Carl Sauer (1889–1975) towers like a Chimborazo over Latin American historical geography. While many colleagues may have traveled more extensively south of the border, probably none has approached Sauer’s depth of knowledge and understanding of the area, or his familiarity with its vast geographic, historical, and anthropological literature. Yet he was by predilection a field man. He could hardly conceive of geographic research that did not grow out of field-won knowledge. Beginning in 1926, he spent part of nearly every year for three decades in the field, in the arid northwest of Mexico (Baja California, Sonora, and Sinaloa) and, in later years, in the more tropical lands to the south. On these ventures he was usually accompanied by one or more student or colleague. “One of the rewards of being in the field with students, he wrote, “is in discovering the ones who are quick and sharp at seeing.”
Robert C. West, a Sauer student who fits well that description, has here inventoried, mapped, and evaluated the results of each of some thirty field study trips Sauer made to Latin America and the Southwest between 1926 and 1967. For this he has leaned especially on the Sauer correspondence in the Bancroft Library and the testimony of those who accompanied him (curiously, the author himself seems never to have been with Sauer in Latin America). What comes through is not so much field method as a point of view, reflecting both an ecologically based “land ethic” and a real liking for rural folk who live the simple life close to the earth. Sauer had his eye out for all observable elements of the cultural landscape, but perhaps especially for economic plants, farming systems, and soil and vegetation disturbances that gave evidence of past settlement patterns and population densities. A master at interpreting historical documents in the light of present physical conditions, he depended more on intuition than on method. He was neither a photographer nor a systematic recorder of field data. Most of his observations were stored in his head, aided by an amazing power of near total recall.
Always patient and unhurried, he established rapport with local inhabitants easily and unobtrusively, listening as attentively to muleteers and campesinos as to highly prepared academic colleagues.
This unusual work may offer new perspectives and insights to Latin Americanists of varied persuasions who sense that they may be missing both part of the evidence and part of the fun in relying too much on manuscripts and the printed word. It makes clear why Sauer, who had a truly interdisciplinary mind, felt so comfortable and at ease working under the rubric of that fundamental, but sometimes overlooked, subject that is academic geography.
