Abstract

AMARIS-CERVANTES, Orlando. No Plants, No Trees: Grass expansion in the Costa Rican Cantons of Mora and Puriscal, First Half of the 20^th Century. Historelo.rev.hist.reg.local [online]. 2023, vol.15, n.32, pp.175-207.  Epub Dec 16, 2022. ISSN 2145-132X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/historelo.v15n32.97417.

This article describes how African grasses and cattle varieties from India modified land use of peripheral zones in Costa Rica, specifically in the cantons of Mora and Puriscal. During the early decades of the 20th century, the expansion of a particular grass called Calinguero -Melinis multiflora in these areas was of key relevance, as promoted by Revista de la Escuela Nacional de Agricultura, a scientific dissemination publication. To reconstruct these production transformations and their effects on the landscape in these two cantons, we used primary sources such as archival documents, publications of the time, and interviews with farmers and octogenarian stockbreeders of both cantons; additionally, we used secondary sources that allow us to understand this part of the environmental history of this Central American country, specifically regarding non-coffee regions engaged in food production. Finally, the selection of the grasses sown consisted of varieties from tropical latitudes included in the commercial routes organized by the Europeans. Thus, grasses were predominant over other species and other production surfaces, evidencing an ecological simplification that was more marked than the one that took place in agroecosystems such as polycultures and coffee plantations.

Keywords : environmental history; grasses; stockbreeding; Costa Rica; environmental transformations.

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