Colonial Ranches (week 10)

During XVI colonial ranches were getting bigger and better but very few of them lasted until XVIII, this make other companies join and make more ranches it also started to spanned all over the country, Popayan, Santa Fe, Cali, Honda and Mariquita. In the XVIII other ranches were used and the control of Negroes, Indians affects this so the ranches started to popularize this new form of develop the country.

They harvest cacao in lots so it was very important because lots of companies started to sled this and the country began to grow, but how did they make the cacao? Its very difficult it requires an special care for the first 4 years and then it began to produce, they have to maintain it vey cline, in the book (Imagenes de Su Diversidad pg 107) explain very well how they harvest “En estas fincas los arboles de cacao se siembran en hileras, con intervalos de tres o cuatro metros y como es necesario protegerlos de los rayos directos del sol, se siembran al mismo tiempo, alternadamente, otras hileras de Plantain y de Lerityne que crecen muy rapido y dan magnifica sombra. L”Eritryne protégé la plantacion despues del segundo a;o, y el Plantain el primero, al mismo tiempo que produce sus propios frutos. Generalmente produce dos cosechas anuales, una en Julio y otra en diciembre y se requiere gran ciudado para la recoleccion y el secamiento de la fruta. El grano se extrae de la vaina y se coloca sobre hojas o caneyes para secarlo.”

The ranches where considered the patrimony of healthy, richness, and power.

These ranches had lots of conflicts because they work with Indians and Europeans so they fight very often. They also have another problem, if they don’t have a good climate the harvest will never show the cacao, so what they had to do was in the good climate work very hard and produce as much as they can of cacao and when there’s bad climate they don’t harvest. Could they probably pay all the workers of the ranches? No they couldn’t, so what they did was to give food to all the workers including slaves, so they could jump the salaries.