Agriculture and Livestock in Wetlands in the Bogota Plateau (Colombia), Eighteenth Century. Land Use and Wetland Management

Colombia’s agrarian history has traditionally been focused on land tenure and relations of production. However, little is known about farming practices, land use and management, and the transformation of ecosystems. This paper addresses these issues in the Bogota Plateau, a region dominated by the Bogota River. The period being analyzed spans the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century; an era defined by the gradual disappearance of indigenous reservations (in Spanish, resguardos) and the dominance of haciendas. The key primary sources are the reports of European travelers in the region, and the documentary collections of the Archivo General de la Nación (Bogota, Colombia). This paper examines livestock specialization and hydraulic modifications that farmers made spontaneously and informally in order to increase production. This paper also describes farming practices characteristic of the region, including white landowners engaged in farming across micro-climates, an agricultural practice that has been traditionally defined as Indigenous. Agriculturalists also engaged in more typical Spanish agriculture, including the temporary grazing of herds coming from long distances and lower altitudes. Farmers in the Bogota Plateau were involved in the expansion of the pastures as the main land cover and the land use for livestock in the wetlands, and the construction of trenches and ditches for saving the water during droughts, draining of wetlands and diverting the river’s course.