Most students of colonial Latin America have recognized that the famous Relaciones geográficas, compiled between 1578 and 1589, form a major group of sources relating to the geography, ethnography, economy, and social conditions of the Spanish colonies during the late sixteenth century. In 1964 Howard Cline briefly traced the history and described the nature and present availability of the Relaciones, emphasizing those that pertain to New Spain (HAHR, August 1964, 342-374). Now for the first time, the extant Relaciones that cover Mexico have been utilized to ascertain their value in the reconstruction of the late sixteenth-century economic geography of that area.
Alejandra Moreno Toscano has approached this problem by using three interrelated methods of analysis: 1) the matrix technique, employing simple rank-order correlations; 2) cartographic analysis, showing space-environment relationships of given economic and cultural phenomena; and 3) regional microanalysis, whereby the author, through application of methods 1) and 2) has attempted to reconstruct the late sixteenth-century demographic and agricultural characteristics of the Yucatán peninsula.
The author admits that one might reasonably question the validity of using the matrix technique for ordering nonquantitative data, which characterize all of the geographical relations. Nonetheless, the method is applicable insofar as the data are homogeneous, i.e., based on a standard questionnaire. Moreover, just as it reveals gaps in information for a given locality, this method also helps correlate interrelationships between geographic, economic, and historical factors that conditioned the late sixteenth-century life of New Spain. In addition, with the matrix method one can order data in such a manner that they can be readily represented cartographically.
A series of 53 maps, each showing the distribution of a given economic or cultural phenomenon reported in the relaciones from 246 towns in New Spain, form the result of the cartographic analysis. The author attempts to interpret these distributions, which include such things as indigenous and introduced crops, domestic animals, agglomerated settlements, crafts, and house types. Some distributions are compared with those of today in order to indicate persistence or change.
The author’s microregional analysis of the Yucatán peninsula points up at least two deficiencies in the utilization of data taken from the relaciones: 1) The quality and completeness of information for given localities within an area are not uniform. 2) These data represent only one source of information for the economic geography of the late sixteenth century. Whenever possible such information should be supplemented by data from contemportary sources (such as the Relación of Diego de Landa in the case of Yucatán). Moreover, as the author points out, comparative studies based on geographical relations of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries would present a developmental sequence of colonial economic geography in Mexico. Unfortunately comparable relations for seventeenth-century New Spain are few in number and those for the eighteenth, although numerous, are based on questionnaires different in character and quality from those of the late sixteenth.
Despite some questionable assumptions on the part of the author, this monograph is a significant pioneer work. It deserves the attention of all students who deal with the early colonial aspects of Latin America.