Patron Saints of Meat and Tallow: Sacralizing Extractivism in the Colonial Cattle Industry of Yucatán, Mexico

Abstract

In colonial Yucatán, Mexico, the owners of plantation-like estates known as haciendas conscripted saints and cows to expropriate land from Indigenous Maya farming communities. In this paper, I trace the role of hacienda saints by framing them as an introduced or adventive species, capable of forming both mutualistic and invasive interspecies relationships in their new habitat. I examine the introduction of saints to the region by Franciscans, early attempts by Maya people to build anticolonial coalitions with saints and cows, the participation of hacienda saints in extractivist ranching practices, and the ultimate reclaiming and possible naturalization of saints by Maya rebels. This paper extends conceptualizations of the plantation—as both a site of species extinction and a site of interspecies collaboration—to include Catholic saints, so as to interrogate the dynamic role of supernatural entities in deep and ongoing histories of extractivism.