Disassembling cattle and enskilling subjectivities: Butchering techniques and the emergence of new colonial subjects in Santiago de Guatemala

Abstract

When they introduced cattle into Guatemala in the 16th century, Europeans also brought a whole new industry involving ranches, slaughterhouses, and new forms of labor. On the one hand, cattle producers had to treat the animals as intact living organisms requiring care and nurture to maintain and increase the herds. Those animals were grown by the ranchers for specific purposes. In the first place, colonial Mesoamerican cattle were raised to produce hides and leather for intercontinental trade with Spain. The regularized disassembling of the bovine bodies created these new products, but it also had some unintended consequences, namely the generation of new subject positions among the indigenous workers of these facilities. New forms of butchering techniques aimed at extracting animal parts were unlike the indigenous practices of animal hunting and exploitation, which aimed at preserving the physical integrity of the animals’ bodies. The newly introduced techniques that involved the compartmentalization of animal bodies also involved an increased compartmentalization of labor, accompanied by new body techniques and gestures. As the butchers and the tanners became enskilled, their bodies changed and so did their hexis. To operationalize these ideas, technological approaches combined with zooarchaeological (butchery marks), ethnographic, and historical evidence are used to investigate how humans and cattle mutually grew each other’s matter and subjectivities.

Rebanhos em objetos: histórias materiais das relações humano-animais nas aldeias indígenas no Brasil

“…A busca pela identificação inequívoca das espécies instiga mais uma questão no que concerne particularmente aos ossos. Um estudo sobre técnicas de abate, desmembramento e corte de bovinos introduzidos entre os Maya na Guatemala mostrou não apenas que os restos osteológicos são localizados sempre em certos locais específicos, mas que são extremamente raras as marcas de instrumentos cortantes nesses ossos (DELSOL, 2020). Isso implica que, provavelmente, ossos de bois e outros animais exóticos só possam mesmo ser identificados se e quando preservados na forma de artefatos culturais.…”

Ancient DNA confirms diverse origins of early post-Columbian cattle in the Americas

“…Following humans, it was the arrival of domestic animals from the Eastern Hemisphere that most significantly rearranged the abundance and distribution of species and human activities. Among these, cattle ( Bos taurus ) were particularly impactful as a central part of new post-Columbian (post-1492) economic and social structures 3 , and as a major force in reshaping pre-Columbian landscapes and agrosystems 4 , 5 . These cultural and environmental impacts of cattle can be attributed in large part to the development of cattle ranching, a management system where animals roam semi-freely on vast tracts of land with little human intervention 6 , 7 .…”