Colonial Cataclysms
Subtitle: Climate, Landscape, and Memory in Mexico's Little Ice Age
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2020
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780816539963
Description: "Colonial Cataclysms: Climate, Landscape and Memory in Mexico's Little Ice Age is an in-depth examination of the climatic effects of the hemispheric "Little Ice Age" on pluviosity, soils, and indigenous agriculture in central Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The manuscript offers a corrective of the long-standing scholarly thought that the primary problem facing agriculture in this period was drought. In contrast, Skopyk argues that the problem was in fact elevated rainfall that resulted in flooding and the silting of wetlands, particularly in the watersheds of Tlaxcala. Such elevated rainfall restricted agriculture and led to conditions that were described as "arid" or "desiccated." Such over-saturation of rainfall led to destructive bursts of dirt and water to downstream communities, drastically eroding and degrading soil. At the time, major hydraulic engineering projects were launched, rivers were deemed the "enemy" of the people, and human ingenuity was seen as the only remedy to a capricious and impetuous nature. Historians and thinkers have long considered the region's abundant flooding to be the product of failed hydraulic infrastructure. Skopyk argues that anomalies in the region's temperature have been neglected, converting what he sees as Mexico's "Little Ice Age" into Mexico's "Little Drought Age.""--