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Drink scarcity, environmental crisis and Indigenous bodies in the colonisation of Mesoamerica
Tue, July 14, 9:15 to 10:45am, Edinburgh Futures Institute, 1.50English Abstract
This paper studies the creation of food and drink scarcity as a way to control Indigenous peoples’ bodies and landscapes in the context of the colonisation of Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) focusing on the prohibition on the ingestion and replacement of Indigenous fermented drinks for Spanish wine and spirits. Spanish colonisation of the Americas imposed social, religious and environmental change to support the Christianisation of the Indigenous peoples and the extraction of wealth through several systems, such as the encomienda, taxation, and mining haciendas, based on labour and environmental exploitation. To instrumentalise this twofold colonisation enterprise, catholic priests (particularly Franciscans) and colonial state officials used the humoral medical theory to classify Indigenous peoples, based on their food and drink choices and bodily constitution, as phlegmatic, prone to illness and lacking industriousness. To change this alleged deficiency, priests and colonial state officials banned the ingestion of Indigenous fermented drinks and imposed Spanish wine and spirits. While in the long-run Maya, Nahua and P’urhepecha people negotiated, adapted, and repurposed the introduction of European beverages, during the sixteenth century, this ban, in addition to the environmental, social and religious degradation, caused scarcity of Indigenous fermented drinks which had supported the religious life, bodily health and daily replenishment for Indigenous peoples since at least 4,500 BCE. This paper addresses the oft overlooked multilayered social role of Indigenous fermented drinks while it also looks at social control based on drink choices.