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This paper analyses three sites where research on the development of some South American animals was carried out between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries: a missionary post in the Paraguayan Chaco, a hotel located in the Sierras of Córdoba, and a livestock farm on the coast of the Río de la Plata, the latter two in Argentina. The study of how these places functioned and of the people who passed through them allows us to see how these sites served as nodes in the itineraries of the scientists and in the gathering and circulation of objects and information. This shows the variety of places for conducting scientific work and their relationship to the infrastructures that shape the formation and occupation of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will consider the administration of the community goods of Yucatecan towns during Colonial period. As an example, we analyze the community goods of Izamal, through the "Matricula y cuenta de comunidad de los indios de la cabecera y pueblo de Izamal de 1795", a document located in the Archivo General de la Nacion of Mexico. "The Matricula y cuenta" is, along with Buczotz and Pixila (previous documents in the same record), the only ones of its kind that we have found for the Yucatecan towns of the eighteenth century. Finally, we propose that the Izamal neighborhoods corresponded to the guild farms sold a few years before by the bishop fray Luis Piña y Mazo. As they were also part of the community goods, the farms were deliberately concealed by local authorities to avoid their dispossession and to preserve the bonds of community reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sheep livestock sector is going through an important crisis in Argentine Patagonia, which has been magnified by reduced pasture productivity caused by a lasting history of overgrazing. Farmers were interviewed in order to assess their knowledge and attitudes towards adopting additional, potentially more sustainable activities complementary to livestock farming that would help to mitigate income losses and land abandonment. Tourism and consumptive uses of wildlife were the preferred options by the respondents. However, only half of farmers would be willing to reduce sheep stocking density even if economic reward from complementary uses of wildlife exceed losses due to overgrazing. This casts some doubts on the potential conservation benefits for Patagonian shrub-steppe ecosystems of exploiting populations of wild species or other complementary activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies have increasingly recognized tourism as an alternative to reducing social inequality. They have been fomenting the development of this activity as economic option to different geographical scales. However, the implications of this process depend on the meaning of tourism to places where it has been encouraged. Therefore, this research aims to understand what has been the recent contribution of tourism policies for indicators related to social inequalities in the tourist municipalities at state of São Paulo, Brazil. Through the use of policy evaluation method known as 'differences in differences', the main results contribute to demonstrate that the group of tourist municipalities at São Paulo, covered by this study, has been shown better performance only in some of the analyzed indicators when compared with other cities in the same state. On the other hand, the investigation about the causal interactions between political intervention with the obtained results in these municipalities suggest that the role of these policies falls short of what is stated in oficial discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the process that took place as changes were made to the way in which indigenous manual labor was used (as mandated by the Spanish government through the encomienda) in Central Chile towards the end of the sixteenth century through the first half of the seventeenth century. As gold veins were depleted and the Chilean economy changed, moving toward agro-livestock production, Spanish representatives began slowly and tentatively, at first, then massively and permanently, to move workers to farms and ranches where they lived and lent personal services. Other tax payers paid indigenous people, bought slaves or contracted those who were available to work regardless of their origin. This meant that by the seventeenth century, the majority of these people were living on such rural properties and deserting their original settlements. As these farms became the main nuclei of the rural indigenous populations, people from many different geographical locations–with a variety of legal statuses and identities–came together and raised families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O estudo da administração e aplicação das temporalidades apreendidas dos jesuítas em 1767, nas diferentes regiões da América Latina, destacou o papel primordial de redes de ligações locais no acesso aos cargos e à posse desses bens. A partir desta perspectiva, a alienação do patrimônio rural dos jesuítas, confiscado pela Junta de Buenos Aires, recebeu menos interesse historiográfico. Este artigo centra-se na análise das operações de transferência de usufruto e propriedade das fazendas Areco e Las Vacas, concretizada no final do século XVIII. O objetivo é identificar as várias partes envolvidas e fazer avançar a análise dos métodos de gestão das Juntas portenhas em um período em que as mudanças políticas e institucionais da monarquia espanhola articula um processo regional de expansão agrícola e de reavaliação dos recursos produtivos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The colonial "estancias" have been recently analyzed as enterprises rationally oriented to the market. Researches estimated the utility rate and profit, according to the economic factors, especially, the investment. On the other hand, this research will propose an analysis of the profit and valuation of the estancia, proposing an alternative methodological perspective, where "peones" and slaves were the ones who create a new value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical causes of landscape degradation in tropical highland central Mexico remain poorly understood. Scholarly contention exists over the landscape effects of livestock introduced during the sixteenth century. In this article, the author considers the methodology of using land grant documents to assess livestock's environmental impact during the early colonial period (1521–1620 CE). The investigation focuses on the southeastern Valle del Mezquital as a case study by which to reconsider the methodologies of previous scholars. The author then presents a spatial reconstruction of sheep ranching in the case study area. This reconstruction indicates that the majority of sheep ranches occupied mountainous zones where indigenous agriculture would have been absent. This suggests that sheep overstocking likely instigated soil erosion in the higher elevations whereas agricultural terrace abandonment triggered soil erosion in the lowlands, which together resulted in landscape-wide environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural settlements growing crops and rearing animals are known as estancias in several South American countries. They played a prevailing role in the political and economic history of Argentina, particularly during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. At present, many estancias are developing alternative activities, as recreation and tourism, in order to be able to subsist. The main problem lies in the fact that a non-sustainable activity, frequently focused on the greatest economic yield, leads to the destruction of the heritage, instead of achieving its long-term conservation. The purpose of this paper is to develop and verify a suitable model for the planning, execution and management of recreational and tourist activities in these rural settlements. As regards the scope of the concept of sustainable development, this methodology aims at achieving a balance between the recreational and tourist operation and the conservation of the rich heritage concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]