Abstract

PULIDO SECUNDINO, Juan  and  BOCCO VERDINELLI, Gerardo. Traditional landscape knowledge. The case of a purépecha indigenous community, Western Mexico. Invest. Geog [online]. 2016, n.89, pp.41-57. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.45590.

The study of indigenous groups everywhere in the world indicates a thorough knowledge in natural resources, including soils, plants, animals, and more widely in landscape and landscape management in space and time. During centuries indigenous communities have established a strong relationship with their natural environments, and have developed knowledge systems and classificatory frameworks for both biotic and non biotic landscape components. The vision is however integrated, holistic, and society is actually perceived as embedded in nature. Studying these knowledge systems is important because despite their contribution to landscape understanding especially in tropical regions, they run the risk of being lost together with the societies that create them. In addition, in spite of substantial research efforts, these systems have been poorly documented.

The purpose of this article is to document and analyze the ethnogeographic, landscape knowledge in Comachuen, a purepecha community in the State of Michoacán, and to highlight its usefulness in natural resource management. To this end, we developed a co-investigation, participatory scheme, involving a group of community members, with whom we work during several months, in the field, between 2008 and 2010. Field work consisted on geographic transects along forests and cropland, coupled to in-depth interviews, to 24 local producers, all of them native speakers of the purepecha language.1 Participatory mapping was recorded on a hard copy at a detailed scale of a digital elevation model and satellite imagery depicting terrain, and land-use. We thus differentiated terrain and land suitability classes, as well as peasant landscape mapping units. These schemes are hierarchic, and encompass different, nested levels of generalization. The first and second levels are discriminated by climatic conditions, whilst the third corresponds to local landscape classes. These classes recognize either geoforms, as is the case in technical landforms studies, or territorial sites, which are unique and labeled by a toponym (parajes ). In the next level, terrains are classified according to land quality criteria, coupled to localtion, and micro-climate. The most common term is Echér'i, a purépecha concept meaning land or terrain. In Comachuen, three types of terrain are recognized on the basis or color and texture: sandy, red and silty. In turn, these terrains are subdivided according to specific properties concerning quality, particularly for cropland. In conclusion, local, traditional landscape knowledge is able to formulate hierarchic classificatory systems at different geographic scale, encompassing climate, terrain, soil and land-use.

Keywords : Traditional knowledge; Ethnogeography; Ethnopedology; traditional farmlands; Purepecha culture; Michoacán.