundred meters above
the surrounding valleys. As the volcanoes erode, they deposit large amounts of
sediment in the valleys. The sediments and ancient cinder cones thus obstruct
drainage from these low-lying areas. La Malinche (4,550 m) occupies the south-
eastern corner of the state of Tlaxcala, and its western flanks contribute runoff
to the Zahuapan River. The flanks of Mount Tlaloc extend into both the Valley
of Teotihuacán, where the outcrop is known as the Patlachique range, and Tlax-
cala, where the outcrop is known as the Bloque de Tlaxcala.
Both of the uplifted areas have small cinder cones and fault lines, with
underlying sediments composed of ancient lacustrine sediments sixty-five mil-
lion years old.2 Tectonic activity has exposed in places the underlying lacus-
trine sediments, which have higher-than-normal concentrations of both clay
and volcanic silicates and lack the normal Holocene cap, a porous layer with a
thickness of twenty-five to eighty centimeters formed in the current interstadial
(<11,500 BP). This layer is primarily the product of massive forest clearance
during the early settlement and agricultural history of central Mexico when
materials were transported by both aeolian and colluvial (slope) processes. The
high porosity of this topsoil restricts the upward pull of water (termed capillary
rise) from the subsoil and water table, a property that not only protects roots
248 | Appendix B

of maize plants from rotting, but also limits the movement of sterile salts from
these lower reaches.3 For this reason, the Holocene cap is of utmost importance
to agriculture, especially in water-retaining soils (such as those with a high clay
content in the valley regions mentioned above) or shallow soils situated above
a tepetlatl horizon (discussed below), which impedes soil percolation. Because
of its young age, the Holocene cap is not repeated in any other underlying
horizons, or paleosol sequences.
Because of the successive eras of volcanic activity in the region, the typical
soil profile consists of multiple sequences of loose and consolidated soil strata.4
In this typical soil profile, a deep B horizon of volcanic ashes lies under the
Holocene cap. It is similar to a sandy loam in that it contains relatively little clay
content and is quite porous. Deep and loose (unconsolidated) soils with little
pedological variation dominate throughout the B horizon. In each sequence, the
B horizon sits on top of a bed of fine, silicate-laden materials that have been
washed out of the upper horizons by intense summer rainfall. These hardened
silicate layers are called tepetlatl in Nahuatl, meaning “a rocky mat.” In colonial
texts, tepetlatl entered the Spanish vocabulary as tepetate. When the tepetlatl
horizon is subterranean, it impedes water percolation into deeper paleosol hori-
zons and as such can be quite beneficial to crops by maintaining soil moisture at
a propitious distance from plant roots. In this common soil/plant arrangement,
plants draw from the highly saturated soils situated on top of the tepetlatl hori-
zon, while the coarse colluvial cap permits chemical exchanges to occur between
the upper soil horizon and the air.5

EROSIVITY AND ERODIBILITY

Soils and, more generally, slope surfaces, possess varying abilities to resist entrain-
ment and transport by weathering processes such as rainfall. Resistance to ero-
sion is called a slope’s “erodibility.” Changes to the soil and vegetation on slopes
will alter a slope surface’s erodibility. Certain types of weather events such as
hail and snowfall, for instance, alter soil and vegetation conditions and ulti-
mately make soils more erodible. Thus, a slope’s surface does not have a “natural”
or immutable degree of erodibility. “Erosivity,” on the other hand, measures
the potential of precipitation (and other forces such as wind or earthquakes)
to cause erosion. While it is sometimes difficult to separate “resistance” and
“impact” factors, this analytical framework is an interesting place to begin to
understand erosion dynamics.
 Appendix B | 249

A study in the Tlaxcala region conducted by geomorphologist Hans Wege-

ner reveals some of the dynamics of erosion through time and across different
surfaces.6 Five different test plots were set up to measure erosion on various
types of soils. Traps were set to collect and measure erosion on five different
agricultural fields (each with different soil characteristics) and on two areas of
tepetlatl during the rainy seasons of 1975 and 1976. The entrapped sediments
were measured daily in order to assess the changing rate of erosion through-
out the rainy season. Wegener found that the first rainfalls of the year had
the greatest potential to erode soils because the lack of vegetation and loose
topsoil formed by frost and wind processes make it easier to entrain and trans-
port. Wegener found that no less than 35 percent of all annual erosion occurs
during these first rainfalls. During his study, many metepantli terraces newly
constructed during the winter months collapsed entirely with the onset of rain-
fall. In the years that Wegener lived in Tlaxcala, he experienced a strong mid-
summer (August) drought, known as the canícula. When precipitation began
once again in September, very significant erosion occurred (45 percent of the
total). All told, 80 percent of annual erosion was produced by post-drought
precipitation events. The onset of summer rain showers in June and September
(after the midsummer drought) is often accompanied by hailstorms. Hail not
only destroys crops and other vegetation, which makes slopes less resistant to
erosive forces, but impacts and compacts soils, which then reduces or inhibits
altogether the infiltration of water into the soil.7 These processes, too, prepare
soil for future degradation.
As for the relative erodibility of the soils themselves, Wegener’s results have
proven to be counterintuitive. It is widely believed that tepetlatl surfaces pro-
duce the highest rates of erosion. After all, these soils are impermeable and thus
produce very strong overland flows during rainfall events. Moreover, tepetlatl
surfaces are completely unvegetated and totally exposed to erosive pluvial forces.
Particle entrainment and transport on tepetlatl is patently obvious. Yet the high
silicate/clay concentrations of tepetlatl increases soil coherency and resistance
to erosion. Contrary to popular opinion, the fertile volcanic ash soils discussed
above (known as cambisols) were most erodible because of their loose structure.
Among cambisols, erodibility increased with the proportion of finer particles.
Wegener found that fine-grained, loose cambisols eroded at annual rates of
seventy-three tonnes per hectare versus seventeen to twenty tonnes for tepetlatl.
Rates of erosion of cambisols with higher concentrations of clay are equal to
those of tepetlatl surfaces.
250 | Appendix B

The key to interpreting Wegener’s results is to remember that when soils

are perfectly exposed to erosive precipitation, tepetlatl performs significantly
better than many cambisols, but the likelihood of having perfectly exposed
soils on non-tepetlatl surfaces is slim. The fertility of cambisols ensures that at
least some vegetation will regenerate spontaneously and, moreover, encourages
farmers to protect these valuable soils with terracing and vegetation berms. The
tepetlatl soils, on the other hand, have no value to farmers, and because they are
indurated and hold no nitrogen or carbon stores, rarely support more than the
sparsest vegetation cover.8 The structure of cambisols collapses rapidly, but such
occurrences are relatively rare. Once the rich A and B horizons are swept away,
erosion rates slow but are sustained for numerous decades, if not for longer.9
Thus, while the rates of erosion on tepetlatl surfaces might be average for the
highlands, the total amount of sediments supplied by them is far greater than
that from other soil types.

F L O O D P L A I N S E D I M E N TAT I O N

The counterpart of hillside erosion is floodplain deposition. Large quantities of

upland sediment are transported and deposited into nearby valleys and flood-
plains, thus forming large inland deltas. Deposits located at the alluvial toeslope
of a hill are known as alluvial fans. As streams enter these deltaic deposits, water
stalls and percolates through the deep sediment. Flow continues underground
and may appear in the form of wetlands, or as base flow into river channels
located downslope in the floodplain. If sedimentation remains high and stream
flow velocity remains constant or even lessens, the deltaic deposits stabilize or
even grow. If, on the other hand, “sediment yield decreases, or channel gradient
and flow velocities increase,” the stream will begin to incise the deposits and
push its way through the delta, from the head to toe of the sediments, eventually
crossing the floodplain.10 This is called “fan-head trenching” and can be brought
on “by climate changes, increased tectonic activity, or even human-induced land
use changes in the upstream basin.”11
The topography of the Tlaxcala and Teotihuacán regions makes such forma-
tions quite common. Volcanic hills and upthrust/downthrust fault lines create
steep slopes that rise directly from the flat lands. Geographer Gene Wilken
found many of these fluvial forms in southern Tlaxcala, calling them “raised
barrancas” (see figure 34).12 Effectively, the raised channels replace the buried
streams and deprive wetlands of the groundwater recharge they had depended
 Appendix B | 251

FIGURE 34 Diagram of a typical “raised barranca,” or elevated streambed.

on. The raised barrancas are like water expressways that bypass the surrounding
floodplains, moving downstream, quickly and efficiently, all the precipitation
that fell on the tepetlatl slopes. Stream flow thus takes on a flash-flood character.
The dynamic hydrology of floodplain and endorheic wetlands that we have
studied—that is, their high sensitivity to climate variability—demands an
appropriately flexible characterization of their changing location and extent.13 A
dry wetland or one reduced in extent should not be interpreted as the outcome
of successful drainage schemes, overuse of water, alluviation, or the appearance
of a great drought. Because so many factors can influence surface hydrology,
comparing palustrine dynamism in multiple basins over the long term can help
identify periods of synchronous change and the drivers of such change that were
experienced in all basins.
Small, shallow wetlands in floodplains are substantially synchronous with
generalized climate-induced soil humidity conditions, almost year by year.
Take, for instance, Grazing Marsh (ciénega de apasteo) in Tlaxcala, which was
already dry by 1616, the first report of any desiccation in any wetland during the
entire pluvial.14 That same year, the canal that brought spring water to the new
Tepexpan grist mill was completely dry; also astrologer Diego Cisneros wrote
about a “great drought” that followed dryness in 1615. Apparently the years
were very windy, which would have increased evapotranspiration rates. Cisneros
attributed an epidemic in 1616 to these climatic conditions.15 Then, the Grazing
Marsh expanded in the 1620s and once again receded in the 1660s. In this last
252 | Appendix B

instance, it seems that the water table had fallen deeper and for a longer period
of time than in the past, as Spanish cultivators entered with ploughs to break
soil. Similarly, desiccation in 1654 of a substantial wetland in the Atenco basin
was also accompanied by complaints of a prolonged drought. At this time, even
one of the deepest parts of the Atlancatepec wetlands—the Ciénega de Santa
Clara Atzompan—dried out and was converted to agricultural land in 1684.
In the Valley of Teotihuacán, the 1680s witnessed an early spike in water sales
(indicating increased value of water), the conversion of wetlands to cultivation,
and the desiccation of numerous parcels of land.16
Larger floodplain wetlands remained very stable (and very full) throughout
the late sixteenth century. It would take major inputs of sediment and extended
dehumidification to reduce their extent. Conditions around Acolman (before
the dam) and throughout central Tlaxcala exhibit such trends well. The large
and highly sensitive endorheic wetland in the Valley of Mexico, which draws
on a much larger watershed than any of those mentioned thus far, had a delayed
start (lags) but more decadal-scale inertia than the smaller floodplain wetlands.
When humid soils were found, such as during the conditions observed and
described by San Miguel, water accumulated rapidly in the valley, but when
groundwater stores still had capacity for recharge, time lags could occur before
wetland growth could be observed. Finally, there are essentially depressional
throughflow wetlands, like that in Teotihuacán, that seemed to have their own
rhythms, except when saturated groundwater gave rise to hydrological pro-
cesses that operated with finer timescales: for example, the birth of new springs,
increased baseflow in even the smallest streams, and direct inputs from extended
precipitation cycles with low evapotranspiration rates. When these short-term
processes let up, the spring water and wetlands once again expressed long-term
baseflow inputs derived from the upper valley.
Endorheic and floodplain wetlands were the most volatile and subject to
short-term climatic processes and permanent alteration of hillside soils or val-
ley alluvium. Because floodplain wetlands functioned, from a certain point of
view, as hydrological buffers where excess water during peak flow seasons could
be stored, their desiccation opened up possibilities for storm protection or the
return of pluvial conditions. Of course, if a floodplain was breached through
stream avulsion, this natural storm-flow storage was essentially eliminated from
the hydrological network. Quite differently, however, throughflow depressional
wetlands did not act as buffers. Their variable volume indicated, instead, long-
term variability of groundwater resources.
 Appendix B | 253

Because groundwater travels at exceedingly slow rates, lag times between

decreased recharge of groundwater (i.e., decreased precipitation) and decreased
output of springs (itself representing a decrease in both groundwater pressure
and subterranean depth) can be between three and fifty years. Determining the
duration of groundwater residency (between infiltration and re-exposure) is
extremely difficult. If the velocity and depths of groundwater remained constant,
and using standard rates of one meter per day, groundwater travels perhaps a
kilometer every three years. With a dense stream network, such as in the two
basins examined here, groundwater must travel two to ten kilometers, with
residency calculated at between six and thirty years. Yet rates do not remain
steady, nor does depth, which regulates groundwater outlets to streams or sur-
face low spots. Thus, in a pluvial scenario, groundwater residency might be cut
in half (e.g., three to fifteen years), while in a dehumidifying context, it might
be doubled or tripled (e.g., ten to fifty years). Of course, local geology strongly
influences rates in any given basin or sub-basin. Desiccation of a throughflow
depressional wetland indicates long-term landscape desiccation, the product
of reduced precipitation or reduced percolation of rain through the soil profile,
or both.
When the raised barranca finally pushes through the entire length of the
floodplain delta, an important threshold has been transgressed. When hydro-
logical buffers are removed, the downstream segments are directly linked to
the vast stores of sediment of the delta. Once these sediment stores are made
available for downstream transport, the valley below will be forever transformed.
As these sediments increase, the downstream channel beds aggrade, causing
them to decrease in slope and volume and so cause more common flooding. I
hope this soil-water framework will help us understand the transformations of
the hydrological basins in the colonial era.
 NOTES

INTRODUCTION
1. BNAH Serie Tlaxcala, Report on the works, correspondence by Cabildo on
Sept. 3, 1791.
2. Alzate, Gacetas de literatura, II:280– 81 and 81n1.
3. Grove: “Great El Niño of 1789– 93” and “East India Company.”
4. Oppenheimer notes that since 500 CE only the eruptions of 1257/58 and 1452
exceeded Tambora’s atmospheric sulfur contribution. The event resulted in the
“worst famine in Europe and North America in over a century.” Oppenheimer,
Eruptions That Shook the World, 98, 295, 312; Post, Last Great Subsistence Crisis.
5. In 1791, for instance, Alzate agreed with Jean Honoré Robert de Paul de Lamanon,
a renowned geologist whose published work circulated in the 1780s and whom
Alzate called “one of the sagest physicists of Europe,” that “the constitution of the
atmosphere depends principally on the nature and situation of the land, and that
these in turn regulate the state of the atmosphere.” He cited less reverentially, but
still favorably (at least with regard to desiccation theory), the work of the Comte
de Buffon, one of the primary Enlightenment figures and a critical cog in the des-
iccation theory propaganda machine, and Duhamel du Monceau, a French mete-
orologist and arboriculturist, one of the earliest advocates of the theory. Decades
before Lamanon, Monceau argued that trees play an essential role in regulating
atmospheric humidity. Trees increase humidity; their removal reduces it, leading
to a general desiccation of the landscape. Alzate was familiar with Monceau’s work
as early as 1769. While Monceau was not the originator of these ideas nor the only
person to champion them in the years leading up to their adoption by Alzate, he
did play a critical role in disseminating them, globally, through lectures given to
administrators and scientists of British and French imperial transoceanic circuits.
256 | Notes to Pages 10–12

For his contributions to this international discourse, see Zilberstein, Temperate

Empire; Grove, Ecology, Climate, and Empire, chap. 1; Alzate, Gacetas de literatura,
II:285, IV:52.
6. A secular priest, as well as a member of the prestigious French Academy of the Sci-
ences, Alzate distinguished himself for the breadth of his scientific contributions.
Alzate recorded meteorological conditions four times a day with thermometers,
barometers, hygrometers, and wind vanes, from 1769 to 1777. He likely knew data
from other sources, such as that by don Felipe de Zuñiga y Ortiveras (1763– 73,
1775– 85). This knowledge of observed drought undergirded his belief in long-term
desiccation. He also observed sunspots by means of telescopes to confirm long-
term climate trends. Galindo and Saladino, “Early Comment”; Gibson, Aztecs,
550n12; Ouweneel, Shadows over Anáhuac, 78; Alzate, Gacetas de literatura, II:41,
III:463.
7. Gibson was influenced by Alzate. Gibson, Aztecs, 4– 5, 550n14; further references
are found on 303– 7, 13– 17, and 78.
8. Although disproved by 1910, desiccation theory remained popular in the twentieth
century. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, 78.
9. Florescano, “Meteorología y ciclos agrícolas”; Florescano, “La evolución de los
precios del maíz”; Florescano, Precios del maíz y crísis agrícolas.
10. Swan linked drought with war in 1810. Swan, “Mexico in the Little Ice Age”; Swan,
“Drought and Mexico’s Struggle for Independence.”
11. García Acosta: “Los panes y sus precios” and “Oscilación de los precios”; García
Acosta and Espinosa Cortés, Estudios históricos; García Acosta: Los precios de ali-
mentos, “Comparación entre El Movimiento,” and Historia y desastres.
12. Ouweneel reproduced the general chronology of late-colonial drought. Ouweneel,
Shadows over Anáhuac, 91.
13. In her book Climate and Society, Endfield focuses almost exclusively on eighteenth-
century drought. She offers three climate reconstructions. First, figure 3.6 recovers
conditions in Oaxaca, Chihuahua, and Guanajuato after 1720. Drought is the only
climate variable shown. In figure 5.4, she recovers the past climate in Chihuahua
from 1500 onward. Again, drought is the only variable discussed. Finally, table 6.1
relates drought and other meteorological phenomena, although the chronology
begins only in 1690. Endfield, Climate and Society, 72, 130, and 144– 53.
14. O’Hara and Metcalfe, “Reconstructing the Climate of Mexico”; O’Hara, “His-
torical Evidence of Fluctuations”; O’Hara and Metcalfe, “Climate of Mexico”;
Endfield and O’Hara, “Conflicts over Water.”
15. Cold and wet conditions took hold in waves circa 1652, 1660, and 1682. By contrast,
the early 1630s were very dry, as were periods circa 1655, 1668, and 1675. Neverthe-
less, the only decadal-scale, statistically significant event of this entire fifty-year
period is the cold/wet phase from 1643 until 1652.
16. Neukom et al., “Inter-Hemispheric Temperature Variability.”
17. Brooke, Climate Change, 371– 83, 424– 28, 53– 55; Behringer, Cultural History
of Climate, 157– 67. With regard to global temperature patterns, the case for an
 Notes to Pages 12–15 | 257

Enlightenment optimum is made clearly by Neukom et al., “Inter-Hemispheric

Temperature Variability.”
18. The only comparable events are circa AD 300 and AD 500. Good and convincing
multiproxy reconstructions of temperature are offered over the last one thousand
(Neukom et al., “Inter-Hemispheric Temperature Variability”) and two thousand
years (Ljungqvist et al., “New Reconstruction of Temperature Variability”).
19. On the ecology of disease, generally, see Nash, “Beyond Virgin Soils,” 77– 86. On
the question of plague, see Brooke, Climate Change, 343– 49, and Campbell, Great
Transition, chap. 4.
20. Russell, Evolutionary History.
21. The conceptual literature describing the interplay between humans and the nat-
ural world is vast. In this, I have been deeply influenced by the work of Richard
Hoffmann. His interactive model— itself emergent from his collaboration with
Verena Winiwarter (professor of environmental history at the Institute of Social
Ecology, Vienna)— is succinctly formulated in Hoffmann, Environmental History
of Medieval Europe. A more complex iteration is presented in Fischer-Kowalski
and Haberl, Socioecological Transitions and Global Change. The work of geographers
Vaclav Smil and Ian Simmons help us pay attention to the pathways of nutrients,
energy, and material through social ecological systems: Smil, Energy in World His-
tory; Simmons, Changing the Face of the Earth. Similarly, the literature on complex
social ecological systems is crucial to understanding resilience and vulnerability
in the human-centric environments: Gunderson and Holling, Panarchy; Norberg
and Cumming, Complexity Theory for a Sustainable Future. Recent work by Jason
Moore provides an excellent vista from which we can begin to see an ecology of
capitalism during the early modern world and beyond. Moore, Capitalism in the
Web of Life.
22. Ruddiman: “Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis” and Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum.
23. New interpretations of social and cultural adaptation to climate change suggest
that narratives of both despair (see White) and triumph (Degroot) can easily coex-
ist. White, A Cold Welcome; Degroot, Frigid Golden Age.
24. This argument of agrarian and ecological change parallels historiographical trends
in other spheres of colonial Mexican history, particularly religious history. The
work of Louise Burkhart, for instance, shows how natives were best positioned—
intellectually and culturally— to move guided syncretism in innovative ways, often
beyond the intention of Spanish friars. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday. For the term
“ecological mestizaje,” see Leander, “Mestizaje ecológico en México.”
25. Frans Schryer provided a critical assessment of Eric Wolf ’s thesis in 1990, mark-
ing the death of the “closed corporate community” concept. Schryer, Ethnicity
and Class Conflict, chap. 2; Wolf: “Vicissitudes” and “Closed Corporate Peasant
Communities.”
26. Further challenges to the image of the peasant farmer as conservative were
advanced by Baskes as early as 1993 but especially in his monograph: Baskes:
“Indians, Merchants, and Markets” and Indians, Merchants, and Markets.
258 | Notes to Pages 15–20

27. Take, for instance, the agrarian manual from 1513 by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera,
an agronomist sent by the Spanish monarchy to investigate the new lands opened
by the recent conquest of Andalucía. Alonso de Herrera was familiar with both
Roman and Arabic agronomy. Despite the exciting prospects that one might see
from the meeting of Spanish and Berber agriculture in the south of Spain, and
despite the innovative history of agriculture in Spain as devised by Arabic agron-
omists and cultivators in the centuries before the Spanish Reconquest, Alonso
de Herrera saw no new possibilities for Spanish agriculture in these new lands
beyond what would be prescribed by Roman-era texts. Alonso de Herrera, Obra
de agricultura.
28. For Crosby’s earliest work, see Crosby, Columbian Exchange and Germs, Seeds,
and Animals. The thesis was enhanced in 1978, tying together ecology and power
to explain European global expansion: Ecological Imperialism and “Ecological
Imperialism.”
29. Melville: “Pastoral Economy” and Plague of Sheep.
30. Butzer and Butzer, “Transfer”; Hunter, “People, Sheep, and Landscape Change”;
Sluyter: Colonialism and Landscape and “Recentism in Environmental History”;
Hunter: “Methodologies for Reconstructing” and “Positionality, Perception, and
Possibility.”
31. Simpson, Exploitation of Land in Central Mexico; Gibson, Aztecs; Crosby: Colum-
bian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism; Licate, Creation of a Mexican Landscape;
Melville, Plague of Sheep; Lipsett-Rivera, To Defend Our Water; Beach, Luzzadder-
Beach, and Dunning, “Soils History of Mesoamerica.”
32. Ángel Palerm, Obras hidráulicas prehispánicas, 94– 96; Candiani, Dreaming of Dry
Land, 28– 29.
33. Terry Jordan showed how livestock raising was complementary with local ecosys-
tems. Karl and Elisabeth Butzer, as well as Andrew Sluyter, have traced patterns
of Spanish livestock raising in central New Spain. Cook, Soil Erosion and Pop-
ulation; Butzer: “Cattle and Sheep,” “Ethno-Agriculture,” and “Ecology in the
Long View”; Butzer and Butzer, “‘Natural’ Vegetation”; Jordan, North American
Cattle-Ranching Frontiers; Sluyter: “Ecological Origins,” “From Archive to Map,”
“Making of the Myth,” “Colonialism and Landscape,” Colonialism and Landscape,
and “Recentism in Environmental History”; Endfield, Climate and Society; Butzer
and Butzer, “Transfer.”
34. Miller, Environmental History of Latin America.
35. Carney and Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery; Carney, Black Rice.
36. Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers.
37. McNeill, Mosquito Empires.
38. McCann, Maize and Grace.
39. McCook, “Neo-Columbian Exchange.”
40. It will become clear in later chapters that describing the metepantli system as a
“failure” makes sense only when counting its environmental costs. The system
“failed” because it unleashed mass soil movements, but it succeeded greatly in
 Notes to Pages 20–40 | 259

terms of economic viability and even with regard to the persistence of this agroeco-
logical system. The metepantli system actually expanded after the Late Maunder
Minimum and became evermore dominant throughout the eighteenth and even
nineteenth century. This subject is discussed in chapter 3.
41. Mörner, “Maunder Minimum.”
42. Some evidence suggests that the demographic collapse occurred, in large part,
because of the pluvial. Acuña-Soto, Romero, and Maguire, “Large Epidemics.”
43. Population densities in map 2 reflect conditions in 1800 and were derived from
Tanck de Estrada, Miranda García, and Chávez Soto, Atlas ilustrado. Tanck’s pop-
ulation data pertain only to the 4,468 “pueblos de indios” and exclude all non-indio
settlements such as Mexico City. The data set provides geographic coordinates
for each pueblo, which facilitated processing in GIS software. The demographic
patterns revealed by this analysis and shown in map 2 match those of Gerhard
(see “Map 14. Density of population, c. 1620,” in Gerhard, Guide to the Historical
Geography, 25). In map 3, “temperate climates” indicate regions with non-extreme
precipitation and temperature, averaged annually. Terms such as “semi-humid”
(semihúmedo), “temperate” (templado), “semi-hot” (semicálido), and “semi-cold”
(semifrío) are defined by García, Modificaciones, 50– 55.
44. Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought Atlas.”

CHAPTER 1
1. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 76.
2. Acuña-Soto, Romero, and Maguire, “Large Epidemics.”
3. BNAH Colección Antigua, Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 1, 804.
4. Musset, De l’eau vive.
5. Alchón, Pest in the Land; Livi Bacci, Conquest.
6. González-Arqueros, Mendoza, and Vázquez-Selem, “Human Impact.”
7. Bueno, “Teotihuacán,” 54.
8. For visitor numbers, see Secretaría de Turismo (Mexico), “Llegadas a museos.”
9. Acuña, Relaciones geográficas, 231; Osorios, Documentos sobre posesión de aguas, 21.
10. Nieves et al., interview by author, June 2011, San Juan Teotihuacán.
11. Gerardo Jiménez digitized the Millon maps, which show one-meter contours and
spring locations. Millon, Teotihuacán Map; Almaraz, Ballesteros G, and Comisión
Científica de Pachuca, Memoria de los trabajos; Archivo Técnico de la Zona Arque-
ológica, Salvamento Arqueológico de Teotihuacan, I:42– 44.
12. Downstream of Atlatonco, the river was called the Río de San Juan or by a name
that indicated the branch, such as the “canal with water for the mill,” “the canal of
San Antonio,” or “the canal of San José.” Farther downstream, at the confluence
of the Teotihuacán Valley’s water with Lake Tetzcoco, the term “Río de San Juan”
sufficed as a general term for any water that flowed through the valley.
13. For evidence of small perennial baseflow in historical times, see Mooser, “Geologia,
Naturaleza y Desarrollo”; Lorenzo, “Clima y agricultura en Teotihuacan”; AGN
260 | Notes to Pages 40–61

Tierras, Proceedings between Tepexpan, fol. 70r; AGN Tierras, Dispute over lands,
fols. 6 and 45.
14. The historical origins and physical details of the dam are discussed by Bradley
Skopyk and Diana Martínez Yrízar, “La presa de Acolman,” 50.
15. A document from 1684— reproduced within a twentieth-century court case—
describes the installation of the Temascal: AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales,
Declaration of the springs, fol. 29r.
16. This is the Códice de San Juan Teotihuacán, also called the Códice Texcoco-
Acolman, located in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, in Mex-
ico City. For an account and interpretation of the uprising, see Johnson, “Remaking
the Hinterland,” 49– 53.
17. AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales, Declaration of the springs, fol. 338v.
18. Acuña, Relaciones geográficas, 2, 244.
19. In an earlier text, I did not think that the climatic and ecological evidence sup-
ported this etiology. Given new and better climatic evidence, I believe that Acuña
Soto and Marr were correct, or at least have not yet been proven wrong. New
studies implicating salmonella poisoning (see Vagene, below) are based on insuf-
ficient evidence and impossible etiological mechanisms. Marr and Kiracofe, “Was
the Huey Cocoliztli?”; Acuña-Soto, Romero, and Maguire, “Large Epidemics”;
Vågene et al., “Salmonella Enterica Genomes.”
20. AGN Tierras, Grant of two caballerías, fols. 336r, 38v, 40r.
21. Lameiras, “Relaciones en Torno.”
22. Castillo, “La inundación de Acolman,” 556; Gamio, Población, ed. facsimilar, 3:371;
AGN Tierras, Teotihuacan against Cristobal Gudiel, fols. 57v– 58r; AGN Con-
gregaciones, Barrio of Los Reyes, fol. 5r.
23. My discussion contradicts that of Barbara Mundy, who identified little place-based
knowledge in the Teotihuacan map. Mundy, Mapping of New Spain, 33– 34.
24. Acuña, Relaciones geográficas, 2, 224, 32, 40, 45.
25. AGN Desagüe, Fray Andrés de San Miguel, fols. 333v– 34v.
26. AGI México, Letter of Viceroy Marqués de Cerralbo, fol. 2r.
27. San Miguel and Báez Macías, Obras de fray Andrés de San Miguel.
28. San Miguel and Báez Macías, Obras de fray Andrés de San Miguel, 194– 95. The
editor of his works, Eduardo Báez Macías, tired of San Miguel’s divine providen-
tialism, 107.
29. Martínez, Reportorio de los tiempos, 185– 86; AGN Desagüe, Report by Enrico
Martínez.
30. AGN Desagüe, Report by Enrico Martínez, fol. 334v.
31. The date of 1599 derives from Martínez, Reportorio, chap. 5. Astrology was “a very
serious science” at the time. As Cañizares-Esguerra explained, “astrology was con-
sidered a very serious science” at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Nature,
Empire, and Nation, 67.
32. Martínez, Reportorio, 171– 74.
33. Martínez, Reportorio, 185– 86.
 Notes to Pages 62–72 | 261

34. Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land, 43.

35. The earliest he could have written this text is 1607, as per his note that mentions
events two years after 1605. According to Leon Miguel de Portillo, Torquemada
finished redacting the manuscript in 1612 and published it in 1615. Torquemada,
Monarquía indiana, book III, chap. xxviii, pp. 422– 24; 7:20.
36. Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land, 48– 50.
37. Siemens, “Modeling the Tropical Wetland Landscape.”
38. Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan; Sigüenza y Góngora, Seis obras.

CHAPTER 2
1. Tlaxcaltecatl denotes an indigenous member of the polity of Tlaxcala. The plural
is Tlaxcalteca. Additionally, I use Tlaxcalan as the possessive of Tlaxcala.
2. For tribute demands, see Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 170– 81.
3. Tlaxcala had both a Spanish and indigenous gobernador, or governor. The Spanish
provincial magistrate was called the “gobernador de la ciudad de Tlaxcala por su
majestad,” whereas the indigenous gobernador was called the “gobernador de la
nobilísima ciudad de Tlaxcala” or “gobernador de los naturales de la ciudad de
Tlaxcala.” For their respective duties, see Baber, “Construction of Empire,” 129,
138; Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 1– 27, 66, 74– 75; Ochoa Paredes,
“Evolución Histórico-Geográfica.”
4. The altepetl (pl. altepemeh) was a common form of political and territorial organi-
zation in Mesoamerica. Lockhart, Nahuas After the Conquest, chap. 1. Over time,
towns and barrios became more similar and the title of cabecera/altepetl lost its
functional power. Cabeceras and altepemeh proliferated. By 1700, the Cabildo held
authority over more than 150 altepemeh and more than 800 barrios (or tlaxilacalli
in Nahuatl). Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 74.
5. AGN Mercedes, Regarding waters of the Atoyac, fojas 9r– 10v.
6. My translation of the Nahuatl. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García,
and Martínez Baracs, Historia cronológica, 152.
7. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 42.
8. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia
cronológica.
9. Ciudad Real et al., Tratado curioso, 88– 89.
10. The stream that descended from Tlaxco was unnamed. A mid-eighteenth-century
map called it the Arroyo de Tecomatla. AGN Mapoteca, Map of San Agustín Tlaxco.
11. The name derives from the closest town, Santa María Atlantepetzinco, which
disappeared by 1600. AGT Fondo Histórico, Tlaxcalteca Juana Cano, 65v.
12. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 91.
13. Muñoz Camargo used the Ptolemaic league, which equaled 4,440 meters. Muñoz
Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 35, 58, 90; Adkins and Adkins, Handbook to Life
in Ancient Rome, 313; AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos: Power of attorney,
Terms of sale, Gabriel and Isabel Muñoz.
262 | Notes to Pages 73–75

14. A witness remembered his uncle talking about “the many bogs” that obstructed
traffic. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 80v.
15. Richardson and Vepraskas, Wetland Soils, 211.
16. The Nativitas Marsh was located downstream of Tlaxcala City and thus falls out-
side of the main focus of this book. Luna Morales, Cambios en el aprovechamiento;
González Jácome, “Paisajes del pasado.”
17. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 92.
18. AGT Fondo Histórico, Testament of Pedro de Tabares, fol. 9r.
19. Soria’s sheep grazed outside of Tlaxcala. AGT Fondo Histórico, Testament and
inventory, fols. 6r, 13r. Outside of Tlaxcala, sheep fertility could be great: Muñoz
Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 87– 88.
20. Hoekstra, Two Worlds Merging, 91.
21. AGT Fondo Histórico, Presentation of documents, fol. 12r.
22. González Sánchez, Haciendas y ranchos.
23. On 1712 hectares, there were 60 oxen, 240 sheep, and 180 pigs. AGN Tierras,
Investigation into missed payments, vol. 3306, exp. 1, fol. 483.
24. Melville’s average sheep stocking rate was 291/km2. Melville, Plague of Sheep, 82.
25. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 9:126.
26. Baber, “Construction of Empire”; Riley: “Priests,” “Public Works,” and “Land-
lords, Laborers”; Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno”; Prem, Milpa y hacienda;
Hoekstra: “Profit from the Wastelands” and Two Worlds Merging; Gibson: Aztecs
and Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century, 80– 88, 148– 57; Trautmann, Transformaciones,
49– 59, chaps. 6– 8.
27. AGN Mercedes, Information regarding estancia; García Cook, Assadourian, and
Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 6:419, 7:85.
28. AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos, Cabildo of Tlaxcala.
29. AGN Mercedes: Grant of estancia de ganado menor at Cuapiaztlan; Grant of
estancia de ganado menor at Tetlapancan; Grant of estancia de ganado menor at
Atlixoloyan; Grant of estancia de ganado menor at San Juan.
30. For Tlaxcalan flocks, see Celestino, Valencia R, and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo
de Tlaxcala, 264; Martínez Baracs, Assadourian, and Muñoz Camargo, Suma y
epíloga, 184; García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 6:419, 7:85;
AGN Mercedes, Information regarding estancia; Skopyk, “Undercurrents of Con-
quest,” 219– 28.
31. Stocking rates were commonly exaggerated: Abbass, “Herd Development,” 165.
32. Sheep were rare among the Tlaxcalteca. AGN General de Parte, Alcalde mayor
must not permit, fol. 43r; García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlax-
cala, 6:394; Rojas Rabiela, Rea López, and Medina Lima, Vidas y bienes olvidados,
1:221– 23; Martínez Baracs, Assadourian, and Muñoz Camargo, Suma y epíloga,
143. Romero Frizzi claimed that the Tlaxcalteca possessed four hundred thousand
sheep in the colonial era, a figure that is both unsubstantiated and wildly exagger-
ated in my estimation. Romero Frizzi, “Agricultura en la época colonial,” 175.
 Notes to Pages 75–79 | 263

33. Epidemics undercut many resource markets by the late sixteenth century. Further-
more, competition from other regions and international trading barriers hindered
the industry after 1631. By the eighteenth century, Tlaxcala wove imported cotton,
not locally produced wool. Garavaglia and Grosso, “La región de Puebla/Tlaxcala”;
García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 10:88; AGI México,
Shepherds in bishopric of Tlaxcala.
34. AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos, Domingo Lópes de Soria; AGT Fondo
Histórico, Catalina de Zamora, fol. 9r; AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos:
Antonio Jorge rents hacienda in Atlancatepec; Antonio Jorge rents Hacienda de
Zacatelco; Trautmann, Transformaciones, 11.
35. Martínez Baracs, Assadourian, and Muñoz Camargo, Suma y epíloga, 145, 51, 56.
36. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 82, 90, 92, 143. A viceregal order from
1576 mentioned the many Indio producers of pork. AGN General de Parte, Alcalde
mayor must permit selling.
37. White, “From Globalized Pig Breeds.”
38. Martínez Baracs, Assadourian, and Muñoz Camargo, Suma y epíloga, 151.
39. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 9:129.
40. AGT Fondo Histórico, Gaspar Pérez litigates, fol. 6r. The use of the plant for
livestock was mentioned in agricultural manuals of the nineteenth century. Young,
Gleanings, 340.
41. AGT Fondo Histórico, Viceroy Lorenso Suares de Mendoza.
42. Juniperus deppeana is known as tlatlauhquitlatztli in Nahuatl, as sabino or enebro in
Tlaxcalan Spanish, or as “alligator juniper” in English. Muñoz Camargo and Reyes
García, Historia de Tlaxcala, 273– 74.
43. In one case, from 1630, the estate manager mentions “eighty head of hogs, large
and small, of the savannah.” AGN Tierras, Investigation into missed payment,
vol. 3306, exp. 1, fol. 518r; AGT Fondo Histórico, Testament and inventory of
belongings of Antón Domingo, fol. 8r.
44. The methods of reconstructing disease events and mortality rates is explained in
detail by Skopyk. Skopyk, “Undercurrents of Conquest,” chap. 4; Chapa, Camacho,
Anguiano, and Rojas Rabiela, Padrones de Tlaxcala.
45. Williams, “Archaeological Signature,” 78.
46. Cordova, “Landscape Transformation,” 8– 9.
47. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 362; Fisher, “Demographic and Land-
scape Change”; Fisher et al., “Re-Examination.”
48. Without good demographic or sediment records, Borejsza favors multicentury
time lags. I believe that this book— particularly chapter 4— will show his estimates
to be in error. Borejsza, “Village and Field Abandonment,” 20.
49. Cabildo’s minutes for 1545, 1547– 67, and 1627. Celestino, Valencia R, and Medina
Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala; Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas.
50. Celestino, Valencia R, and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 391– 92, 99,
432, 50, 52– 53, 60– 70, 72, 75, 87, 733, 80, 883.
264 | Notes to Pages 79–84

51. The Cabildo declared in 1552 that according to the viceroy’s orders, uncultivated
land would be dispossessed and given as a land grant (merced ): Celestino, Valencia
R, and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 450– 53.
52. Celestino, Valencia R, and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 392.
53. Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana; see entries for çacatl, çacamolli, and niçaca-
moa. Sahagún, Anderson, and Dibble, Florentine Codex, 11:196; Olmos, Arte para
aprender la lengva mexicana.
54. Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas, 80; Burkhart, Slippery Earth; Sullivan, “Un diálogo.”
55. Celestino, Valencia R., and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 733.
56. Celestino, Valencia R., and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 733, 883.
57. Celestino, Valencia R., and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 453.
58. Celestino, Valencia R., and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 450.
59. Celestino, Valencia R., and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, 487.
60. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 76.
61. A full agroecological explanation is offered in Skopyk, “Undercurrents of Con-
quest,” chap. 5.
62. Evans, “Productivity of Maguey Terrace Agriculture,” 105; Williams, “Archaeolog-
ical Signature,” 80– 82.
63. Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba, “Ecología y agricultura en Metztitlán,” 131, 34– 36.
64. Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth.
65. Rojas Rabiela, Agricultura indígena, 134, 51– 55. Legal dispute over Tizatlan land,
in Sullivan, Documentos tlaxcaltecas, 136; AGN Tierras, Documents relating to the
cacicazgo, 330– 33. The fire-intolerant family of trees (Juniperus spp.) expands read-
ily on unburned fields, especially in the case of Juniperus deppeana in Tlaxcala,
whose seeds are consumed and dispersed by livestock, mostly hogs. Burkhardt
and Tisdale, “Causes of Juniper Invasion”; Muñoz Camargo and Reyes García,
Historia de Tlaxcala, 273– 74. For a fuller discussion, see Skopyk, “Undercurrents
of Conquest,” 326– 35. A collection of indigenous wills mainly from southern
Tlaxcala gives the text of forty-one indigenous wills (totaling 295 bequests of
land), written between 1572 and 1598. No maps or land schemata appear in this
collection of wills. The collection also offers six wills and twenty-eight bequests of
land from the seventeenth century. Rojas Rabiela, Rea López, and Medina Lima,
Vidas y bienes olvidados, 1:182– 336.
66. Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas, 79– 84.
67. Cochineal in the late sixteenth century accounted for 40 percent of nonmineral
exports from the Spanish Indies and 20 percent of all exports from New Spain.
García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 9:137, 6:316– 50; Green-
field, Perfect Red; Marichal, “Mexican Cochineal”; Muñoz Camargo and Reyes
García, Historia de Tlaxcala, 285– 90.
68. Donkin, Spanish Red.
69. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 6:330– 33.
70. Gonzolo Gómez de Cervantes and Alberto Maria Carreño, La vida económica y
social, lámina 199v.
 Notes to Pages 84–89 | 265

71. Donkin, Spanish Red, 14.

72. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 9:138.
73. Baskes, Indians, Merchants, and Market.
74. Very few indigenous wills exist before 1572, but evidence points to widespread
cochineal cultivation after this time. In the early seventeenth century, Juliano
Quetzaltototl possessed a cochineal garden (“nopalmilli”) near Santa Barbara
Acuicuitzcatepec, along with maguey, all in his house plot: AGT Fondo Histórico,
Testament of Juliano Quetzaltototl, 2, referring to a will from 1620. Similarly, a ref-
erence to cochineal producing nopal exists for Atlihuetzyan in 1607: AGN Tierras,
Litigation of Tlaxcalteca; for San Felipe in 1582: AGN Indios, License granted; for
Hueyotlipan, 1594: AGN Indios, Royal order to prohibit oxen; along the north-
central Camino Real, in 1578 and 1592, respectively: AGT Fondo Histórico, Vice-
regal mandate; AGN Indios, Royal order to stop damages. In 1614, Tlaxcala sent
professionals to Campeche (Yucatán Peninsula) to teach the arts of cochineal:
Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia
cronológica, 218.
75. Castillo Palma, “Cholula en sangre de grana.”
76. Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas, 81.
77. Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas, 89.
78. Lockhart et al., Tlaxcalan Actas, 83.
79. The first wave of resettlement (congregación) in the 1560s was ineffective in Tlax-
cala. Sullivan, “Un diálogo”; Prem, “Spanish Colonization”; Mauriño, “Las con-
gregaciones de indios.”
80. “Situación del cultivo de la grana en 1591,” in García Cook, Assadourian, and
Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 6:349.
81. Donkin, Spanish Red, 37.
82. Donkin, Spanish Red, 28.
83. Reales Cédulas, “Copia del Memorial de 1620,” 498– 99.
84. For Oaxaca, Endfield emphasizes “the extreme vulnerability of cochineal to cli-
matic variability and inclement weather.” Endfield, Climate and Society, 66.
85. Marichal, “Mexican Cochineal.”

CHAPTER 3
1. For the fall of pulque, see Bunker, “Consumers of Good Taste.”
2. The primary pulque species are Agave salmiana, Agave mapisaga, Agave atrovirens,
Agave ferox, Agave hookeri, and Agave americana. Gentry, Agaves of Continental
North America, 13– 14; García Mendoza, “Distribution of Agave.”
3. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 69.
4. Motolinía, Memoriales e historia, 332.
5. Motolinía, Memoriales e historia, 330.
6. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 35– 39.
7. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 249.
266 | Notes to Pages 91–98

8. “Real cédula que concede a Tlaxcala mantenerse en la posesión de no pagar el

impuesto del pulque mayo 1,” 1793, in García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez
Baracs, Tlaxcala, 7:402.
9. AGI México, “Measures to curb abuse.”
10. Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay, 477.
11. José Antonio Martínez A, Testimonios sobre el maguey, 228.
12. Vargas Lugo de Bosch, Images of the Natives, 344– 45.
13. Ramirez, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry,” 83– 85.
14. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain, 75, 136– 37. For “indianesque,” see Earle,
“Padres de la Patria,” 785, 92.
15. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque.
16. Nobel, Environmental Biology, 4.
17. Parsons and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 29.
18. Rojas Rabiela, Rea López, and Medina Lima, Vidas y bienes olvidados, vol. 1. Excep-
tions to this rule are in paragraphs 170, 73, 263, 467– 68, 71, and 507.
19. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 99; Cordova, “Landscape Transfor-
mation”; Evans, “Productivity of Maguey Terrace Agriculture”; Lockhart, Nahuas
After the Conquest.
20. Rojas Rabiela, Rea López, and Medina Lima, Vidas y bienes olvidados, 1:188– 97,
218– 21, 28– 35. The average size of the callalli, in hectares, agrees with Evans, “Pro-
ductivity of Maguey Terrace Agriculture”; Williams, “Archaeological Signature.”
21. Nobel, Environmental Biology, 29. Offsets are also called “pups” or “ramets.” Nobel,
91. In Nahuatl, they are metzitzintin (plural), metzintli (singular), or alternatively,
mecoconeh (plural), meconetl (singular). Parsons and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 19.
See “Uso y abuso del pulque para curar enfermedades,” 1772– 72, by José Ignacio
Bartolache, reprinted in Martínez A, Testimonios, 238.
22. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 80.
23. Endfield, Climate and Society, 73.
24. For the efficacy of the second-wave congregación, see BNAH Colección Antigua,
Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 2, 810; Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes
García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia cronológica, 217; Sullivan, “Un diálogo.”
On the Cabildo’s comments, see “Historia de los propios y ejidos de la Ciudad
de Tlaxcala, 1749,” in García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala,
7:83– 84.
25. Gibson, Aztecs, 337.
26. Molina, Vocabulario, “ichcatl.”
27. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 36.
28. See, for example, AGT Fondo Histórico, Petition of Joseph de Celi; AGN Indios,
Royal order to verify damages.
29. Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation, 32.
30. Some lesser taxes began in 1658. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 31– 40.
31. Bartolache, “Uso y abuso del pulque para curar enfermedades,” 1772– 72, reprinted
in Martínez A, Testimonios, 243.
 Notes to Pages 98–106 | 267

32. Bartolache, “Uso y abuso del pulque para curar enfermedades,” 1772–72, reprinted
in Martínez A, Testimonios, 243.
33. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 10:141. Three distinct
classes are identified by Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and
Martínez Baracs, Historia cronológica, 409, 509.
34. AGT Fondo Histórico, Taxation records of pulque.
35. For pre-asiento marketing system, see AGN Indios, Royal order to verify damages,
fol. 353r; AGT Fondo Histórico, Dispute between Zacatelco, fol. 7r.
36. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 36.
37. Smil, Energy in World History, 86.
38. “Decree of the duke of Albuquerque to avoid damages to the pulque commerce to
the capital, 1709,” in Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 436– 38.
39. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion, 32.
40. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 44.
41. Receipts for 1687 until 1695, AMP: Regarding rents, tomo 153, legajo 1546; Regard-
ing rents, tomo 153, legajo 1552.
42. Taylor defined a carga as “twelve arrobas, or forty-eight gallons,” about 182 liters
(i.e., 182 kg). Kicza declared that a single mule carried two cargas, that is, twenty-
five to thirty kilograms per carga. Konrad defines it as two fanegas or twelve arro-
bas, about 300 pounds, or about 136 kilograms. Hernández’s study of the asiento
de pulque supports Konrad’s definition. Konrad, Jesuit Hacienda; Smil, Energy in
World History, 86; Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 320– 21; Taylor, Drinking,
Homicide, and Rebellion, 51; Kicza, “Pulque Trade,” 199.
43. AGT Fondo Histórico, Information regarding tribute reform.
44. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 18.
45. Ouweneel, Shadows over Anáhuac, 288.
46. A cédula from 1585 specifically exempted Tlaxcala from paying tax on pulque.
For other taxes, Baracs believed Tlaxcala continued to pay less than other regions.
Gibson believed Tlaxcala had fared no better than other regions. Gibson, Tlaxcala
in the Sixteenth Century, 170– 81; García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs,
Tlaxcala, 9:94– 111.
47. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia
cronológica, 401.
48. My emphasis. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez
Baracs, Historia cronológica, 420.
49. The pulque taxation saga continues and is revisited over many pages: Buenaventura
Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia cronológica, 439,
47, 49, 51, 63, 83, 557; AGT Fondo Histórico, Dispute between Martín de Irasoqui.
50. In 1681, the Puebla asentista was still trying to collect his taxes, but this is the last
mention of pulque taxation in Tlaxcala until 1793: Agt Fondo Histórico, Dispute
between Martín de Irasoqui. The 1716 tax-free markets were an effort to invigo-
rate a slumping Tlaxcalan economy in the 1740s: García Cook, Assadourian, and
Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 7:368.
268 | Notes to Pages 106–116

51. “Real cédula que concede a Tlaxcala mantenerse en la posesión de no pagar el

impuesto del pulque,” May 1, 1793, in García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez
Baracs, Tlaxcala, 7:401.
52. This testimony relates to the polity of Cholula, which adjoins Tlaxcala to the south.
Castillo Palma, “Cholula en sangre de grana,” 57.
53. Gómez de Silva, Diccionario breve de mexicanismos.
54. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 58.
55. Wegener, “La erosión acuática,” 63.
56. Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, Basin of Mexico, 249.
57. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” xxiv.
58. McClung de Tapia, “Prehispanic Agricultural Systems,” 122.
59. McClung de Tapia, “Prehispanic Agricultural Systems,” 137.
60. Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, Basin of Mexico, 249.
61. Rojas Rabiela, “El hierro, el machete y el arado.”
62. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 443.
63. Zuria and Gates, “Vegetated Field Margins,” 58, 69.
64. AGN Tierras, Natives of Tzompantzinco, 1– 13, 17– 23; AGT Fondo Histórico:
Bills of sale, Testament of María Salome Altamirano, 3– 7, and María Quetzal
Xexeltzin, 3.
65. AGN Tierras, Land dispute, 48– 49.
66. AGT Fondo Histórico: Cabildo protests incursions, and Ordinances regarding
natives and the mesta.
67. AGN Mapoteca, Map of lands; Baber, “Construction of Empire,” 230– 35.
68. AGT Fondo Histórico, Disposition of orphans.
69. For example, see AGN Tierras, Natives of Tzompantzinco. Alternatively, see AGT
Fondo Histórico: Documents relating to land sales and disputes, Bills of sale, and
Sebastián de Almuger Ángulo.
70. The text reads “trató de hacer calles y canales.” AGT Fondo Histórico, Disposition
of orphans, 4.
71. AGN Tierras, Natives of Tzompantzinco. The 1729 dictionary of the Real Aca-
demia Española notes that “likewise two rows of trees, placed one after the other
[a cordel], are called [calles], just as they used to do in groves and gardens.” Real
Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua castellana, “calle.”
72. Landesque capital is an investment into land to increase future production. Blaikie
and Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society, 9.
73. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 79– 80; Wilken, Good Farmers, 127.
74. Castillo Palma, “Cholula en sangre de grana,” 57.
75. Parsons and Prsons, Maguey Utilization, 18.
76. AGN Tierras, Information given by indios, fol. 86r.
77. Riley, “Landlords, Laborers,” 224– 26.
78. AGN Tierras: Litigation for pesos, fols. 68v, 136r; and Litigation for land, fol. 107r.
79. AGN Tierras: Litigation for pesos, fol. 136r; Investigation into missed payments
(1663), fol. 19v; Litigation for pesos, fols. 42v– 43r; Investigation into missed pay-
 Notes to Pages 116–124 | 269

ments (1663), fols. 483r, 493–94 (33–34), 504 (30, although mainly cattle); AGT
Fondo Histórico, Catalina de Zemora, fol. 9r; AGT Registro de Instrumentos
Públicos, Domingo López de Soria, fols. 468– 69.
80. Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 176– 77.
81. See AGN Tierras, Mariana Leal Méndez, fols. 16, 31v.
82. Seeding winter wheat was an agrarian experiment and adaptive strategy employed
“during dry years or years when the rainy season was noticeably delayed.” Endfield,
Climate and Society, 102.
83. AGN Tierras, Dispute over land, fols. 39– 61, 94– 98.
84. AGN Tierras, Cacicazgo of Atlihuetzyan, fols. 174– 202, with direct references to
maguey in fols. 178r, 78v, and 201r.
85. Wilken, Good Farmers, 109.
86. Williams and Harvey, Códice de Santa María Asunción, 33.
87. Wilken, Good Farmers, 104– 13; Parsons and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 22.
88. Wilken, Good Farmers, 108.
89. AGN Tierras, Account of farm hands.
90. AGN Tierras, Cacicazgo of Atlihuetzyan: erosion is cited at Tliltolpan (175r), San
Simon Tlatlauhquitepec (76r), Atecocomolco and Tepexihualco (76v), and Atli-
huetzyan (99v).
91. AGT Fondo Histórico, Land dispute, fol. 35v.
92. The ranch was worth nine thousand pesos, and in order for it to be used as col-
lateral it was kept apart from the cacicazgo. AGN Indios, Regarding lien against
ranch, fol. 164r; AGT Fondo Histórico, Dispute between India Josepha María, fols.
9v, 25r, 28– 29.
93. AGT Fondo Histórico, Division of property, fols. 3– 5.
94. Morris also identified this process: Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 144.
Maguey terraces and plantations appear as standard features of maps of the Tlaxco
area from the 1740s on. Meade de Angulo, Cartografía del estado de Tlaxcala, #796
and #98.
95. González Sánchez, Haciendas y ranchos, 64.
96. Oxen were valued at about ten pesos each, large maguey one peso each, and small
maguey (offsets) one-half peso (or four tomines) each: AGT Fondo Histórico,
Division of property, 10; Parsons and Parsons, Maguey Utilization, 45, 336.
97. Ouweneel, Shadows over Anáhuac, 297– 98.
98. Konrad, Jesuit Hacienda, 101.
99. Konrad, Jesuit Hacienda, 204. For agriculture, see Ouweneel, “Eighteenth-Century
Tlaxcalan Agriculture.” For the larger discourses, see Brading, First America.
100. Konrad, Jesuit Hacienda, 100– 102, 205.
101. Robert West, “Population Densities,” 267n4; Wilken, Good Farmers, 111.
102. Most of this story derives from the Tlaxcalan annals. But other sources are here
listed. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, His-
toria cronológica; Feijoo, “El tumulto de 1692”; Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,”
63, 128– 31.
270 | Notes to Pages 124–133

103. Konrad, Jesuit Hacienda, 100–106.

104. Feijoo, “El tumulto de 1692,” 667, my translation.
105. Feijoo, “El tumulto de 1692,” 667.
106. Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 130– 31.
107. The population decreased from 12,742 to 10,972 during the measles epidemic, and
then by another 2,498 tributaries after the epidemic of 1695. In the neighboring
province of Cholula, mortality rates were only marginally higher for the 1695
epidemic. AGT Fondo Histórico, Tribute payments; Malvido, “Factores de despo-
blación,” 69.
108. Malvido, “Factores de despoblación,” 70.
109. Murdo MacLeod, “Three Horsemen,” 43; Endfield, Climate and Society, 84– 85.
110. The alcalde mayor of the Guadalajara region gave a long list of wild plants foraged
from common forests. MacLeod called such famine foods “an alternative natural
economy.” MacLeod, “Three Horsemen,” 40. For the use of maguey as famine
food, see Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 80; Endfield, Climate and Soci-
ety, 76; Hassig, “Famine of One Rabbit,” 174.
111. AGT Fondo Histórico, Tribute payments, fol. 3r.
112. AGT Fondo Histórico, Tribute payments, 38– 39.
113. AGT Fondo Histórico, Disposition of orphans.
114. Feijoo, “El tumulto de 1692,” 676.
115. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 78.
116. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 78.
117. Archivo Municipal de Puebla, Regarding rents.
118. Hernández Palomo, Renta del pulque, 83.
119. Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 104; Riley, “Landlords, Laborers,” 229– 30.
120. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 25, 40.

CHAPTER 4
1. AGT Fondo Histórico, Litigation for ejidos, fols. 72–73.
2. Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 301– 2.
3. AGT Fondo Histórico, Litigation for ejidos, fol. 3r.
4. Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 64– 71.
5. Don Pascual Ramírez was at least sixty years old in 1705. Although married to
a family of long-standing nobility, he himself had risen to power with the help
of the Spanish governor, don Francisco Antonio Picazo. Buenaventura Zapata y
Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia cronológica, 680n233, par.
522, 66, 93.
6. AGT Fondo Histórico, Litigation for ejidos.
7. AGN Indios, Possession and protection; AGN Tierras: Litigation for pesos, and
Information given by indios.
8. AGN Tierras, Dispute over land; AGT Fondo Histórico, Dispute between India
Josepha María.
 Notes to Pages 133–141 | 271

9. AGT Fondo Histórico, Petition by don Domingo de Calderón.

10. AGT Fondo Histórico, Division of property.
11. Tlaxcala City was founded in 1528 by Spanish colonists. The location of the new
settlement on a floodplain proved problematic soon after its founding. Local annals
written by indigenous elite in their own language, Nahuatl, provide an excellent
and consistent record of floods from the city’s founding until the early eighteenth
century when this rich and unique document series ends. It should also be noted
that the annals series lacks entries from 1689– 1700, inclusive. This means that
floods might have gone unrecorded during this twelve-year period. For the eigh-
teenth century, a myriad of legal and administrative documents are used, although
only flood events for Tlaxcala City are considered. The convent and church of
Acolman is our second point to gauge flooding, which is reconstructed exclusively
from nonserial legal and administrative records. There is no substantial annals
series for the Valley of Teotihuacán.
12. Divided into halves, the rates are 75 percent (6 of 8) for the early colonial era versus
28 percent (11 of 39) for the late colonial era. Divided into quarters, the colonial era
shows rates of 100 percent (1521– 96), 60 percent (1597– 1671), 24 percent (1672–
1746), and 30 percent (1747– 1821).
13. AGN Tierras, Natives of Acolman, fol. 46.
14. Gamio, Población, ed. facsimilar, 3:374.
15. AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage, fols. 270– 333; AGN General de
Parte, Proceedings related to the draining and repair, fols. 198v– 200r.
16. Endfield, Climate and Society, 114– 16.
17. AGN Ríos y Acequías, Cabildo seeks taxes, fols. 81, 4v– 5r.
18. The 1707 dispute lingered until 1718 because Spaniards refused to pay: AGN Ríos
y Acequías, Cabildo seeks taxes. Also, see examples from 1782 and even 1866,
respectively, where local governments and landowners highlighted the dam theory
for reasons of self-interest: Riley, “Public Works”; AGN Administración Pública
Federal, Decree to avoid floods, fol. 8r.
19. Riley, “Public Works,” 366.
20. BNAH Serie Tlaxcala, Work on the Zahuapan River, fols. 1r– 3r.
21. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fols. 29v, 33r, 54r, 59r– 64r.
22. The best evidence of erosion exists as deposition forms, not denuded ones. Never-
theless, there is a great description in AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fols. 59– 66.
23. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, 33v.
24. AGN Tierras: Litigation for land, fol. 107r, and Litigation for pesos, fol. 68v.
25. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fols. 41r, 63r, 70v, 107r.
26. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fols. 41v– 42r.
27. AGT Fondo Histórico, Presentation of documents, fols. 2v, 3r, 6v, etc.
28. AGT Fondo Histórico, Presentation of documents, fols. 44v, 63v, 71r.
29. For detailed maps of the dam site, see AHA Consultivo Técnico, Report by inge-
niero José González Ramírez; AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales, Report on
the waters and springs, fol. 37.
272 | Notes to Pages 141–154

30. AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales: Petition to confirm water rights, fol. 1r;
and Report on the waters and springs, fols. 7r, 35r.
31. AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage; AGN Archivo Histórico de Haci-
endas, Regarding use of water; AGN Tierras, Natives of Acolman, fols. 1r– 3v.
32. AGN Bienes Nacionales, Regarding the flooding.
33. AGN Tierras, Haciendas of San Miguel Coyotepec; AGN Tierras, Natives of
Acolman; AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage.
34. AGN Archivo Histórico de Haciendas, Regarding raising gate planks, fol. 40v.
35. Archivo Técnico de la Zona Arqueológica, Salvamento Arqueológico, I:42– 44,
2:55.
36. Archivo Técnico de la Zona Arqueológica, Salvamento Arqueológico, 2:42– 44.
37. Archivo Técnico del INAH, Gilberto Pérez Rico, 14– 641, I:33– 40. His excavation
reports continue at ZAT/A/118/08, ZAT/A/238/08; ZAT/A/182/08.
38. Cabrera Castro, “Nuevas evidencias arqueológicas,” 130.
39. Letter by Francisco de Lissa to Carlos III, June 30, 1787, in García Cook, Assa-
dourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 8:143.
40. BNAH Serie Tlaxcala, Engineering report, fol. 13r.
41. AGN Administración Pública Federal, Decree to avoid floods, fol. 8.
42. Riley, “Public Works”; Endfield, Tejedo, and O’Hara, “Conflict and Cooperation.”
43. AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage; AGN Archivo Histórico de Haci-
endas: Regarding the use of water, and Regarding raising gate planks; AGN Tier-
ras, Natives of Acolman, fols. 1r– 3v.
44. AGN Indios, Viceregal order to inspect, fol. 138v.
45. AGN Indios, Viceregal order to inspect, fols. 138v– 39r.
46. AGN Tierras, Haciendas of San Miguel Coyotepec, fol. 5r.
47. AGN Tierras, Haciendas of San Miguel Coyotepec, fols. 6v– 7r, 12r– 13r.
48. AGN Tierras, Natives of Acolman, fol. 46.
49. AGN Tierras, Regarding the Hacienda de San Antonio, fol. 7r.
50. AGN Archivo Histórico de Haciendas: Regarding use of water, and Regarding
raising gate planks; AGN Tierras, Proceedings between Tepexpan, fols. 80– 81.
51. AGN Tierras, Regarding the Hacienda de San Antonio, fol. 18r.
52. AGN Tierras, Haciendas of San Miguel Coyotepec, fols. 27– 28.
53. AGN Tierras: Town of Cuanalan (1727), and Town of Cuanalan (1727– 31).
54. Cuevas Aguirre y Espinosa, Extracto de los autos de diligencias, 16.
55. AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage, fols. 185v– 86v.
56. AGN Archivo Histórico de Haciendas, Regarding raising gate planks, cuad. 4, fols.
58r– 59v.
57. AGN Archivo Histórico de Haciendas, Regarding raising gate planks, cuad. 4,
58r– 59v.
58. AGN Temporalidades, Regarding the drainage, fols. 185v– 88r.
59. A flooding event in 1645 is possible. According to two early twentieth-century
scholars, don Manuel Espinosa de los Monteros (priest in Acolman in 1823) noted
the destruction of certain baptismal books because of flooding in 1645. Gamio,
 Notes to Pages 155–164 | 273

Población, ed. facsimilar, 3:369; Castillo Palma, “Inundación de Acolman,” 553. Just
as noteworthy, however, is that the other sources mention a flood in the convent
in 1629, before the dam was constructed. Montes de Oca and Colín, San Agustín
Acolman. Others have argued that a first and less substantial dam was built around
1604. Rojas Rabiela, “Aspectos tecnológicos,” 101; José Lameiras, “Relaciones en
torno.”
60. AGN Bienes Nacionales, Regarding the flooding, fols. 29r– 46v.
61. AGN Bienes Nacionales, Regarding the flooding, fol. 128v.
62. Archivo Histórico del Municipio de San Juan Teotihuacán, AHSJT Aguas, Teo-
tihuacán against Hacienda de San José Acolman, fol. 7r.
63. Chinampas are a form of intensive wetland agriculture that alters both water and
soil elevations to seek ideal soil humidity conditions. The process of making chi-
nampas involves raising cultivation beds above the level of surface waters, regulat-
ing water levels through dredging canals, and then enriching soils with dredged
materials. The spatial extent of the Teotihuacan chinampas (50 ha) was calculated
with mapping software using scanned versions of maps devised by archaeologist
Rene Millon. Millon, Teotihuacán Map. In independently devised estimates, Sand-
ers offered the same figure of 50 hectares: Sanders, Land and Water.
64. Archivo Histórico del Municipio de San Juan Teotihuacán, AHSJT Aguas, Teo-
tihuacán against Hacienda de San José Acolman, fol. 6v.
65. Archivo Histórico del Municipio de San Juan Teotihuacán, AHSJT Aguas, Teo-
tihuacán against Hacienda de San José Acolman, fol. 6v.
66. Alzate, Gacetas de literatura, 2:110.
67. Van Young, Other Rebellion, 250, 318, 436; Gamio, Población, 727– 32.
68. Archivo Histórico del Municipio de San Juan Teotihuacán, AHSJT Aguas, Teo-
tihuacán against Hacienda de San José Acolman, fol. 7v.
69. Renowned archaeologist William Sanders was the first scholar to date the origins
of Teotihuacán’s chinampas to the formative phase of Teotihuacán empire building
(before 100 CE). For Sanders, the chinampas were a key component of nutritional
self-sufficiency in the valley, feeding the large premodern urban population of
150,000. Sanders: “Resource Utilization” and Land and Water. Sanders’s position
was later supported by others, such as Millon, Teotihuacán Map, 39, 47, fig. 44b;
Gamboa Cabezas, “El barrio de Puxtla”; Scarborough, Flow of Power, 119– 21. Oth-
ers cast doubt on the Sanders thesis, most importantly McClung de Tapia, “Silent
Hazards, Invisible Risks,” 153; González Quintero and Sánchez Sánchez, “Sobre
la existencia de chinampas.”
70. A central argument of Candiani is that elite power and knowledge were instru-
mental to the desagüe project, even when top bureaucrats and thinkers relied on
local indigenous knowledge. Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land.
71. Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno,” 64.
72. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred.
73. Tutino: Making a New World and From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico;
Lipsett-Rivera, To Defend Our Water; Ayala, “La pugna por el uso.”
274 | Notes to Pages 165–178

CHAPTER 5
1. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land.
2. The Holy Office of the Inquisition of New Spain was established in 1571 and
prosecuted non-indios for religious transgressions, but as seen here, also for fiscal
improbity. The Church was the single biggest landholder in New Spain and was
a money-lending institution. As a lending institution, see Bauer, “Church in the
Economy of Spanish America”; Gisela von Wobeser, El crédito eclesiástico.
3. On this approach to landscape as a conceptual/material entity, see Sluyter, Colo-
nialism and Landscape.
4. Parr, Sensing Changes; Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power.
5. Pauly, “Anecdotes.”
6. Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 240– 48; Gordillo, Rubble, 119– 21.
7. Howe, Writing the Map, 6.
8. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, cuad. 3, fol. 23r.
9. García Acosta, Precios del trigo, 55; Konove, Black Market Capital, 73; O’Gorman
and Novo, Guía de las Actas de Cabildo, 41.
10. BNAH Serie Tlaxcala, Governor don Antonio López Matoso, fols. 1– 2.
11. AGN Tierras: Litigation for land, cuad. 3, fol. 41v; and Documents of the Cua-
mancingo, fol. 8r.
12. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, 4.
13. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, cuad. 6, fol. 255.
14. Craib, Cartographic Mexico, 57.
15. AGN Tierras, Purchase of Cuamancingo estate.
16. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fols. 1– 3.
17. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 27.
18. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fol. 6r.
19. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, 4.
20. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 7:83, 87.
21. Celestino, Valencia R, and Medina Lima, Actas de cabildo de Tlaxcala, par. 25, 153,
317, and 476.
22. AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos, Cabildo of Tlaxcala, fojas 54v– 57; AGT
Fondo Histórico, Copy of cédula real; Muñoz Camargo, Martínez Baracs, and
Assadourian, Suma y epíloga, 184 (prob. 1588).
23. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 7:83– 84.
24. The best evidence of erosion exists as deposition forms, not denuded ones. Never-
theless, there are some great descriptions: AGN Tierras: Litigation for land, fols.
29v, 33, 54, 59– 66, 107r; and Litigation for pesos, fol. 68v.
25. García Cook, Assadourian, and Martínez Baracs, Tlaxcala, 8:138.
26. Parr, Sensing Changes.
27. Parr, Sensing Changes, 4.
28. Parr, Sensing Changes, 134.
29. Parr, Sensing Changes, 3.
 Notes to Pages 179–198 | 275

30. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, 83.

31. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fols. 48v– 49r.
32. AGN Mapoteca, Map by don Joseph González de Silva, fol. 72r.
33. Meade de Angulo, Cartografía del estado de Tlaxcala.
34. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 81v.
35. Cosentino, “Landscapes of Lineage,” 136– 54.
36. Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan, 152– 53.
37. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fols. 11, 24, 59.
38. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fol. 40v.
39. With thirty folios of text in two languages and three maps, not to mention all the
documents produced in the other cases mentioned by the man in custody, it is
reasonable to assume that a number of men (and perhaps women) contributed to
the production of these documents.
40. Howe, Writing the Map, 25.
41. Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards, 43– 44.
42. Haskett, Visions of Paradise, 189.
43. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fol. 8r.
44. For the area of interest in this study, only a portion of the census has been found:
Chapa, Camacho, Anguiano, and Rojas Rabiela, Padrones de Tlaxcala.
45. The earliest use of this name, or a rendition of it, for a Spanish agricultural estate
is from 1604, where it is called San B’me Quamancinco. In 1606 it was called
San Bartolomée Cuamantla. See AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos: Ínes
Arroñes pays; and Rental agreement.
46. Cuamancingo has also known as Cuamantlac or Cuamantla in 1557: Chapa, Cama-
cho, Anguiano, and Rojas Rabiela, Padrones de Tlaxcala, 302. The town of Hua-
mantla (i.e., Cuamantla) took its name “from the forest that had been there in
times past, and means ‘in the place of the ‘standing tree trunks’ [los palos puestos o
palos hincados].” Muñoz Camargo and Acuña, Descripción, 84. This interpretation
is reinforced by eighteenth-century references (in Spanish) that equate the Cua-
mancingo Ravine with the Palo Huérfano Ravine, or, the Isolated Stick Ravine,
to make a literal translation (AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 65r). See also
Aguilera García, Códice de Huamantla, 1:40, 2:39; Anaya Monroy, Toponimia indí-
gena, 49.
47. In Mexico, the word barranca denotes a deep and steep-sided ravine, usually with
an ephemeral stream.
48. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, cuad. 3, fol. 33r.
49. On the phenomenon of ad hoc names, see Lockhart, Nahuas After the Conquest,
479n15; Haskett, Visions of Paradise, 153; Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices, 12.
50. AGN Tierras, Documents of the Cuamancingo, fol. 49f.
51. AGN Tierras, Litigation for land, fol. 23v; Reyes García, La escritura pictográfica en
Tlaxcala, 204, 55.
52. The Cuecillos, which archaeologists refer to as Los Cerritos de Guadalupe, was
bulldozed in the 1970s and the stones used to build a dam near the site. Borejsza,
276 | Notes to Pages 199–219

“Agricultural Slope Management,” 140, 42. For a fascinating read on what such
acts might have meant to residents and outsiders, see Gordillo, Rubble.
53. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope Management,” 392.

CONCLUSION
1. Gamio, Población, ed. facsimilar, 3:378.
2. AGN Tierras, Haciendas, fol. 11v.
3. Leander, “Mestizaje ecológico en México.”
4. Similarly, economic and biological integration had been occurring across central
Europe. See Hoffmann, “Frontier Foods.”
5. Alternatively, repeated injury by the same cause might be the product of “deliberate
risk taking” in which “perceived . . . gains . . . far outweighed the apparent threat.”
Endfield, Climate and Society, 72– 73, 99– 101.

APPENDIX A
1. Cavazos and Hastenrath, “Convection and Rainfall.”
2. In the year following each of the fifteen volcanic eruptions in the colonial era with
global sulphur dioxide emissions of more than five million tons, three-quarters had
extreme wetness, one-eighth had normal soil humidity, and about one-eighth had
extreme dryness.
3. Lachniet provides new and old references to support a strong ENSO influence,
while Stahle provides new evidence to suggest that the connection is only very
strong for northwest Mexico. Lachniet, Asmerom, Polyak, and Bernal, “Two Mil-
lennia”; Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought Atlas,” 49– 52.
4. Therrell: “Tree Rings, Climate” and “Tree Rings and ‘El Año del Hambre’”; Ther-
rell et al., “Tree-Ring Reconstructed Maize Yield”; Therrell, Stahle, and Acuña
Soto, “Aztec Drought”; Stahle et al., “Tree-Ring Analysis”; Stahle et al., “Major
Mesoamerican Droughts.”
5. Villanueva Diaz et al., “Winter-Spring Precipitation Reconstructions”; Villanueva
Diaz et al., “Red dendrocronológica.”
6. In previous analyses of the paleoclimatology of central Mexico, I used Therrell’s
chronology derived from Douglas fir at the Cuauhtemoc la Fragua site. This data
was good, but not as robust as the new Mexican Drought Atlas, which— in any
case— incorporates the la Fragua data. I also compiled the Lachniet speleothem
data into decade-by-decade bins. The subsequent development of more sophis-
ticated skills in the acquisition, processing, and statistical analysis of paleoclima-
tological data has allowed me to surpass and reinterpret the results presented in
my earlier studies: Skopyk and Martínez Yrízar, “La presa de Acolman”; Skopyk:
“Undercurrents of Conquest” and “Rivers of God.”
7. I thank Dorian J. Burnette, assistant professor, Department of Earth Sciences,
at the University of Memphis, who oversees the web interface of the Mexican
 Notes to Pages 219–233 | 277

Drought Atlas and responded quickly and thoroughly to all the questions I asked.
It was through email communication with him that I gained insight into the can-
didate weighting and candidate selection procedure for individual grid points. Bur-
nette, personal communication, April 20, 2018. On the methodology of Ensemble
Point-by-Point Regression, and the statistical validation of the Mexican Drought
Atlas, see Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought Atlas,” 39– 41.
8. Dorian J. Burnette, personal email communication, April 20, 2018.
9. As described above, PDSI values are actually scPDSI, or self-calibrating PDSI,
which adjusts the PDSI scale relative to the changing definition of the statistical
norm of each geographic site.
10. In Tlaxcala and the Valley of Mexico, June soil moisture and July– August soil
moisture is strongly correlated, r = +0.75– 0.85.
11. Stahle et al., “Mexican Drought Atlas,” 36.
12. Therrell correlated maize yield in the late twentieth century with the instrumental
record of rainfall. Knowing how yield fluctuates with climate, he then applied this
same correlation to the tree-ring reconstructed record of precipitation. The study
does not, and cannot, account for the effect of modern farming techniques and
modern maize varieties on maize yields. I would expect that historical cropping
techniques would use varieties and soil management techniques that would be
more resilient than at present. Therrell et al., “Tree-Ring Reconstructed Maize
Yield.”
13. The term Correlation Area is used because, below, I compare and correlate evi-
dence, from both Lachniet’s speleothem and my Agroecological Index, to that of
PDSI values derived from the Mexican Drought Atlas. Stahle et al., “Mexican
Drought Atlas.”
14. Once the events were selected based on these criteria, geo-referenced gridded
PDSI data were then processed within a geographic information system (GIS).
Gridded maps were converted to point data and then interpolated with a Kriging
function across the extent of central Mexico to create a continuous surface.
15. Two articles by Lachniet and associates analyze and interpret the cave minerals:
Lachniet et al., “2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction”; and Lachniet
et al., “Juxtlahuaca Cave.” The paleoclimatological data are available at Lachniet
et al., “2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction” and Lachniet et al., “Two
Millennia.”
16. Lachniet et al., “2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction,” 261.
17. Lachniet et al., “2400-Yr Mesoamerican Rainfall Reconstruction,” 261.
18. Colonial Mexican records present a detailed and reliable picture of the history of
droughts with significant impact on agriculture. Unfortunately, the sources do not
speak in any consistent manner of the severity of these events. Thus, when enter-
ing data into a spreadsheet, years took on one of two possible values, either 1 or
0. It is important to note that the Agroecological Index does not record events or
meteorological conditions corresponding to the opposite of agroecological stress,
that is, fair weather. While it can be assumed that nonreporting corresponds to
278 | Notes to Pages 233–240

good years, such an assumption cannot be used to record a–1 or any other nomi-
nal value. To do so would classify all conditions at two extremes of the spectrum
and would preclude the possibility of normal conditions. Thus, without data to
separate good from normal conditions, my method records only exceptionally bad
years and remains mute regarding years without reports of adverse meteorological
conditions. Data is thus, by definition, discontinuous.
19. See, for instance, the Codex Telleriano Remensis, which shows the human suf-
fering caused by snowfall during the winter of 1447– 48. Quiñones Keber, Codex
Telleriano-Remensis, fol. 92.
20. Mostly, “dates” were cited as movable feast days or saints’ days. The conversion to
modern calendar dates was made with the help of Agustí y Casanovas, Voltes Bou,
and Vives, Manual de cronología española.
21. Krug and Townsend, “Tlaxcala-Puebla Family of Annals”; Townsend, Annals of
Native America.
22. Townsend, Here in This Year, 157– 93; BNAH Colección Antigua: Anales de Méx-
ico y sus alrededores, núm. 2; Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 2; Anales
de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 2; Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 2;
Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 2; Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 3; Anales
de Tlaxcala, núm. 2; Anales de Tlaxcala, núm. 2.
23. Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Reyes García, and Martínez Baracs, Historia
cronológica.
24. After recording only a few scant details from 1697 to 1725, AAM 18.1 becomes
exceedingly rich and detailed from 1725 to 1739, but the information found there
relates almost exclusively to the operations of the Archbishopric of Tlaxcala (located
in the city of Puebla) (BNAH Colección Antigua, Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala,
núm. 1, pt. 1).
25. The argument for a change in leadership is put forward in a recent dissertation:
Morris, “Pascual Antonio Moreno.”
26. García Acosta et al., Desastres agrícolas en México.
27. Malvido, “Factores de despoblación.”
28. This is similar to the Catálogo histórico’s frequent citations from Espinosa et al.,
Florescano, or from Sanders. Espinosa Cortés et al., Cronología de hambrunas en
México; Sanders et al., Teotihuacan Valley Project Final Report, appendix A.
29. To do this, years with PDSI values less than zero resulted in a– 1, and greater
than zero with a +1. Agroecological Index values were then simply multiplied
by this polarity function to give an Agroecological Index value an integer above
or below zero. Note that the polarity values were drawn from the raw (nons-
moothed) PDSI values, not the ten-year smoothed data. They were applied to the
raw Agroecological Index values, not the nine-year smoothed data. This method
allows for some independent trend movement in each data set with generalized
trend mirroring.
30. The Agroecological Index values are an amalgamation of many types of climate
data. They represent the occurrence of crop-damaging meteorological conditions.
 Notes to Pages 241–250 | 279

31. To compute this, Agroecological Index data were first averaged over a seven-year
running mean.
32. The central plazas of Mexico City and Tlaxcala City lie at almost identical elevations
(approx. 2220 m). The sites also have nearly identical average annual temperatures
and average annual precipitation amounts. Yet significant microclimatic differences
set the two places apart. Tlaxcala experiences greater temperature extremes. A later
onset of summer rains in Tlaxcala City elevates temperatures more than in Mexico
City in May: hitting a maximum of 36ºC versus 32ºC in Mexico City. Almost
the entire modern state of Tlaxcala is classified as “subhumid,” while Mexico City
and even areas around Tlaxcala are “transitional” (i.e., between subhumid and
semiarid). Jáuregui O, Mesoclima de la región Puebla-Tlaxcala.
33. Pei et al., “Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Temperature.”
34. Neukom et al., “Inter-Hemispheric Temperature Variability.”
35. Ljungqvist, “New Reconstruction of Temperature Variability.”
36. Ljungqvist, “New Reconstruction of Temperature Variability,” 347.
37. Parker’s argument hinges on the period from 1630 until 1660, the mid-seventeenth
century. He focuses on Europe and the Far East. Parker, Global Crisis.

APPENDIX B
1. The list of such problems is long and not worth repeating. Rather, see the discus-
sion of “Old World Ungulates in New World Hands” in chapter 2.
2. Trautmann calls these lacustrine deposits “tertiary,” meaning from the late Ceno-
zoic Era. Trautmann, Transformaciones, 5.
3. Yanar, Lipps, and Deep, “Effect of Soil Saturation Duration”; Werner and Aeppli,
Suelos de la cuenca alta, 30– 32.
4. Aeppli and Schönhals, Suelos de la cuenca, 15.
5. Werner and Aeppli, Suelos de la cuenca alta.
6. Wegener, “La erosión acuática.”
7. Wegener, “La erosión acuática,” 63.
8. For the nutrient conditions of tepetlatl soils, see Haulon et al., “Assessment of
Erosion Rates,” 500.
9. While the rates of erosion on tepetlatl seem to be widely agreed on, those for
cambisols are not. Borejsza argued that cambisol rates should be one to three
tonnes per hectare, even though he cited authors who had found the tonnage to be
close to forty. He discredited the higher numbers as being the product of studies
done on experimental plots that use barren surfaces, which always exaggerate soil
loss. It is clear, however, that the difference in erosion rates has to do with varying
degrees of erosivity depending on the existence of normal conditions or anomalous
conditions as would be found in years of collapse. Borejsza, “Agricultural Slope
Management,” 56.
10. Summerfield, Global Geomorphology, 222.
11. Summerfield, Global Geomorphology, 222.
280 | Notes to Pages 250–252

12. Wilken, “Drained-Field Agriculture,” 219.

13. Siemens, “Modeling the Tropical Wetland.”
14. AGN Mercedes, Grant of water to irrigate tular.
15. Cisneros and Stradanus, Sitio, naturaleza y propriedades, 111, 23.
16. O’Hara and Metcalfe, “Climate of Mexico,” 30. AGN Tierras, Tlaxcalan indios
petition; AGT Fondo Histórico: Petition by Francisco Maldonado, Tlaxcalteca
Juana Cano, and Presentation of documents, fol. 100r; AGN Tierras: Indios from
Maquixco, 24v– 28r; and Towns of San Juan and Maquixco, fols. 2v, 8r, 11r, 15r, 19v.
Some wetlands lingered until the eighteenth century— for example, AGN Tierras,
Domingo de Chaniz petitions. In 1753, elder witnesses remembered a time when
the entire valley had a marshland with reeds. This dates the existence of the marsh
to at least 1672. AGN Tierras, Natives of Acolman, fols. 40v– 48v, specifically fol.
46. A 1690s map shows deep flooding around the convent of Acolman: Cuevas
Aguirre y Espinosa, Extracto de los autos. The Late Maunder Minimum extended
the southern wetlands in Tlaxcala: González Jácome, “Paisajes del pasado,” 206.
 REFERENCES

UNPUBLISHED REFERENCES
Archivo General del Estado de Tlaxcala
AGT Fondo Histórico. Bills of sale between Bernardino Cuicuitzcatl and Sebastián
Ángulo, caja 76, exp.17 (1658).
———. Cabildo protests incursions of alcaldes of mesta, caja 65, exp. 17 (1648).
———. Catalina de Zamora rents Hacienda de Texopan inherited from her father Anto-
nio Jorge, caja 24, exp. 20 (1625).
———. Copy of cédula real regarding prohibitions holders of the abasto de carne, caja
12, exp. 22 (1617).
———. Disposition of orphans after epidemic of 1693– 94, caja 98, exp. 24 (1694).
———. Dispute between india Josepha María and Doña Isabel Galicia regarding land
in pago de Cacaloac, caja 96, exp. 31 (1692).
———. Dispute between Martín de Irasoqui and Tlaxcalan Cabildo regarding payment
of pulque taxes, caja 91, exp. 12 (1681).
———. Dispute between Zacatelco and surrounding communities over damage to crops
by mule trains, caja 104, exp. 5 (1699).
———. Division of property of José de Závala (deceased), caja 102, exp. 10 (1698).
———. Documents relating to land sales and disputes between Contlan, Tzompantzinco,
and the Ángulo family, caja 50, exp. 14 (1637– 68).
———. Gaspar Pérez litigates for payment of debt incurred by Antonio Jorge, caja 1,
exp. 5 (1600).
———. Information regarding tribute reform after epidemics of the 1690s, caja 102,
exp. 2 (1698).
———. Land dispute between the towns of San Dionisio Yauhquemehcan and Santa
María Atlihuetzyan, caja 52, exp. 16 (1722).
282 | References

———. Litigation for ejidos de los Llanos de Atlancatepec, caja 4, exp. 11 (1703).
———. María Quetzal Xexeltzin litigates for land and magueys, caja 10, exp. 1 (1615).
———. Ordinances regarding natives and the mesta, caja 65, exp. 25 (1648).
———. Petition by don Domingo de Calderón regarding the ejidos of Atlancatepec,
caja 12, exp. 4 (1705).
———. Petition by Francisco Maldonado to destroy a dam installed by Jusepe Vasquez
Gastelo, caja 74, exp. 2 (1654).
———. Petition of Joseph de Celi to continue producing pulque in Tlaxcala, caja 36,
exp. 13 (1630).
———. Presentation of documents to creditors of the Hacienda de Santa Clara Atzom-
pan, caja 6, exp. 2 (1702– 18).
———. Sebastián de Almuger Ángulo manifests ownership of Rancho de Almomoloco
near San Salvador Tzompantzinco for rental agreement with Gerónimo Vargas, caja
88, exp. 20 (1676).
———. Taxation records of pulque entering city of Puebla, caja 84, exp. 23 (1670).
———. Testament and inventory of belongings of Antón Domingo, caja 66, exp. 11 (ca. 1650).
———. Testament and inventory of belongings of Francisco Lópes de Soria, caja 50,
exp. 14 (1631).
———. Testament of Juliano Quetzaltototl, caja 10, exp. 28 (1615– 1719).
———. Testament of María Salome Altamirano, caja 77, exp. 6 (1659).
———. Testament of Pedro de Tabares resident of Atlancatepec, caja 6, exp. 4 (1592).
———. Tlaxcalteca Juana Cano seeks court protection in possession of lands near Santa
Clara Atzompan, caja 37, exp. 6 (1630).
———. Tribute payments made by cabildo during 1696 epidemic, caja 102, exp. 21 (1697).
———. Viceregal mandate prohibiting transhumant grazing amongst nopals used for
cochineal, caja 4, exp. 3 (1578).
———. Viceroy Lorenso Suares de Mendoza orders Alonso de Orozco to avoid buying
chickens, pigs, and other things from the indios, caja 4, exp. 7 (1581).
AGT Registro de Instrumentos Públicos. Antonio Jorge rents Hacienda de Zacatelco
to Gaspar Rodríguez de Villanueva, vol. 13, fojas 39– 40 (1601).
———. Antonio Jorge rents Hacienda in Atlancatepec to Francisco Martín de Cuenca,
vol. 30, fojas 335– 36 (1611).
———. Cabildo of Tlaxcala rents three estancias with sheep to Rodrigo Alonso, vol. 4,
fojas 54v– 57 (1580).
———. Domingo Lópes de Soria rents hacienda in Atlancatepec to Domingo Martín,
vol. 21, fojas 468– 69 (1607).
———. Gabriel and Isabel Muñoz sell two parcels in Atlancatepec to Francisco Gómez,
vol. 18, fojas 227– 28 (1605).
———. Ínes Arroñes pays twelve hundred pesos in favor of Hacienda de San Bartolomé
Cuamancingo, vol. 15, fojas 190– 91 (1604).
———. Power of attorney by Gabriel and Doña Isabel Muñoz for sale of two parcels
near Atlancatepec, vol. 18, fojas 223– 24 (1605).
———. Rental agreement between Domingo Lópes de Soria and Bartolomé Días, Haci-
enda de Labor de San Bartolomé Cuamantla, vol. 19, foja 90 (1606).
 References | 283

———. Terms of sale for two parcels in Atlancatepec between Gabriel and Doña Isabel
Muñoz and Francisco Gómez, vol. 18, fojas 224– 25 (1605).

Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico)

AGN Administración Pública Federal. Decree to avoid floods caused by the Atoyac and
Zahuapan Rivers, caja 49 (1866).
AGN Archivo Histórico de Haciendas. Regarding raising gate planks of Acolman Dam,
vol. 682, exp. 6 (1760– 1777).
———. Regarding use of water and opening of dam, vol. 682, exp. 3 (1751– 1783).
AGN Bienes Nacionales. Regarding the flooding of the Acolman Church, vol. 1187,
exp. 4 (1762– 66).
AGN Congregaciones. Barrio of Los Reyes asks to be congregated in San Martín and
not San Juan Teotihuacán, vol. 1, exp. 6 (1603).
AGN Desagüe. Fray Andrés de San Miguel regarding the drainage of Mexico City,
vol. 3 (1631).
———. Report by Henrrico Martínez regarding the desagüe, vol. 3 (1629).
AGN General de Parte. Alcalde mayor must not permit selling or trading of sheep and
other goods to indios, vol. 2, exp. 213 (1579).
———. Alcalde mayor must permit selling and butchering of hogs by natives as they
see fit, vol. 1, exp. 816 (1576).
———. Proceedings related to the draining and repair of the Camino Real at San Juan
Teotihuacán, vol. 62, exp. 211 (1781).
———. Verification of Apizaco as suitable site to found a town of indios and españoles,
vol. 39, exp. 20 (1631).
AGN Indios. License granted to doña Juan Nuñez principal for two hundred sheep,
vol. 2, exp. 583 (1583).
———. Possession and protection of land for San Lucas Tecopilco, vol. 27, exp. 234
(1682).
———. Regarding lien against ranch of Josepha de San Miguel, vol. 49, exp. 137 (1725).
———. Royal order to prohibit oxen used in Camino Real near Hueyotlipan, vol. 6,
exp. 877 (1594).
———. Royal order to stop damages caused by oxen used in Camino Real to Tlaxcalteca,
vol. 6, exp. 736 (1592).
———. Royal order to verify damages received by natives in towns near San Martin
Xaltocan, vol. 13, exp. 430 (1641).
———. Viceregal order to inspect the San Juan River channel, vol. 54, exp. 154 (1736).
AGN Mapoteca. Map by don Joseph González de Silva of boundaries between his estate
(San Andrés Buenavista) and that of Cuamancingo, Río de las Vacas, Zoltepec, and
the ejidos of Tlaxcala, #1418 978/0044, originally AGN Tierras, vol. 2341, exp. 1,
cuad. 3, foja 232 (1765).
———. Map of lands near Santa María Cuauhtelolpan, San Dionisio Yauhquemecan,
San Martín Xaltocan, and others, #905 977/1080, originally AGN Tierras, vol. 1004,
exp. 1, cuad. 2, foja 2 (1777).
284 | References

———. Map of San Agustín Tlaxco and Hacienda de Santa María Xaloztoc, #796
977/0970, originally AGN Tierras, vol. 624, pt. 2, exp. 1, foja 139 (1741).
AGN Mercedes. Grant of estancia de ganado menor at Atlixoloyan to Diego Paredes
principal de Atlihuetzyan, Tlaxcala, vol. 6, foja 236 (1563).
———. Grant of estancia de ganado menor at Cuapiaztlan to Diego Paredes principal
de Atlihuetzyan, Tlaxcala, vol. 6, foja 235 (1563).
———. Grant of estancia de ganado menor at San Juan to Juan Maldonado principal de
Atlihuetzyan, Tlaxcala, vol. 6, foja 236v (1563).
———. Grant of estancia de ganado menor at Tetlapancan to Bernardino Santa Cruz
principal de Atlihuetzyan, Tlaxcala, vol. 6, foja 235v (1563).
———. Grant of water to irrigate tular in wetland of Santa Cruz Cocomico, vol. 31, foja
137v (1616).
———. Information regarding estancia, molino, and other property of Gutierre Maldo-
nado in Tlaxcala, vol. 1, exp. 293 (1542).
———. Regarding waters of the Atoyac, vol. 60, fojas 9r– 10v (1681).
AGN Ríos y Acequías. Cabildo seeks taxes from Spanish property owners for repairs to
Zahuapan River, caja 5590, exp. 81 (1707).
AGN Temporalidades. Regarding the drainage of the Acolman Lake, vol. 22, exp. 16 (1757).
AGN Tierras. Account of farm hands at the San Blas Hacienda, vol. 175, exp. 1 (1700).
———. Cacicazgo of Atlihuetzyan against Pedro Matías Paredes Guzmán y Sarmiento,
vol. 79, exp. 3 (1759).
———. Dispute over land between San Baltasar Tochpan and San Francisco Tetlanocan,
vol. 299, exp. 5 (1713– 32).
———. Dispute over lands between Felipe Martínez and Francisco Pimental in town of
San Francisco Aztacameca, vol. 1719, exp. 2 (1585– 1745).
———. Documents of the Cuamancingo and Río de las Vacas estates, vol. 946, exp. 3
(1761).
———. Documents relating to the cacicazgo of Tizatlan, don Alonso Júarez and doña
Juana Jiménez, vol. 216, exp. 9.
———. Domingo de Chaniz petitions for protection of property in wetland near San
Lorenzo Techalotepec, vol. 2959, exp. 90 (1663).
———. Grant of two caballerías of land to Fernando de la Serna near Tepexpan, vol. 1871,
exp. 17 (1578– 1617).
———. Haciendas of San Miguel Coyotepec and Los Rincones against the Colegio de
San Gregorio regarding Presa del Rey, vol. 619, exp. 1 (1740).
———. Indios from Maquixco against Juan Isidro Valazquez de la Cadena, vol. 2603,
exp. 1 (1757– 67).
———. Information given by indios of Tecopilco regarding Texopan parcel, vol. 3117,
exp. 7 (1709).
———. Investigation into missed payments to the Holy Office of the Inquisition,
vol. 3116, exp. 1 (1663).
———. Investigation into missed payments to the Holy Office of the Inquisition,
vol. 3306, exp. 1 (1663).
 References | 285

———. Land dispute between natives of San Dionisio Yauhquemehcan and Santa María
Atlihuetzyan, vol. 914, exp. 2 (1689, 1766– 79).
———. Litigation for land by José González Silva against Alejandro Muñoz de Cote
and Luis Athanacio Gil, vol. 2341, exp. 1 (1760– 70).
———. Litigation for pesos between owner of Hacienda del Río de las Vacas and the
Royal Exchequer of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, vol. 3104, exp. 1 (1709).
———. Litigation of Tlaxcalteca from Atlihuetzyan against Sebastián Maldonado,
vol. 2953, exp. 69 (1607).
———. Mariana Leal Méndez against the heirs of Elena de la Cruz Juárez, regarding
possession of cacicazgo of Atlihuetzyan, vol. 892, exp. 1 (1759– 1804).
———. Natives of Acolman against Don Fernando Palazuelos for use of water, vol. 1477,
exp. 3 (1753).
———. Natives of Tzompantzinco against Juan Serrano for community land, vol. 414,
exp. 3 (1723– 24).
———. Proceedings between Tepexpan and neighboring haciendas, regarding quantity
of water in Río San Juan, vol. 1872, pt. 2, exp. 21 (1714).
———. Purchase of Cuamancingo estate by Alejandro Muños de Cote, vol. 3228, exp. 4
(1753).
———. Regarding the Hacienda de San Antonio and the use of water of the presa,
vol. 3012, exp. 6 (1783).
———. Teotihuacán against Cristobal Gudiel regarding mill site, vol. 1649, exp. 1 (1585).
———. Tlaxcalan indios petition for protection of their rights of wetland, vol. 3542,
exp. 29 (1661).
———. Town of Cuanalan against town of Tepexpan for land, vol. 2515, exp. 1 (1727).
———. Town of Cuanalan against town of Tepexpan for land, vol. 2368, exp. 1 (1727– 31).
———. Towns of San Juan and Maquixco against the Hacienda de la Cadena for land
and water, vol. 1653, exp. 6 (1642– 1758).

Archivo General de Indias

AGI México. Letter of Viceroy Marqués de Cerralbo, vol. 30, no. 33 (1630).
———. Measures to curb abuse of pulque during desagüe, vol. 31, no. 31 (1635).
———. Shepherds in bishopric of Tlaxcala after epidemic of 1576, vol. 216, no. 29 (1582).

Archivo Histórico del Municipio de San Juan Teotihuacán

AHSJT Aguas. Teotihuacán against Hacienda de San José Acolman regarding use of
spring water (1818).

Archivo Histórico del Agua

AHA Aprovechamientos Superficiales. Declaration of the springs of San Juan Teoti-
huacán as national property, and related documents, caja 1781, exp. 26466 (1918– 43).
286 | References

———. Petition to confirm water rights for towns near Santa Clara Atzompan, caja 1235,
exp. 17082 (1920– 27).
———. Regarding the conflict between users of spring water and the executive commit-
tee that distributes water, vol. 416, exp. 7740 (1926– 35).
———. Report on the waters and springs in the Hacienda de Santa Clara Atzompan,
caja 1732, exp. 25584 (1921– 34).
AHA Consultivo Técnico. Report by ingeniero José González Ramírez about geological
conditions at the narrows of San José Atlanga dam, caja 839, exp. 7910 (1957).

Archivo Municipal de Puebla

AMP. Regarding rents from the asiento de pulque, tomo 153, legajo 1546 (1687).
———. Regarding rents from the asiento de pulque, tomo 153, legajo 1552 (1687– 95).

Archivo Técnico de la Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán

Archivo Técnico de la Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán, Instituto Nacional de Antro-
pología e Historia (INAH). Salvamento Arqueológico de Teotihuacán, Informes
Técnicos, I:42– 44 (2004).
Archivo Técnico del INAH. Gilberto Pérez Rico, Informe Técnico, Zat/a/095/08 (2008).

Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia

BNAH Colección Antigua, with Nahuatl, Spanish, compiled by don José Fernando
Ramírez, rollo 78.
———. Anales de México y sus alrededores, núm. 2 (1564– 1716; AAM #14).
———. Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 1 (1519– 1739; AAM #18.1).
———. Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 2 (1519– 1697; AAM #18.2).
———. Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 1, pt. 3 (1519– 1691; AAM #18.3).
———. Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 2 (1531– 1671; AAM #19).
———. Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, núm. 3 (1664– 86; AAM #20).
———. Anales de Tlaxcala, núm. 1 (1453– 1603; AAM #16).
———. Anales de Tlaxcala, núm. 2 (1519– 1692; AAM #17).
BNAH Serie Tlaxcala. Engineering report by Joseph Rodriguez Bayon, rollo 30, exp. 81
(1793).
———. Governor don Antonio López Matoso promotes reconstructing the royal palace
in Tlaxcala because the old one is in ruins, rollo 10, exp. 426 (1761).
———. Report on the works of the Zahuapan River, rollo 29, bis 37 (1785).
———. Work on the Zahuapan River, rollo 29, bis 30 (1783).

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Acapulco City, 27
Acolman (San Agustín), Ex-Convento, 5,
6f, 40, 42–44, 50, 54, 64, 138, 143, 149, 151,
154–56, 201, 210, 271n11, 273n59, 280n16;
Teotihuacán Valley, 5, 35, 44, 49–50, 54,
64. See also flooding, Acolman
Acolman dam. See hydraulic infrastructure,
Acolman dam
Acuauhtla, Tlaxcala, 133–34
Acuicuitzcatepec (Santa Bárbara), Tlaxcala,
121, 131, 133, 191, 197, 198, 265n74
Acuña Soto, Rodolfo, 47, 259n42, 260n19
adaptation, environmental, 29, 49, 66, 67,
88, 95
African agriculture, Americas, 19
agave. See pulque
agroecological stress, 32, 33, 48, 214, 277n18.
See also crisis, socioecological
agroecology, 16, 19, 28, 32–33, 48–49, 66–67,
86, 203, 206–8, 214, 232–33, 238–45,
258n40, 264n61, 277n13, 277n18, 278n29,
278n30, 279n31. See also cochineal;
pulque; social ecology
ahuehuetes, 38–39, 51, 52, 110–11, 145, 152,
158, 160, 209, 219, 239
INDEX
Ahuehuetitlan, Teotihuacán Valley, 52;
Tlaxcala, 110, 111, 209
Alchón, Suzanne, 33. See also disease,
imperialism
alluviation (sedimentation). See sediment
transport, deposition
Alzate Ramírez, José, 7, 9–11, 18, 65, 255n5,
256n6, 256n7, 256n8
animal mortality, 13, 20, 21, 75, 115, 134,
169, 232. See also climate, animal
mortality
Apam, 93, 100, 183 (fig.)
Apizaco, Tlaxcala, 111, 113, 117, 122, 172, 183f,
184, 191, 194
asiento marketing system. See pulque,
marketing of
Atentzinco, Tlaxcala, 111
Atezcalac, Teotihuacán Valley, 40, 52
Atezcatzinco, Teotihuacán Valley, 52
Atezcatzonco, Teotihuacán Valley, 52
Atlancatepec (San Juan), Tlaxcala, 22, 72–
73, 75–76, 131, 140–42, 145, 148, 165, 173,
181f, 184, 193, 203, 209, 252
Atlatonco (Santiago Atla), Teotihuacán
Valley, 40, 42, 43, 93, 149–50, 259n12
306 | Index
Atlihuetzyan, Tlaxcala, 71, 75, 117, 118, 119,
209, 265n74
Atoyac River, 68, 69, 202
Ayotzinco, Teotihuacán Valley, 52
Baldivieso, Antonio de, 133
barley, 74, 96, 99, 100, 110, 115, 116, 129, 140,
179
Borejsza, Aleksander, 78, 110, 129, 199,
263n48, 275n52, 295n9
Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Juan, 70,
105, 106, 234
Cabildo (Tlaxcala), 75, 79–80, 82–85,
97, 105, 106, 111–12, 115, 119, 125–26,
131–35, 138, 163, 172–77, 182, 185, 189,
191, 194–95, 197–98, 210–12, 237–38,
261n4, 264n51. See also ejidos, Cabildo
(Tlaxcala)
Cabrera Celís, Matías de, 121
caciques. See elite, indigenous; pulque,
indigenous elite
Calderón, Domingo, 133–35
callalli, 81, 82, 93–94, 95, 96, 97, 110, 208,
266n20; definition of, 93
Calvario (Acolman), Teotihuacán Valley,
138, 149–50, 155
Camargo Caballero, Juan, 147
Castañeda, Francisco, 53–54
Castilla y de Galicia, Isabel de, 117
Castillo, El. See hydraulic infrastructure,
Acolman dam
cataclysm, climatic, 11–13, 18, 21, 28–29;
definition of, 15; geomorphic, 4–11, 13,
15, 18, 20–21, 29–30, 136–45, 201–2, 205,
211, 212. See also sediment transport
cattle, 19, 74, 116, 122, 134, 175, 258n33
central settlement zone, 24, 25m; temper-
ateness, 25
Cerro Gordo (mountain), 35, 40, 70, 247
chinampas, 30, 158–62, 164, 209, 212,
273n63, 27369
chiyahuiztli (crop fungus), 32
Chiyauhtempan (Santa Ana), Tlaxcala, 113,
122, 210
Cholula, 84, 86, 98, 214, 238, 268n52,
270n107
Cimatepec, Tlaxcala, 119
Citlaltpec (Santa Úrsula), Tlaxcala, 117
Ciudad Real, Antonio de, 71
climate: animal mortality and, 75 (see also
animal mortality); canícula, 107, 221, 249;
cold (including frost and snow), 11–13,
20, 25, 28, 29, 31–32, 54, 61, 67, 76, 83–84,
86–88, 92, 93, 95, 123–25, 127, 137, 151,
160, 172, 205, 209, 213–17, 232, 235, 238,
242–45, 248, 249, 256n15, 278n19; dehu-
midification, 7, 9, 10, 141; desiccation, 3,
5, 7, 9–10, 16, 20, 62, 65, 129, 135, 141, 160,
205–6, 230, 251–53; drought, 7, 9–11, 20,
25, 32, 47, 65, 93, 107, 124–28, 133–34, 160,
164, 169, 175, 205, 206, 209, 213–23, 229–
32, 234–35, 238, 242, 249, 251–52, 256;
precipitation, 7, 11, 25, 29, 32, 36, 39–40,
42, 57–59, 62, 67, 69, 83, 86, 107, 120, 137,
138, 144, 151, 160, 206, 213–17, 219, 221–22,
229–31, 244–45, 248–53, 259n43, 279n32
(see also pluvial); regional comparisons
in central Mexico, 67; Spanish imperial-
ism and, 11–13, 29, 33, 34; temperate, 25
(map); variability of, 9, 95
climate anomalies. See climate periods
climate determinism. See nature/humans,
dualism
climate extremes. See climate periods
climate periods, 1514–1528 (conquest
drought), 11, 64, 224m; 1532–1539, 11, 47,
224, 225m; 1542–1554, 12, 31, 44, 45, 47,
64, 65, 70, 224, 225m; 1574–1579, 12, 224,
31, 45, 64, 70–71, 86, 225m; 1604–1616,
12, 31, 45, 57–63, 64, 86, 224, 226m; 1643–
1652, 12, 224, 226m; 1662–1688, 7, 12;
1696–1705 (Late Maunder Minimum),
7, 9, 13, 20–21, 29, 65, 77, 92, 111, 123–28,
129, 133–34, 137, 172, 175, 179, 204–6, 212,
222–24, 226m, 228, 233–38, 241, 243, 345,

258–59n40; 1700s, 7, 9, 13; 1706–1778,
7; 1729–1733, 7, 9, 224, 227m; 1785–1786
(Year of Hunger), 9, 10, 20; 1785–1790,
9, 224, 227m; 1791–1796, 9, 224, 227m;
1809–1817, 9, 224, 228m; Colonial
Mexican Pluvial (see pluvial, Colonial
Mexican); definition of, 222–23, 228,
233, 241; Little Ice Age, 11–12, 14, 20,
27–29, 31, 34, 49, 65, 67, 128–29, 137, 169,
175, 202, 209, 213; Pax Romana, 7, 10
climate reconstructions, historical (annals),
32, 71, 86, 214, 232–45, 271n11, 277n13,
277n18, 278n29, 278n30, 279n31; mineral
(speleology), 214, 228–32, 244, 276n3,
276n6, 276n15, 277n13; multiproxy, 12, 243,
256n17, 257n18; tree rings (dendrochro-
nology), 31, 45, 48, 124, 205–6, 214, 216,
217–224, 228, 230–32, 233–34, 239–41,
244, 276n7, 277n9, 277n13, 277n14, 278n29
cochineal, 28, 67, 70, 82–87, 95, 96, 106–7,
114, 116, 207, 264n67, 265n74; climate,
85–87, 265n84
cocoliztli. See disease, cocoliztli
cognition, landscape. See memory
(landscape)
Colonial Mexican Pluvial. See pluvial,
Colonial Mexican
Columbian Exchange, 3, 15–19, 28, 33,
59–60, 62, 66, 73–75, 76, 82–88, 92, 128,
135, 207–8
conflict, land and, 16, 29, 56, 131–34, 149,
163–64, 169–74, 212; rebellion and, 19–
20, 29, 44, 92, 105–6, 123–26, 136, 149,
154–58, 161, 163–64, 212, 233, 260n16;
vandalism and, 29, 41, 149, 152, 163;
water and, 29, 56, 133, 149–51, 158–62.
See also law
congregación, 80, 97, 116, 117, 168, 265n79,
266n24
Contlan (San Bernardino), Tlaxcala, 100,
106, 110, 112
Convento de Acolman. See Acolman,
Ex-Convento
Index | 307
copal tree, 117
Correlation Area, definition of, 22, 23m, 222
Cortés, Hernán, 67, 187f, 188f, 195–99, 234
crisis, socioecological, 9, 12, 13, 16, 20, 25, 29,
32–34, 48, 67, 79, 83, 85, 123–30, 133–35,
150, 154, 160–61, 172, 202, 209, 214, 217,
222, 232, 235–36, 238, 241, 244, 255n4,
270n110
Crosby, Alfred, 17, 18, 59. See also Colum-
bian Exchange
Cuahutelolpan, Tlaxcala, 111
Cuanalan, Teotihuacán Valley, 152, 153f
Cuauhtitlan River, 32–33
Cuauhtli, Baltasar, 117
Cuecillos, Tlaxcala, 181–82, 185, 198, 275n52
Cuevas Aguirre y Espinosa, Joseph Fran-
cisco de, 152
Dávalos, Antonio, 170, 173
declensionism, environmental, 15, 30, 129
deforestation, 10, 17. See also desiccation
theory; reforestation (natural regrowth)
dehumidification. See climate, dehumidifi-
cation; climate, drought
depopulation. See disease
desiccation. See climate, dehumidification;
climate, drought
desiccation theory, 9–11, 22, 160, 255n5,
256n6, 256n7, 256n8. See also Alzate
Ramírez, José
disease, 7, 19, 77, 79, 81, 82, 85, 87, 91, 95,
111, 125, 126, 133–34, 179, 209, 232,
238, 257n19, 263n33, 263n44, 270n107;
climate and, 13, 14, 20, 21, 25, 28, 32–34,
47–48, 53, 64–65, 67, 75, 95, 125, 134,
172, 179, 217, 234, 251, 259n42, 260n19;
cocoliztli, 14, 32, 47–48, 75, 86, 260n19;
imperialism, 33; virgin soil epidemics, 28
donkeys. See draught animals
draught animals, 20, 49, 74, 84, 93, 98–100,
102, 110–15, 122, 128, 134, 148, 170, 208,
262n23, 265n74, 267n42, 269n96. See also
roads; social ecology, energetics
308 | Index
drought narrative, 9–11, 164, 194, 256n10,
256n12, 256n13, 277n18. See also climate,
drought
Ecological Imperialism. See Columbian
Exchange
ecological knowledge, 33, 34, 53, 160;
archives and, 34, 53, 64, 166–67; astrol-
ogy and cosmography, 15, 17, 57, 58, 59,
60, 61, 204, 251, 260n31; Christianity
and, 19, 57, 59, 62, 64; climate as impulse
for, 57, 62–63; mapping and, 21–22, 53–
56, 63, 65, 167, 180–84; normative nature
and, 4, 22, 34, 53, 65, 70, 179, 184, 196;
perceived fertility and, 54; science and,
15, 28, 34, 37,59, 64, 160, 178, 180, 255n5,
256n6, 260n31. See also Alzate Ramírez,
José; desiccation theory; memory (land-
scape); San Miguel, friar Andrés de;
Torquemada, Juan de
ecological mestizaje, 15–16, 19, 20, 207,
257n24. See also Columbian Exchange
ejidos, altepetlalli, 132–33, 135; Amalinalco,
75, 140, 174–77, 185, 189, 197, 211–12;
Cabildo (Tlaxcala), 131–35, 163, 174–75,
181, 198, 209, 212
El Niño. See ENSO
elite, indigenous, 15, 29, 44, 51, 66, 70, 75,
81, 111, 116–21, 125, 128, 133–34, 143, 163,
172, 186–88f, 191, 193–96, 198, 211–12,
270n5, 271n11, 273n70
Endfield, Georgina, 10–11, 95, 138, 210,
256n13, 265n84
energetics. See social ecology, energetics
ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation), 9,
10, 216, 276n3
environmental determinism. See nature/
humans, dualism
epidemic. See disease
epizootic. See animal mortality
erosion. See sediment transport, erosion
evolution (co-evolution), 14
fallow, 81–82, 104, 208
flooding, 3, 4, 5, 12–13, 15–17, 20, 21, 28, 29,
32–35, 45, 51, 64, 78, 86, 129–30, 134–39,
169, 201–6, 217, 232, 235, 238, 246–53;
Acolman, 5, 6f, 35, 40, 43–44, 64, 135–39,
148–58, 169, 209–10, 272n59, 280n16;
Acolman (Hacienda de San José),
138; catch and release’, 138, 271n18; El
Calvario, 138; Guanajuato, 138; Mexico
City, 12–13, 17–18, 32, 43, 44, 57–64,
135, 137, 169; Otumba, 138; San Juan
Teotihuacán, 43, 50–53, 64, 135, 138,
143–45, 161–62; Tepexpan, 44–49, 54;
Tequiciztlan, 44–49; Tlalnepantla (San
Marcos), 138; Tlaxcala City, 5, 7, 35, 43,
64, 68, 70–71, 78, 135–39, 141–43, 146–48,
169, 172, 177, 271n11. See also hydrology,
methods of historical reconstruction
Florescano, Enrique, drought and, 10
García Acosta, Virginia, drought and, 10
geomorphology. See sediment transport;
flooding
Gibson, Charles, drought and, 10, 256n7;
erosion, 17–18
Gil, Luis Athanacio, 165, 170–72, 182, 185, 191,
193. See also Hacienda de Río de las Vacas
GIS (Geographic Information Science), 27–
28, 203, 259n43, 277n14
grasslands discourse. See vegetation
regrowth
Guadalajara City, 10, 24
Gudiel, Cristobal, 38, 51, 52m, 54
Hacienda (Rancho) la Concepción Zacate-
pec, Tlaxcala, 140, 170, 173, 181
Hacienda de Cuamancingo, Tlaxcala, 74,
113, 115, 139, 165, 170–76, 180–82, 187f,
189–96, 198–200, 202, 211, 275n46
Hacienda de los Rincones, Teotihuacán
Valley, 152
Hacienda de Piedras Negras, Tlaxcala, 122

Hacienda de Río de las Vacas, Tlaxcala, 115,
116, 133, 139, 165, 170–74, 181, 189–96,
200
Hacienda de San Andrés Buenavista, Tlax-
cala, 173, 176, 180–81
Hacienda de San Antonio, Teotihuacán
Valley, 143, 149–52
Hacienda de San José, Teotihuacán Valley,
42, 43, 138, 145, 150
Hacienda de San Miguel Coyotepec, Teoti-
huacán Valley, 152
Hacienda de Santa Clara, Tlaxcala, 74
Hacienda de Santiago Buenavista Tepalcat-
lalpan, Tlaxcala, 173
Hacienda de Zavala, 121, 126, 134, 173
hemorrhagic fever. See disease, cocoliztli
Hernández de Lara, Antonio, 192, 193
Hernández de Lara, Joseph, 116
Hernández, Alonso, 121
horses. See draught animals
Huamantla (San Luis), Tlaxcala, 100, 113,
172, 275n46
Hueyotlipan, Tlaxcala, 113, 197
Huitzcolotepec (La Asumpción), Tlaxcala,
131, 197
hydraulic infrastructure, 3, 5, 32–33, 40,
42–44, 49–52, 58, 59, 149–50, 178, 204;
Acolman dam, 35 (map), 36, 40, 41m,
42–43, 136, 143–44, 149–52, 153f, 154, 156,
252, 273n59; desagüe (drainage) project,
57–63; irrigation, 40, 54, 62, 119, 140, 141,
143, 150, 152, 158; San Antonio canal
(acequia), 41–42, 155; San Juan Teoti-
huacán, 37, 39–40, 43–44, 49–55, 158–62;
Temascal or El Sifón, 41–43; Tlaxcala,
69–70, 138–41, 146–48, 175–76, 184–85,
186f, 189, 193, 199, 202, 210, 275n52;
water-driven grist mill, 16, 49–55, 160,
251, 259n12
hydrology, general, 4–7, 9, 16, 25, 28, 29, 31,
246–53; measurements, 11, 37, 43, 69, 145.
See also climate, desiccation; flooding;
Index | 309
Teotihuacán Valley, hydrology; wetlands;
Zahuapan River
idolatry, 18, 62, 168, 182, 195, 198, 200
indigenous farmers, scholarly depictions
of, 15, 19, 257n26. See also agroecology;
cochineal; pulque
inns, 5, 49, 50, 122, 184, 199
Inquisition, Holy Office of, 30, 115–16, 165,
169–71, 182, 185, 211, 274n2
inundation. See flooding
irrigation. See hydraulic infrastructure,
irrigation
ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone)
izcahuihtli, 47
Jesuits, agriculture and, 122–24, 149–51, 158–
62, 209, 212
La Niña. See ENSO
lakes. See wetlands
Late Maunder Minimum. See climate
periods, 1696–1705
law, 11, 16, 22, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 45, 48–49,
50–51, 53, 56, 64, 66, 87, 105, 115, 117,
130–34, 135, 149, 152, 158, 160, 171–72,
174, 182, 198, 204–5, 209, 210–12, 238;
acta indagación, 21, 30, 115, 138, 139–41,
152, 165–72, 174, 176, 180, 182, 184–85,
189–90, 192, 197–200, 202, 210–11;
amojonamiento, 21–22, 30, 131, 133,
162, 163, 164, 171, 184; climate-induced
land transfer and, 45, 48–49, 64–65;
immemorial rights, 65, 132, 150, 176;
landmarks, 21, 30, 65, 81, 110, 141, 165,
167–71, 174–75, 178, 180, 184–85, 189–93,
195–200, 206, 210, 211; posesión, 131,
140, 165; primordial titles, 185, 190–91;
prior use, 49; water rights, 50, 51
Lissa, Francisco de, 145–47
Little Ice Age. See climate periods, Little
Ice Age
310 | Index
Livi Bacci, Massimo, 33. See also disease,
imperialism
Los Reyes, Teotihuacán (San Juan), 53
macehualli, 75, 80, 82–83, 88, 121, 208, 212.
See also pulque, macehualli/altepetl
maguey. See pulque
Malinalli Hill, 38
Malinche Volcano, 70, 122, 247
Malintzin (Malinche), 187f, 188f, 195–96,
199
Marr, J. S., 47, 260n19
Martínez de Viana, Juan de Dios, 135–36,
154–58
Martínez, Enrico, 17–18, 59–63, 204
Mazatepec, Tlaxcala, 75
McClung de Tapia, Emily, 110, 273n69
Melville, Elinor, 17
memory (landscape), 5, 21–22, 30, 34, 52,
57, 65, 106, 146, 155, 166–69, 173–74,
185, 189–94, 197, 199–200, 202, 210–11,
238, 262n14, 280n16; cognition and,
21, 34, 166–69, 178; Conquest, 168–69,
192–99; embodiment, 177–78, 185, 197,
200; forged titles, 30, 166, 167, 172–73,
185, 189–90, 192–93, 195–98, 200, 211,
212; imperialism, 168–69, 193, 198–99;
landmarks, 16, 30, 65, 167–70, 174–78,
184–85, 189, 191–93, 197–200, 210;
organic societies, 168, 199, 202, 211;
shifting baseline syndrome, 167; topon-
omy, 192–93
mercedes (royal grant), 45, 46f, 51, 117,
264n51
mestizaje, 191, 195
meteorology, historical, 9. See also Alzate
Ramírez, José
metepantli. See pulque, metepantli
Mexican Revolution, 5, 123
Mexico, Basin of, 22, 32, 34, 35m, 40
Mexico City, 5, 10, 12, 13, 17, 22, 24, 27, 32,
36, 43, 45, 47, 49, 53, 57–63, 64, 67, 91,
93, 98, 100, 105, 122–25, 135, 137, 138,
146, 152, 158, 160, 161, 169, 171, 174, 177,
178, 180, 214, 216, 219, 222, 229, 233–34,
238–42, 259n43
meyotoc. See pulque, meyotoc
Mezquital Valley, 17, 74
Michoacán (region), 27, 32
mills, water. See hydraulic infrastructure,
water-driven grist mills
mining, markets, 16, 75, 87, 180
Miztlan, Tlaxcala, 112
mules. See draught animals
muleteers. See roads
Muñoz Camargo, Diego, 32, 70, 71, 72, 73,
75, 76, 81, 95, 116
Muñoz de Cote, Alejandro, 165, 170–74,
176–77, 185, 191. See also Hacienda de
Cuamancingo
Nacianceno, Gregorio, 132–33
Najara y Becerra, Diego, 195–96
Nativitas, Tlaxcala, 71, 73, 113, 148
natural history, natural history. See ecologi-
cal knowledge, science
nature/humans, dualism, 4, 13; interactive
dynamism, 4, 13–16. See also social
ecology
Nava Altamirano, Ana de, 115–16, 193
Nieto de Almizón, Francisco, 140, 170
nopal (Opuntus ficus-indica), 83, 84, 106,
114, 189, 265n74
Oaxaca (region), 10, 24, 27, 32, 83, 86–87, 98,
122, 256n13, 265n84
Ocotitlan, Tlaxcala, 112
Octavian Peace. See climate periods, Pax
Romana
Old World agriculture. See Columbian
Exchange
Ollacayocan (San Pablo), Tlaxcala, 121, 134
Ortega, Miguel de, 115, 133
Otomí, 195, 197–99
Otumba, Teotihuacán Valley, 22, 35
Ouweneel, Arij, drought and, 10

oxen. See draught animals
Oztoticpac (San Bartolomé), 192
Palafox Rivera, Juan, 172, 191
paleoclimatology, 7, 28. See also climate
reconstructions
Paredes, Pedro Martín de, 119–21, 126
Patlachique (mountain range), 35, 40, 50,
247
peasants. See macehualli; pulque,
macehualli/altepetl
Peres de Oropeza, Antonio, 115, 140, 165,
172, 175–76, 178, 179
pests, grasshoppers (chapulines), 32;
rodents, 32; worms, 32
Philippines, 76, 77
pigs, 16, 67, 73, 74, 75; Asian type, 76–77, 87,
88; European type, 76–77; wetlands and,
75–76. See also Columbian Exchange
pilli. See elite, indigenous; pulque, indige-
nous elite
pluvial, 7, 9, 25; Aztec, 32–33, 64; Colonial
Mexican, 11–13, 15–16, 20, 22, 27m, 28–
29, 31–34, 38, 44–67, 70–73, 75, 76, 85–87,
92, 128, 135, 137, 141, 163, 204, 207
Portal, Francisco Theodoro de, 139
Presa del Rey. See hydraulic infrastructure,
Acolman dam
Puebla de los Ángeles, City of, 22, 32, 68,
98, 99, 100, 101–3, 105, 106, 110, 111,
112, 114, 122, 126, 146, 148, 234, 267n50;
region of, 32, 107, 214
Puerto Vallarta (port), 27
pulque, 16, 20–21, 29, 49, 67, 89–95,
102–106, 123–28, 134, 194–96, 207–9,
212, 265n1, 267n42, 267n46, 267n50;
agroecology and, 92–97, 102–23; builders
of metepantli and, 112, 114; consumption
of, 89, 90–92, 94, 95, 98, 100–5, 134, 208;
effects on soil (see sediment transport,
pulque and); indigenous elite, 105, 116–
21, 128; inebriation, 85, 91, 107, 124–25,
158; macehualli/altepetl, 92, 95, 97, 99,
Index | 311
106–16, 125, 127; maguey species for, 24,
26m, 89, 90f, 91, 93–95, 194–96, 265n2,
266n21; marketing of, 16, 17, 19–20, 26m,
91, 92, 95–101, 101m; metepantli and, 20,
29, 67, 92, 95, 96, 97, 100, 107, 108–9f,
110–14, 116, 117, 119–20, 121, 123, 125,
126, 127, 128–30, 140, 176, 208, 212, 249,
258n40; meyotoc and, 96; nationalism
and, 92; pre-Conquest, 82, 93–94, 95, 97,
110, 207–8; Spanish elite and, 121–23,
161; women and, 92, 94, 97–98
Ramírez, Pascual, 117, 133–34, 212, 270n5
reforestation. See vegetation regrowth
relaciones geográficas, 21, 53–54, 55f
Río de San Juan. See Teotihuacán Valley,
hydrology of
roads (caminos), 5, 16, 39, 49, 52, 55, 71, 99,
100, 111, 117, 141, 143, 146, 148, 170, 178–
84, 189, 197, 199, 200, 265n74
Roble, Antonio de, 126
Rodríguez Bayon, Joseph, 147
Rojas Rabiela, Teresa, 81, 110
Ruddiman thesis, 14
ruined landscape, Mexico, 3, 18
San Felipe, Tlaxcala, 113
San Miguel, Andrés de, 57–59, 60, 61, 62, 63,
204, 252, 260n28
Sanders, William, 109, 110, 273n63, 273n69
Santa Catarina, Teotihuacán Valley, 54, 149,
155
Santa Cruz, Tlaxcala, 100
science, nature. See ecological knowledge,
science
sediment transport, 16, 28, 29, 129, 135,
139–45, 246–53; demographic collapse
and, 20, 33, 77–79, 81–82, 123, 128–30,
140, 179–80, 209; deposition, 3–8, 11, 16,
18, 20–21, 29–30, 38, 40–41, 43–44, 59–
62, 73, 77–78, 110, 130, 134–35, 139–45,
148–52, 154, 161–63, 176, 201–6, 209–10,
246–53; erosion, 7, 8f, 16, 17–18, 20–21,
312 | Index
sediment transport (continued )
25, 29, 33, 36, 59–63, 70, 77–79, 81–82,
87, 96, 107, 109f, 120–21, 123, 127–30,
134–35, 139, 145, 175–79, 182, 189, 201–3,
205–6, 208–9, 212, 246–53, 279n9; over-
grazing, 21, 73–75, 123; pulque and, 92,
96, 107, 109, 120–21, 123, 127–30, 134–35,
208–9, 211–12
sedimentation. See sediment transport
Serna, Hernando de, 45, 48–49
sheep, 16, 17, 18, 29, 67, 73–75, 88, 97, 98, 100,
107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 121, 122, 175,
207, 262n19, 262n32, . See also Colum-
bian Exchange
slopewash. See sediment transport
snow. See climate, cold
social ecology (socioecological systems),
14–16, 20–21, 24, 28–30, 32–34, 49, 66,
88, 203, 208, 217, 234, 237–38, 257n21;
energetics, 14, 20, 84, 92–93, 96–100,
112, 120, 128–29, 160, 177, 206–9; shared
traits in central settlement zone, 24–25
soil degradation. See sediment transport
soil nutrients and fertility, 81–82, 84, 93–94
springs, water, 28, 43, 135; El Tular, 40, 149;
Teotihuacán, 37–39, 39m, 40, 43, 44, 54;
Tlaxcala, 69. See also hydrology, methods
of historical reconstruction
Swan, Susan, drought and, 10
taxation, 67, 91, 95, 98–99, 101–2, 105–6,
111, 122, 125, 134, 138, 146, 210, 211, 212,
238, 266n30, 267n46, 267n49, 267n50,
271n18
Tecomallocan (San Pedro), Tlaxcala, 71
Tecopilco (San Lucas), Tlaxcala, 115–16, 121,
127, 131, 133, 173, 186f, 195–99, 209
Tecozahuatlan, Tlaxcala, 119–20, 134
Tenochtitlan. See Mexico City
Teoatlauco, Tlaxcala, 75
Teotihuacán (San Juan), Franciscan church
and monastery, 44, 50, 51; Teotihuacán
Valley, 35, 49–53
Teotihuacán Valley, hydrology of, 22, 34–
44m, 51, 53–54, 139, 143–45, 148–52, 153
(fig.), 154–155, 156–157f, 158–162, 164,
203, 205, 209–10, 212; pulque, 92–93;
vegetation of, 36
Teotihuacán, classical era archaeological
site, 36, 37f, 40, 182
tepetlatl (tepetate), 62, 73, 120, 121, 123, 189,
209, 248–51, 279n9
Tepexpan (Santa María Magdalena), Teoti-
huacán Valley, 35, 45, 46f, 48, 49, 54, 152,
153f, 154, 155, 163, 251
Tequiciztlan, Teotihuacán Valley, 35, 45, 46f,
47, 49, 54
Tetlan, Tlaxcala, 112
Tetlanocan (San Francisco), Tlaxcala, 111, 117
teuctli. See elite, indigenous; pulque, indig-
enous elite
Texopan, Tlaxcala, 115–16, 133–34, 188f, 195,
196, 209
tierras baldías, 45
Tizatlan, Tlaxcala, 81–82, 264n65
tlalmacehualli, 117
Tlalmilolpan, Tlaxcala, 181, 184
Tlatlauhquitepec (San Simön), Tlaxcala,
117, 131, 133, 197, 269n90
Tlaxcala City, 68, 69 (map). See also flood-
ing, Tlaxcala City
Tlaxcala, province of, 22, 28, 48, 67, 92;
indigenous government, 67; privileges,
67, 105–6, 117, 194, 234. See also Zahua-
pan River
Tlaxco (San Agustín), Tlaxcala, 8 (fig.), 71,
100, 113, 134, 141, 180, 261n10, 269n94
Tochpan (San Baltasar), Tlaxcala, 111, 117,
121, 133, 134, 209
Toluca City, 32
Torquemada, Juan de, 17–18, 62–63
Tzompantzinco, San Salvador, Tlaxcala,
110, 112
ungulate irruptions. See sheep
Uriarte, Juan, 172

vegetation, regrowth, 18, 28, 32, 79–82
Vera Cruz (port), 27, 49, 178, 180
Villavicencio, Nuño Núñez de (com-
missioner of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition), 30, 165–75, 178–85, 190, 198,
202, 211
volcanism, Laki (Iceland), 7, 9; Tambora
(Indonesia), 9, 160–61
water. See climate, precipitation; Cuauh-
titlan River; hydraulic infrastructure;
hydrology; pluvial; Río de San Juan; riv-
ers; springs; wetlands; Zahuapan River
wetlands, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 16, 21, 25, 28, 29, 44–
47, 58–59, 62, 64, 70, 73, 135; Amomoloc
(Tlaxcala), 112; Atlancatepec (Tlaxcala),
71, 72, 73, 76; Atlantepetzinco, 72; fauna
and flora of, 16, 44, 47, 49, 76, 150,
280n16; hydrology of, 5–6; Nativitas
(Tlaxcala), 71, 73, 262n16; salitre (salt-
peter munitions factory), 50, 51; salts,
47, 49, 160, 248; San Juan Teotihuacán,
37–38, 39 (map), 40, 44, 51–52; Santa
Clara Atzompan (Tlaxcala), 71, 72;
Teotihuacán Valley (general—non-
specified), 70; Tetzcoco Lake, 40, 44, 45,
46f, 47, 54, 202, 259n12; Zahuapan River
basin (general—non-specified), 70, 73,
75–77, 87, 135
Index | 313
wheat, 16, 24, 96, 114, 117, 143, 149, 150, 151,
269n82
wool, 16, 74, 75. See sheep
worms, edible. See izcahuihtli
Xaloztoc (San Cosme), Tlaxcala, 111, 112,
126
Xaltocan (San Martín), Tlaxcala, 115, 131,
173, 197, 212
Xipetzinco (San Simeón), Tlaxcala, 173, 180,
186f, 189, 195, 197–99, 209
Xometla (San Miguel), Teotihuacán Valley,
44, 93, 149–51
Yauhquemecan (San Dionisio), Tlaxcala,
110, 111, 119, 121, 127, 209
Zacatelco (San Francisco), Tlaxcala, 188f,
189, 195
Zahuapan River, 5, 7, 22, 67–70, 71–73, 75,
92, 100, 104, 110, 119, 131, 134, 135–36,
139–48, 162–63, 165, 169–70, 174–179,
186f, 188f, 209–11, 212; Arroyo de
Tliliuhquitepec, 165, 181; basin of, 22,
32, 35m, 67, 68m, 69m, 70, 112, 121, 122,
135–39, 142–44, 203–6. See also flooding,
Tlaxcala City; hydrology, methods of
historical reconstruction
Zavala, José de, 121, 126, 134, 173
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bradley Skopyk is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Bing-

hamton University. His dissertation won prizes from the American Society of
Environmental History and the Canadian Association of Latin American and
Caribbean Studies.