The Great Death Background Information

The Great Death: Disease, Environment, Genetics and the Transformation of Mexican Colonial Society

June 4th, 2009
IOA Complex: Deutz Room

This is not meant to be a comprehensive set of readings on the issues we will discuss at the workshop. It reflects my selective reading, disciplinary biases, interests, as well as my ignorance of many areas of scholarship. A disclaimer: I am not necessarily endorsing the views presented by papers, but I think they may help us in having some common ground for our discussions.

I have also added some of the papers that have been suggested by participants in our recent exchanges. Do let me know of additional material to add or pass around.

Enjoy!

Alberto

Livi-Bacci, Massimo, ‘The Depopulation of Hispanic America after the Conquest’, Population and Development Review, 32 (2006): 199–232.

Abstract. During the century following Columbus's landfall, the population of America experienced a precipitous decline. A widely accepted explanation is the diffusion of Eurasian pathogens among the nonimmune Indians with the attendant catastrophic mortality. Contemporary observers—conquerors, administrators, missionaries, and chroniclers—while mentioning disease among factors in the decline, were convinced that the demographic collapse was due to a plurality of factors, such as serfdom and the confiscation of labor, excessive work, economic and social dislocation, wars and conflicts, and impediments to reproduction. Reconsideration of historical evidence supports the notion that new pathologies cannot satisfactorily explain the varying demographic impacts of Conquest. The Tainos of the Antilles were on the verge of extinction before the first smallpox epidemics struck the islands in 1518; the Guaranís of Paraguay were flourishing in spite of recurrent epidemics; in Peru civil wars were the major cause of decline during the first two decades of Spanish rule. A reappraisal of the Indian catastrophe must consider—together with the impact of the new viruses—the modes and circumstances of European domination.

McCaa, Robert. 1995. “Spanish and Nahuatl views on smallpox and demographic catastrophe in Mexico,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25(3): 397–431.

From the conclusion: “Consensus is emerging on the scale, causes, and consequences of the demographic disaster which struck sixteenth-century Mexico. There is agreement that a demographic catastrophe occurred and that epidemic disease was a dominant factor in initiating a die-off, beginning, in Mexico, with smallpox in 1520. But the role of disease cannot be understood without taking into account the harsh treatment (forced migration, enslavement, abusive labor demands, and exorbitant tribute payments) and ecological devastation that accompanied Spanish colonization. Killing associated with war and conquest was clearly a secondary factor, except in isolated cases, such as the deliberate destruction of Cholula or the leveling of Tenochtitlan. A fair-minded cross-examination of the broad range of primary sources for the epidemic of 1520 leaves little doubt that smallpox swept throughout the central Mexican basin, causing enormous mortality. The epidemic ranked with the deadliest di- sasters that native annals customarily recorded. Whether the fraction of smallpox deaths was one-tenth or one-half, we have no way of knowing, but from my reading of the texts discussed here, the true fraction must fall within these extremes, perhaps near the midpoint.

David Henige. Recent Work and Prospects in American Indian Contact Population History Compass 6/1 (2008): 183–206.

Abstract: The population levels of the newly discovered western hemisphere at contact have been an object of observers’ attention since the first voyage of Columbus. The numbers that have been developed over time reflected the environments in which they evolved – sometimes they were very high and sometimes very low. The latest of these cycles, dating from the 1940s and still in vogue, reflects the highest numbers, as well as the most elaborate methodology, ever applied to the problem. The results have been estimates that are many times most of those previously advanced, and the mechanism to explain this substantially greater decline has been epidemic European diseases, to which the American Indians had no resistance. The High Counters’ methodology involves taking relatively small numbers in the record and multiplying these many times over to reach new numbers that are ten to twenty times as large. A major component of this practice is to presume that the epidemics in question spread across the hemisphere even before Europeans could assess their impact. For this hypothesis, and for several other elements of the exercise, there is no evidence whatever. Despite this handicap, the new cadres of numbers have themselves spread far and wide and can be found in a variety of sources aimed at various audiences.

Linda A. Newson. Indian Population Patterns in Colonial Spanish America. Latin American Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1985), pp. 41-74.

From the introduction:

When half of the population died: the epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers of 1576 in Mexico Rodofo Acuna-Soto, David W. Stahle, Matthew D. Therrell, Richard D. Griffin, Malcolm K. Cleaveland FEMS Microbiology Letters 240 (2004) 1–5. Abstract. During the 16th century, Mexico suffered a demographic catastrophe with few parallels in world_s history. In 1519, the year of the arrival of the Spaniards, the population in Mexico was estimated to be between 15 and 30 million inhabitants. Eighty-one years later, in 1600, only two million remained. Epidemics (smallpox, measles, mumps), together with war, and famine have been considered to be the main causes of this enormous population loss. However, re-evaluation of historical data suggests that approximately 60–70% of the death toll was caused by a series of epidemics of hemorrhagic fevers of unknown origin. In order to estimate the impact of the 1576 epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers on the population we analyzed the historical record and data from the 1570 and 1580 censuses of 157 districts. The results identified several remarkable aspects of this epidemic: First, overall, the population loss for these 157 districts was 51.36%. Second, there was a clear ethnic preference of the disease, the Spanish population was minimally affected whereas native population had high mortality rate. Third, the outbreak originated in the valleys of central Mexico whence it evolved as an expansive wave. Fourth, a positive correlation between altitude and mortality in central Mexico was found. Fifth, a specific climatic sequence of events was associated with the initiation and dissemination of the hemorrhagic fevers. Although the last epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers in Mexico ended in 1815, many questions remain to be answered. Perhaps the most relevant ones are whether there is a possible reemergence of the hemorrhagic fevers and how vulnerable we are to the disease.

JOHN S MARR and JAMES B KIRACOFE Was the Huey Cocoliztli a Haemorrhagic Fever? Medical History, 2000, 44: 341-362.

From the introduction: “Following the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World, interest has intensified in the various consequences of the resulting inter-continental contact. Among the many things that Europeans brought to America were Old World diseases. As we will see, even the most recent and comprehensive scholarship in the field insists that the catastrophic demographic collapse of the native population of the continent was a result of imported diseases, including, most famously, smallpox, measles, and typhus. While there is surely compelling evidence that Old World epidemic disease devastated the native population, we believe that two of the most deadly outbreaks of the sixteenth century, 1545-48 and 1576-80, may have been of a disease of New World origin.”

ELSA MALVIDO. EL CAMINO DE LA PRIMERA PANDEMIA DE VIRUELA EN EL NUEVO MUNDO, DE CÁDIZ A TENOCHTITLÁN, 1493-1521. INAH. MÉXICO 2009.

From the introduction: “El tema que nos ocupa en ésta ocasión es el inicio de la nueva patología en el centro de convergencia de la historia americana de esos tiempos, las islas Canarias y del Caribe y desde ahí, su expansión a tierra firme, o sea, que pretendemos perseguir el camino de la primera pandemia de viruela, para saber quienes y cuando la importaron, así como cuanto tiempo se tomó para continuar el contagio y los estragos que causó entre los habitantes nativos, es decir, jugar con la historia para hacer la geografía epidemiológica de la ruta de la viruela, utilizando los avances científicos de nuestros tiempos, así como incluir nuevos documentos y estudios del tema destacando los aportes que hizo David Cook sobre la viruela(N.D.Cook,2004) . Para lo cual debemos seguir el segundo viaje de Colón desde Cádiz a las islas canarias y caribeñas para entender las cadenas del contagio y el recorriendo sobre las poblaciones de las islas y continuar el viaje por las rutas del padecimiento y la desolación que produjo. Saldremos de Cuba rumbo a la costa de la Vera Cruz hasta llegar al corazón de las culturas mesoamericanas, la gran Tenochtitlán, basándonos en fuentes documentales.”

ELSA MALVIDO. REPRESENTACIONES Y TEXTOS DE LA PRIMERA PANDEMIA DE VIRUELA EN LOS CÓDICES MEXICANOS.

Abstract: Les presentamos textos e imágenes de seis códices mexicanos que capturaron los efectos de la primera pandemia de viruela de 1519 (o dos conejo) en el territorio que llamarían la Nueva España. Los pintores (Tlacuilos) crearon modelos para conservar en la memoria mexicana un mal desconocido que mató tanto a gobernantes como a comunes, 90% de los contagiados. Los seis códices postcortesianos escritos con caracteres latinos en nahuátl guardan formas pictográficas tradicionales; con clara influencia europea el Códice Florentino plasmó no sólo las cuatro etapas de la enfermedad, grupos de edad y sexo proporcionalmente afectados, descritos hoy en textos de medicina contemporánea. Fueron comunes quienes pintaron al fallecido Señor de los Mexica Chuitláhuac atacado por la viruela, mientras en otro ofrecieron la historia de una gobernante quien abortó al hijo enviruelado siendo considerada “cihuateo”, mujer guerrera acompañante del sol; en fin, un mal que marcó el inicio de los nuevos tiempos.

MATTHEW D. THERRELL DAVID W. STAHLE, JOSE VILLANUEVA DIAZ, ELADIO H. CORNEJO OVIEDO and MALCOLM K. CLEAVELAND TREE-RING RECONSTRUCTED MAIZE YIELD IN CENTRAL MEXICO: 1474–2001. Climatic Change (2006) 74: 493–504.

Abstract. Maize was domesticated more than 6,000 years ago in central Mexico, and remains a vital staple food and cultural symbol in Mesoamerica. Maize yield in the central highlands is strongly dependant on adequate rainfall early in the growing season (April–June) because late maturation of the crop may result in damage from autumn frost. Climate-induced crop failures with profound socioeconomic impacts have punctuated Mexican history. However, reliable records of maize harvest have not been available until very recently, and historical records of crop yield and price are discontinuous and can be difficult to interpret. We have developed a continuous, exactly dated, tree-ring reconstruction of maize yield variability in central Mexico from 1474 to 2001 that provides new insight into the history of climate and food availability in the heartland of the Mesoamerican cultural province. The reconstruction indicates that seven of the most severe agricultural crises in Mexican history occurred during decadal-scale episodes of reconstructed maize shortfalls.

STEPHEN A. KOWALEWSKI Scale and the Explanation of Demographic Change: 3,500 Years in the Valley of Oaxaca AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 105(2):313-325. 2003.

Abstract: Explicit attention to scale provides ways to relate the long run of archaeology to the shorter moments of ethnography and history, and ways to link biology and ecology to political economy. In the Valley of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, the long-term history of the aggregate, regional population was constrained by relatively stable factors of human biology and ecology. However, significant, patterned variation in shorter-term, disaggregated, local demographic change was caused by shifts in political economy, both in the past and in recent times. Such conclusions are made possible by an unusual datasetthat combines recent, historical, and archaeological population estimates for a whole region covering a 3,500-year period, from initial settled villages to the present, for every place ever inhabited.



Dorothy Tanck de Estrada. 2005. Atlas Ilustrado de los Pueblos de Indios, Nueva Espana 1800. See the site Devotional Landscapes.



This map overlays the more than 4000 Pueblos identified by Tanck the Estrada (in purple) with the Encomiendas (yellow, green and red, depending on whether they are crown (corregimientos), private or jointly held), according to Cook and Borah and Gerhard.

Robert McCaa. Blame Colombus? New skeletal evidence and the paleodemography of the Americas over the millennia (Powerpoint presentation).

Abstract (from paper). Great variations in fertility constitute one of the major findings of this project to our knowledge of the demography of the past. In the Ancient Americas (that is, more than 1500 years ago), fertility seems to have been surprisingly low (gross reproduction ratio, GRR, =2.3), and the brake on explosive population growth was fertility rather than mortality (life expectancy at birth, e0, =34 years). Consequently the ancient demographic regime was a relatively low-pressure system. A high-pressure system of high fertility and high mortality dates from the middle period, 1500 BP - 500 BP (before the present). Characteristic of only simple horticulturists in ancient times, a high pressure demographic regime seems to have become more general during the middle period, intrinsic to both complex agrarian systems as well as foragers and fishers (GRR=3.0 and 2.8, respectively). Agriculture was not the engine of demographic transformation in pre-historic America because non-horticulturists also experienced a substantial rise in fertility. A second great demographic transformation began 500 years ago with the intrusion of Old World populations and technologies. While these changes were sweeping, indeed many peoples were thrust to the verge of extinction, the fundamental demography of the survivors did not change greatly. The old demographic regime persisted into the nineteenth-century, if the picture developed here from the osteological evidence is trustworthy. Likewise, African-American demographic systems seem to have been under high pressure: very high fertility and high mortality, with the highest pressures characteristic of the free. European-American demographic systems, as measured here, were decidedly low pressure, with relatively moderate mortality and moderately higher fertility.



MORAMAY LOPEZ-ALONSO Growth with Inequality: Living Standards in Mexico, 1850–1950 J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 39, 81–105 2007.

Abstract. This article focuses on trends in the adult heights of various sectors of Mexican society between 1850 and 1950 as a proxy for their biological and material standards of living. The evolution of biological standards of living is an alternative way to assess whether or not economic development after 1850 was beneficial to the population, using a proxy that relies on a basic natural characteristic, adult height. The recruitment records of the Mexican rural and federal militia provide us with information on the secular trends of heights of the Mexican labouring classes, while a database of passport applications allows us to compare the evolution of living standards across social classes. It is argued that the benefits of industrialisation and improved economic performance fostered by the Diaz regime (1876–1910) did not have a favourable impact on the biological wellbeing of the labouring population. There are, however, signs of improvement in living standards with the launching of welfare programmes at the end of the Ca´rdenas administration. In contrast, the average height of the elites increased throughout the period, suggesting that there was a growing disparity in the evolution of living standards between social classes.

Andrés Reséndez and Brian M. Kemp. Genetics and the History of Latin America.

“In this report, we will survey the DNA literature most relevant to historians of Latin America (especially those working in Mexico and the American Southwest) and discuss how the genetic evidence jibes with our socially constructed notions of race and ethnicity. We will be selective in our coverage by necessity, but we also point readers to a fairly comprehensive list of references available at http://resendez.ucdavis.edu. We hope this piece can serve as a bibliographical resource for all historians curious about how their own interpretations square with the DNA evidence.”

Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg The Diffusion of Development March 2008.

Abstract. We find that genetic distance, a measure associated with the amount of time elapsed since two populations’ last common ancestors, has a statistically and economically significant effect on income differences, even when controlling for measures of geographical and climatic differences, transportation costs, linguistic distances, and other measures of cultural and historical differences. We provide an economic interpretation of these findings in terms of barriers to the diffusion of development from the world technological frontier, implying that income differences should be a function of relative genetic distance from the frontier. The empirical evidence strongly supports this barriers interpretation.

Stelios Michalopoulos. Ethnolinguistic Diversity: Origins and Implications Brown University. January 20, 2008.

Abstract: This research examines theoretically and empirically the economic origins of ethnolinguistic fractionalization. The empirical analysis constructs detailed data on the distribution of land quality across regions and countries, and shows that variation in land quality has contributed significantly to the emergence and persistence of ethnic diversity. The evidence supports the theoretical analysis, according to which heterogeneous land endowments generated region specific human capital, limiting population mobility and leading to the formation of localized ethnicities and languages. The research contributes to the understanding of the emergence of ethnicities and their spatial distribution and offers a distinction between the natural, geographically driven, versus the artificial, man-made, components of contemporary ethnic diversity. An application of the proposed approach casts some doubt on the influential findings that ethnic diversity has significant adverse effects on economic outcomes. Instrumenting ethnic diversity using measures of variation in land quality suggests that its effect on contemporary development is not significantly different from zero.

Atlántida Coll-Hurtado Oaxaca: geografía histórica de la Grana Cochinilla Investigaciones Geográficas Boletin, 36, 1998.

Summary. During the Colonial centuries. the 'grana cochinilla", an insect providing red dye, was cultivated in Oaxaca and created great richess. even though no important mines were explored in the area. By the XIX century, a technological innovation. the discovery of artificial anilines, ended that activity and Oaxaca became the poor region it is nowadays.

M.H. CRAWFORD AND ERIC J. DEVOR 1980. Population Structure and Admixture in Transplanted TIaxcaltecan PopuIations AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 52485 -490(1980).

Abstract: The history of the Indian populations from the Valley of Tlaxcala since the Spanish conquest of Mexico has been one of fission and transplantation. A number of Tlaxcaltecan families were relocated by the Spanish and founded new communities such as Saltillo and Cuanalan outside the Valley of Tlaxcala. The contemporary genetic structure of these people reflects their ethnohistory. Genetic distances between Tlaxcaltecan groups are the result of differential systematic pressure acting upon them.

Georgina H. Endfield Climate and Crisis in Eighteenth Century Mexico The Medieval History Journal 2007; 10; 99.

Signals of social and economic growth and prosperity in late colonial Mexico, and especially in the eighteenth century, masked a number of deeper, longer-standing structural problems. Drives towards market integration and the development of international trade associated with the Bourbon reforms stimulated a phase of remarkably rapid economic and administrative change, but also exacerbated a growing social inequality. Some groups benefitted from the economic developments of the 1700s, others suffered serious economic deprivation. This article suggests that repeated periods of anomalous weather and subsistence crisis between the 1690s through to the early 1800s might have served to at once reveal and compound these inequalities and may have also contributed to local and collective social unrest at different points throughout this period.

Endfield, Georgina Hope (1998) 'Lands, Livestock and the Law: Territorial Conflicts in Colonial West Central Mexico', Colonial Latin American Review, 7:2, 205 - 224.

There is still considerable academic debate over the timing and intensity of the European impact on the Mexican landscape. Attention has focused on the environmental impacts associated with the introduction of European livestock, the plough and a new crop complex to the various regions of the country following conquest (Cook 1949; Simpson 1952; Shelter 1991; Sale 1992; Butzer and Butzer 1993; 1995; O’ Hara 1991; O’ Hara et al. 1993; Melville 1994; Endfield 1997) . Less research has been conducted into the social and economic repercussions associated with the development of an agro-pastoral economy in a traditionally agricultural landscape. In this study, colonial documents are employed to illustrate the dissension and antagonism that emerged in response to changes in land use and tenure associated with Spanish colonisation of land in Michoacan, west central Mexico.

Environmental and Social Change in the Valle del Mezquital, Mexico, 1521-1600 Elinor G. K. Melville Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 32, No. 1. (Jan., 1990), pp. 24-53.

The often disastrous consequences of the introduction of exotic animals into a New World environment are very clearly demonstrated by the sixteenthcentury history of the Valle del Mezquital, Mexico. A rapid and profound process of environmental degradation, caused by overstocking and indiscriminate grazing of sheep in the post-conquest era, leads us to ask whether the Spanish always acted in their own long-term interests in the New World.

Susan Deeds. Defiance and Deference in Mexico's Colonial North: Indians under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya (University of Texas Press, 2003).

Ripan Singh Malhi, et al. Distribution of Y Chromosomes Among Native North Americans: A Study of Athapaskan Population History AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 137:412–424 (2008).

Abstract: In this study, 231 Y chromosomes from 12 populations were typed for four diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to determine haplogroup membership and 43 Y chromosomes from three of these populations were typed for eight short tandem repeats (STRs) to determine haplotypes. These data were combined with previously published data, amounting to 724 Y chromosomes from 26 populations in North America, and analyzed to investigate the geographic distribution of Y chromosomes among native North Americans and to test the Southern Athapaskan migration hypothesis. The results suggest that European admixture has significantly altered the distribution of Y chromosomes in North America and because of this caution should be taken when inferring prehistoric population events in North America using Y chromosome data alone. However, consistent with studies of other genetic systems, we are still able to identify close relationships among Y chromosomes in Athapaskans from the Subarctic and the Southwest, suggesting that a small number of proto-Apachean migrants from the Subarctic founded the Southwest Athapaskan populations.

NOAA/NESDIS North American Drought Variability.

Download Palmer Drought Severity Index estimations.

Barbary Mundy. The Mapping of the New Spain. University of Chicago Press.

To learn about its territories in the New World, Spain commissioned a survey of Spanish officials in Mexico between 1578 and 1584, asking for local maps as well as descriptions of local resources, history, and geography. In The Mapping of New Spain, Barbara Mundy illuminates both the Amerindian (Aztec, Mixtec, and Zapotec) and the Spanish traditions represented in these maps and traces the reshaping of indigene world views in the wake of colonization.

Relaciones Geograficas Collection. UT Austin Benson Library.



Disease and Disaster in Pre-Columbian and Colonial Americas A conference with papers organized by the Interamerican Institute.



Kevin Terraciano. The Colonial Mixtec Community. Hispanic American Historical Review 80.1 (2000) 1-42.

From the introduction: “Indigenous communities in Mexico have intrigued generations of historians and anthropologists and have influenced the conceptualization of agrarian “folk” or “peasant” communities worldwide. Since at least the 1940s ethnographers have lived and worked in Mesoamerican communities, observing cultures in their own day while imagining the preconquest past. In the last three decades especially, historians have used both Spanish- and native-language sources from the colonial period to analyze the internal organization of indigenous communities, considering how these structures survived in altered yet recognizable forms after the Spanish conquest.2 In the past, both historical and anthropological studies focused on corporate communities such as the Nahua altepetl (local ethnic state), Maya cah, and the undifferentiated pueblo of modern Mexico; however, findings from the two disciplines are not usually integrated or even compared. In contrast to previous research, this article uses a variety of Mixtec-and Spanish-language sources to define the nature and internal organization of Mixtec communities in the sixteenth century, and examines some aspects of their reorganization and transformation during the colonial period. In particular, I focus on two components of the colonial community in the light of a recent ethnography from the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca.”

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros "Indian Identity, Poverty, and Colonial Development in Mexico". (work in progress)



D. W. Stahle, E. R. Cook, J. Villanueva Díaz, F. K. Fye, D. J. Burnette, R. D. Griffin, R. Acuña Soto, R. Seager, and R. R. Heim Jr. Early 21st-Century Drought in Mexico Eos, Vol. 90, No. 11, 17 March 2009.


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