Extracting Nature: Land, Labor, and Loss

Drawings of Measuring New World Flora, 1522 — *Lista de Tributos, 1522, an inventory of tribute. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress*

The environment in the “New World” was diverse and unique, as those who already lived there knew well. This visual tribute list for Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, shows a variety of regional plants and animals. It illustrates how tribute—like feathers, textiles, cochineal—measured a subject region's loyalty and obligation.

Bracero laborers farming cotton — *Bracero Weighing Cotton. Photo by Leonard Nadel/Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, 2004.0138.18.39*

Fast-forward a few centuries, and there was a new approach to the land. One of the most valuable agricultural products in the Americas was cotton. Huge areas of the US south had been transformed into cotton plantations, with the crop extracted by enslaved people. After abolition, making a profit from the plantations required new forms of exploitation, and immigrant labourers were used. Picking cotton was exhausting. These 1950s images show a Texas bracero using a cotton scale to weigh what he harvested, showing how workers’ value was measured by how much they picked—a practice that continues today.

Cotton weighing scales — *Cotton weigh-up scale (steelyard form), CHSI #2024-1-0002, and Cotton weigh-up scale (steelyard form), #2024-1-0002 & Texas cotton weighing scale (spring-balance form) CHSI #2024-1-0003*

These kinds of scales illustrate a new way of measuring both nature and labor. This steelyard scale could weigh up to 300 pounds of cotton, and the Texas cotton scale 160 pounds.

Agricultural Workers Picking Strawberries and Home Depot Bucket — *Agricultural Workers Picking Strawberries (Sonoma, CA, 2010), and All-purpose Bucket from Home Depot. Photo by Zug Zwang, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.*

Crop harvesting continues to be hard work, often done in hot, tiring conditions. Field laborers, like those pictured picking strawberries, often use buckets to measure how much they have gathered, which can determine their wages. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the strawberry fields of California, agricultural workers, such as those pictured here, were told to keep a safe "two pallet" distance from each other. Pallets, brooms, desks, benches, or cars became impromptu pandemic measures that reflected our different life circumstances.