Carl O. Sauer: Historia  Intelectual, Paisajes Agrícolas  y el Origen del Maíz, 1940-1960

Pedro Urquijo Torres; Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas

doi:10.32991/2237-2717.2024v14i1.p20-47

Authors

Pedro Urquijo Torres Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México - Morelia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9626-0322
Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9305-9412

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2024v14i1.p20-47

Keywords:

green revolution, Rockefeller Foundation, Berkeley School

Abstract

We analyze the conceptual contributions to the study of agricultural landscapes made by the geographer Carl O. Sauer, a leading figure of the Berkeley School. We follow his defense of native maize in the context of the emergence of the Green Revolution and the advance of agricultural programs sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Latin America. Sauer believed that the introduction of agronomic and agricultural breeding packages, with the consequent standardization under U.S. commercial criteria, would ruin the historical diversity of crops. Based on his experience in Mexico and the American Southwest, Sauer emphasized that maize and agricultural landscapes possessed a sort of "local personality", resulting from a correlation between the specific geographic conditions of each site and the types of management and adaptations provided by the societies that settled there. We set two objectives. First, to recognize the guiding concepts of the cultural geography approach and the historical study of landscapes, and how they lead, intellectually and ideologically, to the analysis of the origin of maize, its geographic distribution and identity meaning. We emphasize the notions of diffusionism, historical particularism, cultural geography, landscape personality and area studies. Second, we approach Sauer's relational history by analyzing the epistolary exchange that the geographer had with colleagues regarding his interest in and defense of maize.

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