LAST 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Barbed Wire, Overgrazing, Extreme Poverty

• School: Chico State University
• Department: Latin American Studies
• Course: LAST 110
• Professor: Sarah Anderson

Document Summary

Maize, beans, squashes, peanuts, tomatoes, potatoes, grains (quinoa) Irrigation systems, terracing, raised cultivation beds, floating cultivation beds (chinampas) Village farmers in the tropical lowlands=shifting cultivation. A semi-nomadic system of farming the forest without destruction. Planted a wide variety of crops including fruit and nut trees. Contributed to the legendary biodiversity of the amazon basin. Arrival of spanish and portuguese=disease, domesticated plants and animals, weapons. Spanish believed their system of agriculture was superior. The spanish colonial system=extraction of mineral wealth, silver and gold. Agricultural area to support miners; grazing for the mules. Desertification created by these mining practices persists today. By the late 19th century the forests of the atlantic coast in brazil=virtually destroyed. Sugar= invention of a new economic institution: the plantation. A commercial agricultural venture designed to specialize in one tropical crop for export. Slave based plantations caused areas of brazil and many caribbean islands to be populated beyond capacity.