Henry A. Wallace Award, The Agricultural History Society, 2018

Brazil has the second-largest cattle herd in the world and is a major exporter of beef. While ranching in the Amazon—and its destructive environmental consequences—receives attention from both the media and scholars, the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul actually host the most cattle. A significant beef producer in Brazil beginning in the late nineteenth century, the region served as a laboratory for raising cattle in the tropics, where temperate zone ranching practices do not work. Mato Grosso ranchers and cowboys transformed ranching’s relationship with the environment, including the introduction of an exotic cattle breed—the Zebu—that now dominates Latin American tropical ranching.

Cattle in the Backlands presents a comprehensive history of ranching in Mato Grosso. Using extensive primary sources, Robert W. Wilcox explores three key aspects: the economic transformation of a remote frontier region through modern technical inputs; the resulting social changes, especially in labor structures and land tenure; and environmental factors, including the long-term impact of ranching on ecosystems, which, he contends, was not as detrimental as might be assumed. Wilcox demonstrates that ranching practices in Mato Grosso set the parameters for tropical beef production in Brazil and throughout Latin America. As the region was incorporated into national and international economic structures, its ranching industry experienced the entry of foreign investment, the introduction of capitalized processing facilities, and nascent discussions of ecological impacts—developments that later affected many sectors of the Brazilian economy.

For the Suya, a Ge-speaking tribe of Central Brazil, nature and culture are perceived as fundamental opposites. Yet surprisingly few basic principles seem to underlie both Suya cosmology and society on their various levels—from the construction of villages and the classification of animals and humans to body ornamentation, dietary restrictions, myths, and curing chants.

In this integrated and far-reaching analysis, Anthony Seeger makes a significant contribution to the structural inquiry into lowland South American cosmologies begun by Levi-Strauss. He delineates various strata of the Suya world—perceptions of time and space, kinship, politics and medicine, groupings of animals, plants, and humans—and evolves a simple set of beliefs about nature and transformation that seems to govern all of them. His is an extremely rich and lucid account of the field methods, experiences, and observations that comprised the exploration into a hitherto unfamiliar tribe.