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December 2000
Paige West, Contributing Editor
A and E wishes to congratulate three of our members who were recently elected to AAA committee positions: John (Rick) Stepp, Student seat, Executive Board; Amy Wolfe, Nominating Committee; Linda Whiteford, Ethics Committee.
Brief Notes on Observations in Spain
E. N. Anderson, Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of California, Riverside
Being interested in the cultural ecology of Mexico, I felt a
need to
see the countryside of Spain, since Mexico’s ecology has been so enormously
influenced by Spanish inputs in the last 500 years. Also, I am working
on contacts between the Near East and China in the medieval period (see
Buell and Anderson 2000). Moorish Spain, though far from China, was
such an intellectual dynamo in the early medieval period that it influenced
medicine, science, philosophy, and—presumably—cultural ecology throughout
the Islamic world. Indirect influence on China is possible, but,
more to the point, understanding Spain’s Islamic culture is basic to understanding
anything about the Near East.
Also, Spain’s Moorish culture was enormously influential on the New World, not least because the Spanish got rid of the less successfully converted “New Christians” (Muslims and Jews forced into Christianity) by sending them to the more remote parts of the colonies. Thus, I spent all too short a time (a mere 3 weeks) in Spain and Portugal. Most of the time was spent in Andalucía, where the Moorish influence is strongest, and where the largest chunk of settlers of colonial New Spain originated.
Continuities are fascinating. Andalucía is a land
of wheat, vineyards, and olive orchards. The olives grow on the poor,
eroded, stony soil of the hills. The vineyards grow on good soil
and almost always on slopes. The wheat takes over the intermediate
soils and the flatter lands. Pigs are by far the most important food
animal. This pattern was established by the Romans, long before the Islamic
period. The Muslims introduced oranges, rice (now grown in Valencia
nearby), sugar, and many
other crops, but did not really change the landscape dramatically.
(The continued popularity of the pig shows that.)
A nice measure of continuity: I wanted to visit Jaén, because
of a
well-known medieval folksong about the olive-plucking Moorish girls
of the town. I found that Jaén is still an olive town (almost
100% of the landscape around it is olives) and the “Moors,” now largely
from Morocco, still do the picking.
Every millimetre of the landscape is intensively used. Cultivation
covers nearly 100% of the land up to the limit set by freezing of olive
trees. Above that is oak forest, more or less degraded by heavy harvesting
of firewood etc., plus intensive grazing by sheep and goats. Above that
is pine forest; almost all that’s left is plantations. Even the alpine
tundra (we got up to 12,000’ by convenient tourist bus in the Sierra Nevada)
is grazed hard. National and natural “parks” are like National Forests
in the US: They are there for controlled but heavy use, not for preservation.
On the other hand, they are there, they are extensive, they are reasonably
well managed, and they save an awful lot of fauna and flora that would
otherwise be gone. We visited an excellently managed lake that is
one of the last refuges of the rare White-headed Duck. It is worth
remembering that every living thing in south Spain has had to live with
people for a million years or so, and with agriculture for 7,000 years.
Given the intensive land use, I was cheered by the good shape the landscape
is in, and the many (if sometimes sadly weakening) traditional resource
management strategies: irrigation control, intercropping, coppicing,
intensive mixed tree cropping, etc., etc.
The food shows clear continuities with Roman and medieval Arab food. There is also the inevitable Mexican influence: tomatoes, sunflowers, chiles, etc. Peru has had the most influence, though, via the ever-present potato. The closest similarities to Mexican food are not found in Andalucía but in neighboring Extremadura. (We didn’t stop there, but got a cookbook and ate in an Extremaduran restaurant in Madrid.) Extremeñan food is about the same as Mexican—not surprising in view of the fact that many (if not most) of the conquistadors came from there. (Extremadura borders Andalucía on the northwest, and is high, dry, and rather barren—a great place to be from, as we used to say in the Midwest, with the accent on the “from.”) Influence has flowed both ways.
My Maya friends in Quintana Roo unknowingly preserve medieval Arab-Andalucín culture in their spice mixes, which combine native Maya spices with the classic cumin-clove-cinnamon-black pepper mix that virtually defines the Arab tradition.
This being said, Spain and Mexico influenced each other a lot
less than one might expect. This is because of the great difference
in
environments. In Mexico, the settlers had to learn to love maize,
and to think of a “tortilla” as a Native American corn bread rather than
as an omelet or similar object. In fact, throughout Latin America
except in the far north and south, the beloved wheat, olives, vines, and
pigs that were and are the staples of the traditional Spanish diet do not
flourish. Conversely, Mexican crops have taken much less hold in
Spain than in Italy or even Hungary.
One useful tip to all readers: Probably my most valuable discovery was the Librería Agricola (“Agricultural Bookstore”) in Madrid. The full address is Fernando VI, 2, 28004 Madrid. This bookstore has an amazing selection of books on agriculture, natural history, environment, ecology, and ethnobiology. I bought all I could carry. I wish I’d thought to get things shipped home. They have complete floras for various parts of Spain, and other vital references. If you read Spanish (all the books are in Spanish), or if you get to order books for your campus or firm library, you need to know about this store.
Buell, Paul D., and E. N. Anderson. 2000. A Soup
for the Qan:
Chinese Dietary Medicine of the mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-Hui’s
Yin-shan Cheng-yao. London: Kegan Paul International.