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“The Forests Cannot Be Commons”

Spanish Law, Environmental Change, and New Spain's Council on Forests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Christopher Woolley
Christopher Woolley*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at PembrokePembroke, North Carolinachristopher.woolley@uncp.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the sylvan political ecology of late colonial New Spain and the colonial government's attempt to address deforestation through the Council on Forests, the first body in the kingdom's history dedicated to the conservation of natural resources. Drawing primarily from the corpus of documents produced by and remitted to the council, this article gives a trans-regional perspective on colonial forest use and argues that the Spanish crown's usurpation of indigenous communities’ eminent domain over forests was the first step in a process that over centuries progressively severed the cultural ties that bound communities and forests by converting common-pool resources into open-access commons. The catastrophic mortality of the Spanish invasion was the second step, which rendered conservation measures seemingly unnecessary among both woodcutters and officials. But it was during the eighteenth century that older Habsburg notions of protectionism intersected with economic and political changes associated with Bourbon rule to further compel this cultural severance. While previous works have studied the ecological impacts of mining, ranching, and flood control, this article moves beyond the study of a single industry to suggest some of the larger ecological consequences of Spanish colonialism.

Keywords

New Spainforest historyMexicodeforestation
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 41 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2020

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the Fulbright-García Robles program, the Social Science Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the University of Florida for the generous support that made possible the archival investigation upon which this study is based. Additionally, thanks go out to the staff at the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City for their dedicated assistance over many months, as well as to the many scholars, too many to list here, who through conversation and critique have helped me along the way. Added to this list must be my colleagues in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, who have been like a second family to me. Penultimately, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their thoughtful and incisive comments, and finally, my partner Sarah deserves special recognition for her steadfast support of my career.

References

1. José Villamil y Primo, Report on the state of the forests, August 20, 1799, Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter AGN], Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fols. 590-590v.

2. Felipe Diaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fols. 430-430v.

3. The literature is too vast to reproduce fully here, but for some key works on domesticated animals, see Melville, Elinor, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butzer, Karl, “Cattle and Sheep from Old to New Spain: Historical Antecedents,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78:1 (1988): 29–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butzer, Karl W. and Butzer, Elisabeth, “Transfer of the Mediterranean Livestock Economy to New Spain: Adaptation and Ecological Consequences,” Global Land Use Change: A Perspective from the Columbian Encounter, Turner, B. L., ed. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1995), 151–193Google Scholar; and Butzer, Karl W. and K.Butzer, Elisabeth, “The ‘Natural’ Vegetation of the Mexican Bajío: Archival Documentation of a 16th-Century Savanna Environment,” Quaternary International 43 (1997): 161–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the environmental impacts of mining, see Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken and Schecter, David, “The Environmental Dynamics of a Colonial Fuel-Rush: Silver Mining and Deforestation in New Spain, 1522–1810,” Environmental History 15:1 (2010): 94–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richards, John F., The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 366–370Google Scholar; Elizabeth Dore, “Environment and Society: Long-Term Trends in Latin American Mining,” Environment and History 6:1 (February 2000): 1–29; and West, Robert, The Mining Community of Northern New Spain: The Parral Mining District (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949)Google Scholar. On water and flood controls, see Candiani, Vera S., Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; John F. López, “The Hydrographic City: Mapping Mexico City's Urban Form in Relation to Its Aquatic Condition, 1521–1700” (PhD diss.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014); Endfield, Georgina and O'Hara, Sarah, “Conflicts over Water in ‘The Little Drought Age’ in Central Mexico,” Environment and History 3:3 (October 1997): 255–273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoberman, Louisa, “Bureaucracy and Disaster: Mexico City and the Flood of 1629,” Journal of Latin American Studies 6:2 (November 1974): 211–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Richard Boyer, “Mexico City and the Great Flood: Aspects of Life and Society, 1629–1635” (PhD diss.: University of Connecticut, 1973). On disease, see Cook, Noble David, Born to Die: Disease in New World Conquests, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Crosby, Alfred, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1972)Google Scholar.

4. An important exception is geographer Andrew Sluyter, who has developed a model he calls the “colonial triangle,” based primarily on his work on the Veracruz lowlands, to move us toward a general theory of landscape change. Colonialism and Landscape: Postcolonial Theory and Applications (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002).

5. Some works noting possible afforestation during the colonial era are Emily Wakild, “A Panorama of Parks: Deep Nature, Depopulation, and the Cadence of Conserving Nature,” in A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America, John Soluri, Claudia Leal, and José Augusto Pádua, eds. (New York: Berghahn Book, 2018), 249; and Georgina Endfield and Sarah O'Hara, “Degradation, Drought, and Dissent: An Environmental History of Colonial Michoacán, West Central Mexico, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89:3 (1999): 413.

6. Bernardo García Martínez was among the first to suggest this in “Jurisdicción y propiedad: una distinción fundamental en la historia de los pueblos de indios del México colonial,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 53 (December 1992): 49. Jonathan Amith, in his monumental spatial history of Guerrero, agrees. The Möbius Strip: A Spatial History of Colonial Society in Guerrero, Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 86.

7. Antonio de Mendoza, Nombramiento de Alguacil de Montes, June 26, 1542, AGN, Mercedes, vol. 1, exp. 185, fols. 77v-78.

8. Actas de cabildo de la Ciudad de México, vol. 3, 65, December 12, 1533.

9. In his comparative history of the commons in the America, Allan Greer has shown that litigation over land in the Americas did not balance on a private/commons scale, but instead involved significant negotiations between competing ideas of ownership and property rights that often permitted the endurance of certain indigenous rights. Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

10. On Spain's communitarian tradition, see David Vassberg, Land and Society in Golden Age Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), esp. chapt. 1.

11. Helen Nader has shown that all lands in Castile fell within the boundaries of municipalities, and that towns largely managed their own affairs without the intervention of the monarchy, including the appointment of local judges, sheriffs, and other local officials, among them forest guards. Citizens (vecinos) of a given town paid taxes and participated in civic life, and in return were allowed to make use of local pastures, arable lands, and forests. Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). See also the discussion in David Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile: Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14–20; and Vassberg, Land and Society, esp. chapt. 2.

12. Álvaro Aragón Ruano, “Una longeva técnica forestal: los trasmochos o desmochos guiados en Guipúzcoa durante la Edad Moderna,” Espacio-Tiempo y Forma 4:22 (2009): 100–103. Coppicing involves cutting a tree near the ground to encourage regrowth, while pollarding involves moving the cut higher up the trunk of the tree to prevent grazing animals from consuming the regrowth, which was increasingly important in Spain as stock-raising expanded from the late fourteenth century. For an excellent technical discussion of these methodologies in England, see Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetation and Uses in England (Colvend, Kirkcudbrightshire: Castlepoint Press, 2003).

13. On state forestry in Spain, see John T. Wing, Roots of Empire: Forests and State Power in Early Modern Spain, c. 1500–1750 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015).

14. Aragón Ruano, “Una longeva técnica forestal,” 77–78; and “Guided Pollards and the Basque Woodlands During the Early Modern Age,” in Rotherham, Cultural Severance and the Environment, 150–151.

15. Not all Mesoamericans were agriculturalists, but south of the more arid zones of the north agriculture was the predominant subsistence strategy.

16. Charles M. Peters, “Precolumbian Silviculture and Indigenous Management of Neotropical Forests,” in Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformations in the Precolumbian Americas, David L. Lentz, ed. (Columbia University Press, 2000), 208–209. Both coppicing and pollarding are depicted in the sixteenth-century Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2. David Carrasco and Scott Sessions, Cave, City, and Eagle's Nest: An Interpretive Journey through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 273.

17. Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), xxvi–xxix.

18. Diego Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España y Islas de Tierra Firme, vol. 1, José Ramírez, ed. (Mexico City: J. M. Andrade and F. Escolante, 1867), 41.

19. James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 101.

20. Ana Isabel Moreno Calles et al., eds., Etnoagroforestería en México (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2016), 13; David Barton Bray, Leticia Merino-Pérez, and Deborah Barry, eds., The Community Forests of Mexico: Managing for Sustainable Landscapes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009).

21. Brian Owensby, Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 34; Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Richard L. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 1500–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), x; Colin MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 9–10. Per MacLachlan: “The monarch's position as supreme arbitrator between the classes depended on the acceptance of the king's right to impose his will. In effect the crown's political power rested on its ability to enforce royal jurisdiction.” Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century Mexico, 21.

22. Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture.

23. On the history of the commons, see Derek Wall, The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 7–8. On the English American uses, see 9, and 24–25. Relevant laws can be found in the Recopilación of 1681, vol. 2, book 4, title 17,

24. For just a few examples from sixteenth-century registers, see Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, Orden a su señoría, March 16, 1583, AGN, Indios, vol. 2, exp. 633; Luis de Velasco, Licencia concedido a los Indios del pueblo de Tenango, September 19, 1591, AGN, Indios, vol. 3, exp. 990; Luis de Velasco, Licencia para que los naturales de Pahuatlan, por esta vez, puedan cortar, AGN, Indios, vol.5, exp 231; Luis de Velasco, Se concede licencia a la cofradía de Transito, October 19, 1591, AGN, Indios, vol. 6, part 2, exp. 90; Francisco Ceinos and the oidores of the Audiencia de México, Licencia para Jorge Cerón Carvajal, November 5, 1565, AGN, Mercedes, vol.8, fol. 179; Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, Licencia a doña Catalina Gutiérrez para que pueda cortar la leña que necesitare de los montes, AGN, General de Parte, vol. 2, exp. 1363, fols. 286-286v.

25. The time and scale of recovery depended significantly on location, but 1650 is generally accepted as the demographic nadir of New Spain's indigenous population. Even if Cook and Borah's pre-Hispanic number of 25,200,000 for central Mexico alone is high, a pre-contact population well into the millions is widely accepted; that population was reduced by as much as 90 percent by the middle of the seventeenth century. See Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963). By contrast, the total population for all of New Spain was around 6,122,000 in 1814. After a century and a half of recovery, this number still amounted to probably less than half the population in 1519. For a summary of the debates and issues surrounding the pre-Hispanic population, see Lourdes Márquez Morfín and Rebecca Storey, “Population History in Precolumbian and Colonial Times,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, Deborah L. Nichols and Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

26. There is suggestive research connecting the reduced burning of neotropical forests following the European invasion with afforestation, increased carbon sequestration, and climate change. R. J. Nevle, D. K. Bird, W. F. Ruddiman, et al., “Neotropical human-landscape interactions, fire, and atmospheric CO2 during European conquest,” Holocene 21:5 (2011): 853–864; Robert A. Dull, Richard J. Nevle, William I. Woods, et al., “The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100:4 (2010): 755–771. See also the discussion in Emily Wakild, “A Panorama of Parks,” 249.

27. Brian Madigan, “Law, Society, and Justice in Colonial Mexico City: Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts Compared, 1730–1800” (PhD diss.: University of California, Berkeley, 2013), 6. This key point was previously expressed by Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 3–5; and Charles Cutter, “The Administration of Law in Colonial New Mexico,” Journal of the Early Republic 18:1 (1998): 102.

28. While some scholars have painted the Bourbon reforms in terms of inconsistencies and failures, they were in fact built around a fairly coherent set of objectives, even if policymakers disagreed over the means to achieve them. Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire 1759–1808 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Colin MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988); Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

29. Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 64–66.

30. Gabriel Paquette discusses the importance of local constraints on ideology in Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 115–116.

31. This was often cited in the years after this date. For instance, the auto was cited to resolve litigation brought by the Conde de San Bartolomé de Xala, owner of the Hacienda de Zavaleta, against several towns in the Chalco region that had been cutting wood from the property. Expediente promovido por el Conde de Xala, November 24, 1784, AGN, Tierras, vol. 1666, exp. 3, fol. 20v.

32. See Michael Perri, “‘Ruined and Lost’: Spanish Destruction of the Pearl Coast in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Environment and History 15 (2009): 129–161. While Perri does not distinguish between managed and unmanaged commons, his conclusions about the eventual destruction of the Cubagua pearl beds hold. But as Molly Warsh shows, the Spaniards who exploited these pearl beds were deeply imbued with notions of communitarianism, and they attempted to conserve the oyster beds through rotation, the rejection of potentially harmful technologies, and the defense of local practice. See Warsh, “A Political Ecology in the Early Spanish Caribbean,” William and Mary Quarterly 71:4 (October 2014): 517–548; and Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 13:162 (December 1968): 1243–1248.

33. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

34. The full list includes eight specific criteria: 1) That boundaries between those who can and those who cannot withdraw resources from a particular pool be clearly defined; 2) that rules about how, when, and in what quantity resources can be extracted be tailored to local needs, and that the required labor, materials, and money be provisioned for this; 3) that the rules of conservation be agreed on by the commoners; 4) that effective monitoring take place; 5) that graduated sanctions be established for violators either by the commoners themselves or an accountable official; 6) that conflict resolution be swift and affordable; 7) that higher authorities recognize the rights of appropriators to set their own rules; and 8) that multiple layers of nested enterprises be established to coordinate different systems with different needs at the regional and state level. Ostrom, Governing the Commons, 91–102.

35. Ian D. Rotherham, ed., Cultural Severance and the Environment: The Ending of Traditional and Customary Practice on Commons and Landscapes Managed in Common (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 19.

36. Juan de Bulnés Villar to the fiscal de Real Hacienda Defensor de temporalidades, May 9, 1792, AGN, Tierras, vol. 3557, exp. 17, fols. 2-5v.

37. Ramón de Posada y Soto to the Conde de Revillagigedo, July 16, 1793, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fols. 317-317v.

38. Ramón de Posada y Soto to the Conde de Revillagigedo, July 16, 1793, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fols. 317-317v.

39. Felipe III in 1614 ordered that only laws designed specifically for the Indies would apply there.

40. Ramón de Posada y Soto to the Conde de Revillagigedo, July 16, 1793, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fols. 317v-318.

41. Conde de Revillagigedo, Por las diligencias practicadas en virtud de superior orden de 14 de diciembre, July 17, 1793, AGN, Tierras, vol. 3557, exp. 17, fol. 36.

42. A copy of this 1748 code, as reprinted in 1794, appears in AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 24, fols. 485-505v.

43. Felipe Diaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fols. 431-431v. The report mentions wood traveling to Guanajuato from Tlazazalca, which is about 90 miles distant. For an excellent treatment of Guanajuato's mining industry during the eighteenth century, see David Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763–1810 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 129–130, 132–137, 261.

44. Juan Antonio de Riaño to the Conde de Revillagigedo, Report on the state of the forests, December 18, 1795, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 22, fol. 469. Studnicki-Gizbert and Schecter note that the human impact on the environment lessened during the first two centuries of Spanish rule, and that the greatest destruction of forests near mining centers occurred during the eighteenth century. “The Environmental Dynamics of a Colonial Fuel-Rush,” 97.

45. Gervasio Antonio de Irizar and Francisco de Septién y Arce to the Real Tribunal de Minería, October 30, 1795, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 21, fols. 438-441v. For a brief history of the Diputación de Minería of Guanajuato in the late eighteenth century, see Brading, Miners and Merchants, esp. chapt. 10 (“The Deputation”), 329–339. Brading shows that the deputation operated through the election of a seven-man committee, chosen by a vote of all registered miners, who selected the deputies of the junta. It was these deputies, and not the committee itself, who were most important in setting policies. In Brading's words, the deputation was “in many ways … the most powerful institution in Guanajuato.”

46. Gervasio Antonio de Irizar and Francisco de Septién y Arce to the Real Tribunal de Minería, October 30, 1795, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 21, fol. 438. Ejidos in Spain were common uncultivated lands located adjacent to towns and generally served a variety of purposes including the keeping of stray animals. In New Spain, the term denoted communal lands owned and worked collectively by towns. After independence and especially following the Mexican Revolution, ejidos became associated specifically with communal indigenous landholdings. Dehesas, which could be commons or private property, were pastures that were often partly forested and partly cultivated. See Vassberg, Land and Society, 26–32.

47. Gervasio Antonio de Irizar and Francisco de Septién y Arce to the Real Tribunal de Minería, October 30, 1795, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 21, 438v.

48. Fausto de Elhuyar, Josef Manuel Valcárcel, and Josef Luis de Fagoaga to Marqués de Branciforte, December 7, 1795, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 21, fols. 442–445.

49. While the impact of sheep on land degradation in the sixteenth century is well known to scholars of colonial Mexico, goats were most often singled out for this in the eighteenth century because they consume more shrubs and plants across a wider range of taxa, and because modern evidence supports the connection between goats and soil desertification. Committee on the Economic Development and Current Status of the Sheep Industry in the United States, Changes in the Sheep Industry in the United States: Making the Transition from Tradition (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008), 61; Mario Manzano and José Návar demonstrate a significant association between the overgrazing of goats and the decrease in leaf cover and a general reduction in shrubs and wood plants in favor of herbs and grasses in the modern state of Tamaulipas. “Process of desertification by goats overgrazing in the Tamaulipan thornscrub (matorral) in north-eastern Mexico,” Journal of Arid Environments 44 (2002): 1–17.

50. Acuerdo of the intendant and ayuntamiento of of Guanajuato, March 8, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 21, fol. 454v.

51. Ramón María Serrera Contreras, Guadalajara ganadera: estudio regional novohispano, 1760–1805 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1977), 310–311. The document mentioning the three haciendas owned by the condesa, Deceosdilla (?), Rincón, and Cabras (“Goats”), is in AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp 19, fol. 396.

52. The stipulation about shade for animals is found in the Novísima Recopilación, Book 7, title 24, law II, which was issued by Carlos V in 1537. The phrase from the condesa's complaint is found in AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol.31, exp 19, fols. 389-89v.

53. Petition on behalf of the Condesa de San Mateo Valparaíso, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol.31, exp 19, fols. 390v-391.

54. Petition on behalf of the Condesa de San Mateo Valparaíso, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol.31, exp 19, fols. fol. 393.

55. Diligencias practicadas por el justicia de Xilotepeque, sobre si está comprehendido en los bienes de comunidad el monte de dho pueblo. 1782. AGN, Tierras, vol. 2824, exp. 1, fol. 551v.

56. El conde de San Mateo Valparaíso y el convento y hospital de Betlemitas, contra los leñadores y carboneros de las sierra de Santa Fe, 1757-1791, AGN, Tierras, vol. 800, exp. 1.

57. Petition on behalf of the Condesa de San Mateo Valparaíso, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp 19, fol. 398.

58. Petition on behalf of the Condesa de San Mateo Valparaíso, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp 19, fol. 398. While the verb emboscar today generally means to prepare for an ambush, as one might do in the forests alongside a road, in the eighteenth century the word primarily meant to disappear into the forests. See entry in Real Academía Española's 1732 dictionary, vol. 3, 392.

59. Brading, Miners and Merchants, 46–47.

60. Petition on behalf of the Condesa de San Mateo Valparaíso, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp 19, fol. 398v.

61. Real Acuerdo de México, February 25, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 401.

62. Humboldt, Alexander von, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. 3 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814), 479Google Scholar. In a 1799 letter to the viceroy, Rodríguez de Velasco expresses his gratitude for the appointment and accepts the post. Antonio Rodríguez de Velasco to the Duque de Santa, August 12, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol.31, exp 29, fols. 573-574.

63. The posts were juez de cañerías and de aguas.

64. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Ordenanza que para los cortes de madera, y leña, y conservación de montes, ha formado el Intendente de Valladolid don Felipe Díaz de Ortega, February 5, 1800, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fols. 621-621v. The 1791 Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana mentions that “polilla” could be used to refer to something that “destroys a thing imperceptibly,” that is, gradually or subtly, as a moth does to clothing.

65. Most reports are from the level of the subdelegación. Some, like Tlaxcala's, which was autonomous from the Intendancy of Puebla, are not.

66. María del Carmen León García, La distinción alimentaria de Toluca: el delicioso valle y los tiempos de escasez, 1750–1800 (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2002), 71–80. Peter Gerhard shows a bottoming out of the indigenous population between the 1630s and 1740s, followed by a steep recovery after about 1750. A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, revised ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 331.

67. Fausto Marcial de Urrutia, Report on the state of the forests, August 14, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 577.

68. Manuel Antonio de Falla Oruña, Report on the state of the forests, August 23, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 599. On the evolution of the district, see Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, 3rd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 269–270. Temascaltepec was also known for its silver mines, which by the middle of the eighteenth century were in decline as mercury was diverted to the more productive mines at Guanajuato.

69. Manuel Antonio de Falla Oruña, Report on the state of the forests, August 23, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 413v.

70. Antonio de Elías Saenz, Report on the state of the forests, December 8, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 618. Literally, “una yugada” refers to the extent of land that could be plowed by a yoke of oxen in a day. Los naturales del pueblo de Santiago Temoaya, sobre posesión de tierras pertenecientes a su comunidad, November 24, 1721, AGN, Tierras, vol. 1600, exp. 17, fols. 1-1v.

71. José Villamil y Primo, Report on the state of the forests, August 20, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fols. 590-590v.

72. This includes the reports from the subdelegaciones of Tacuba, Coyoacan, Tetepango, Chalco, and Cuernavaca.

73. Francisco Javier Ramírez, Report on the state of the forests, August 9, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 412.

74. Manuel Antonio Fernández Flores, Report on the state of the forests, August 19, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 594.

75. Manuel de Flon, Report on the state of the forests, January 12, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 25, fols. 543-549. The other towns are Atlixco, Tochimilco, Izúcar, San Juan de los Llanos, Tehuacan, Tepeji, Tecali, Huachinango, Hueyacocotla, Tetela de Tonatla, Chiautla, Ihualpan, Tlapan, Zacatlan, Acatlan, Tesiutlan, Chietla, Cholula, and Huejotzingo. There is a separate report for Tlaxcala.

76. Francisco de Lissa, Report on the state of the forests, September 3, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fols. 607-607v.

77. Manuel de Flon, Report on the state of the forests, January 12, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 25, fols. 548-548v.

78. Manuel de Flon, Report on the state of the forests, January 12, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 25, fols. 544v-545.

79. Francisco Flores, Report on the state of the forests, April 23, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 24, fols. 513-513v.

80. Francisco Flores, Report on the state of the forests, April 23, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 24, fol. 513.

81. The railroad metaphor is James Lockhart's. See “Trunk Lines and Feeder Lines: The Spanish Reaction to American Resources,” in Of Things of the Indies: Essays Old and New in Early Latin American History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 141-42.

82. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fols. 432, 435. Though the Purépecha language predominated in the region, Jiquilpan (Xiquilpa) was settled by Nahuas and speakers of a language referred to as Sayulteca, which Gerhard believed was possibly a Nahuatl dialect. A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, 386–387.

83. Pedro Nicolás Cadrecha, Report on the state of the forest, September 18, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 422. On the economic development of Guerrero, see Jonathan Amith, The Möbius Strip.

84. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fols. 431v, 427-27v. The report from Zacatula/Tecpan indicates “intact” forests and a complete lack of regulation by local officials. On the population of Colima, see Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain, 82.

85. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fol. 430v.

86. Manuel de Flon, Report on the state of the forests, January 12, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 25, fols. 430-430v.

87. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fols. 430-434.

88. The belief that forests’ vascular respiration promoted humidity was common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was a misunderstanding of the ways in which deforestation could lead to erosion and desertification, which gave the appearance of increased aridity. For a discussion of this belief in the nineteenth century, see Boyer, Christopher R., Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 53–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Alejandro Gabriel de la Pascua, Report on the state of the forests, October 9, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp 29, fols. 615v-616.

90. Both Eric Van Young and David Brading have confirmed that most haciendas generated only modest returns on investment. See Brading, Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 208–219. Van Young shows that profits in the Guadalajara region for agricultural estates varied depending on a variety of factors, but generally remained around 5 percent. Still, these estates were always susceptible to the vagaries of weather, and a profitable estate could easily go bankrupt during times of drought. Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006), 224–228.

91. Forests were valuable, but they were less valuable than agricultural and pastoral lands. For instance, in 1717 the alcalde mayor of Metepec, adjudicating a claim over lands between the towns of Calimaya and Tepemajalco in the southern portion of the valley, valued the agricultural lands held by the towns at twice that of forests. Reconocimento de las tierras pertenecientes a los naturales de los pueblos de Tepemajalco y San Pedro Calimaya, 1718-1719, AGN, Tierras, vol. 1441, exp. 2, fol. 246.

92. Martín de San Juan Barroeta, Report on the state of the forests, August 31, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 607v.

93. Josef de Peón Valdés, Report on the state of the forests, April 19, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 26, fol. 551. Acacia trees (tehuistle) grew near Chietla. Their heartwood was used to produce the wheels for the gunpowder factories.

94. Miguel Pacheco Solis to the Junta de Montes of the Intendencia de México, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 420. Other owners charged per animal admitted to the forest. On sixteenth-century concerns over Taxco, see Studnicki-Gizbert and Schecter, “The Environmental Dynamics of a Colonial Fuel-Rush,” 94–95.

95. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera has identified the elite use of private guards to defend private water rights in Puebla. To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources in Colonial Puebla (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).

96. Diligencias practicadas por el justicia de Xilotepeque, sobre si está comprehendido en los bienes de comunidad el monte de dho pueblo. 1782. AGN, Tierras, vol. 2824, exp. 1, fol. 14.

97. Diligencias practicadas por el justicia de Xilotepeque, sobre si está comprehendido en los bienes de comunidad el monte de dho pueblo. 1782. AGN, Tierras, vol. 2824, exp. 1, fol. 11.

98. Juan José Valverde, Report on the state of the forests, August 27, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fols. 418-18v.

99. Diligencias practicadas por el justicia de Xilotepeque, sobre si está comprehendido en los bienes de comunidad el monte de dho pueblo. 1782. AGN, Tierras, vol. 2824, exp. 1, s/f. The specific document is found seven pages from the back of the expediente.

100. José Manzanedo, Vista de ojos del pueblo de San Jerónimo Zacapexco, May 11, 1784, AGN, Tierras, vol. 2171, exp. 6, fol. 21v.

101. Although the royal government purchased wood from these groups, in the early years of project the same communities were used in repartimiento to provide wood for the drainage project. See a receipt from Enrico Martínez, dated January 26, 1630, found in AGN, Indiferente Virreinal, caja 3552, exp. 23.

102. Anastacio Benitez, Los naturales del pueblo de Chapa de Mota, sobre posesión de tierras. November 11, 1794. AGN, Tierras, vol. 1519, exp. 1, fol. 3.

103. Josef de Peón Valdés, Report on the state of the forests, April 19, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 26, fol. 552; Francisco Flores, April 23, 1794, Report on the state of the forests, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 24, fol. 513.

104. Antonio de Elías Saenz, Report on the state of the forests, December 8, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 619.

105. Martín de San Juan Barroeta, Report on the state of the forests, August 31, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fols. 606-606v. The region of Tenango del Valle included the towns of Atlapulco and Calimaya, and others that produced charcoal for the Royal Mint. See Felipe Castro Gutiérrez, “San Pedro Atlapulco y la Real Casa de Moneda: las vicisitudes de una empresa comunitaria,” Historia Mexicana 57:3 (January-March 2008): 674.

106. Manuel Antonio de Falla, Report on the state of the forests, August 23, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 599.

107. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fol. 431.

108. Miguel Pacheco Solis to the Junta de Montes of the Intendencia de México, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 420v.

109. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fol. 432.

110. Luis Urteaga, La tierra esquilmada: las ideas sobre la naturaleza en la cultura española del siglo XVIII (Barcelona: SERBAL-CSIC, 1987), 133.

111. Antonio de Elías Saenz, Report on the state of the forests, December 8, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 619.

112. Antonio de Elías Saenz, Report on the state of the forests, December 8, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 619v.

113. Manuel Antonio de Falla, Report on the state of the forests, August 23, 1799, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 29, fol. 600. On the rental of this small forest, see Ocurso del gobernador y naturales del pueblo de Almoloyan, sobre que les de licencia para hacer la donación de unos montes, 1790, AGN, Tierras, vol. 3058, exp. 2. Live oak was preferred because it was a native species of great economic versatility as a source of firewood, quality construction materials, and acorns for livestock fodder.

114. Miguel Pacheco Solis to the Junta de Montes of the Intendencia de México, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, fol. 419v.

115. Felipe Díaz de Ortega, Report on the state of the forests, February 18, 1794, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 20, fol. 431v. On the laws on replanting, see Novíssima Recopilación, Book 7, title 24, Law 14, especially part 19.

116. Miguel Pacheco Solis to the Junta de Montes of the Intendencia de México, N/D, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 19, 421-421v.

117. “This is the task, this is the hard work.” The quote is from The Aeneid, Book 6, Line 129.

118. Josef de Peón Valdés, Report on the state of the forests, April 19, 1796, AGN, Industria y Comercio, vol. 31, exp. 26, fol. 553.

119. Wing, Roots of Empire, 169–170. Asturias was among the most important sources of oak in Spain and received its own forest superintendent, along with Galicia and Cuatro Villas, in 1598. See Wing, Roots of Empire, 42, 54, 67, 137, 169–170. Peón is listed in the 1794 Padrón of Villaviciosa, near Oviedo. On Peón Valdés, see Contreras, José Enciso, “La biblioteca de don José de Peón Valdés, letrado ilustrado ovetense en la intendencia de Zacatecas,” in Leer en Tiempos de la Colonia: Imprenta, Biblioteca y Lectores en la Nueva España, ed. García, Idalia and Rueda, Pedro Ramírez (Mexico City: UNAM, 2010)Google Scholar.

120. Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 90–91.