Ancient food forestry

Historians will often lump the Indigenous peoples of La Gran Chichimeca (northern Mexico) into two-dimensional categories such as “hunter-gatherers” and other, almost-true categories.  Our hope is to shed light on the complex ways of our ancestors, which don’t always neatly fit into categories created by academics. The southern Guachichiles who lived in San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato were an example of people who not only were hunter-gatherers, but also lived partially sedentary lives within the tunales they called home. Tunales are extensive cactus forests that also include leguminous trees like mesquites and huisaches, succulents such as magueys and yuccas, as well as oak groves, grasslands and shrublands– much like the natural landscapes of the Rio Grande Delta. Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, and Durango have been recorded as the states having the most dense tunales in all of modern day Mexico. Southern Chichimecah were able to achieve partial sedentary lifestyles in these tunales because they were dense, naturally occurring food forests. 

The term food forest is a relatively new one, which is commonly used in the permaculture movement to describe landscaping schemes designed to self-sustain and to bear food. Largely, the native plants of a region already do this when left to their own devices, and so, do not need people to intentionally landscape them. Likewise, the humans of a region are part of the native landscape and naturally fall into symbiotic relationships with the terrains around them when not divorced from the land. The need to utilize permaculture only arises when the symbiosis of a region has been disrupted – something that is almost entirely the vocation of humans. Permaculture is largely a concept created by displaced Europeans in response to observation of Indigenous peoples’ still-existing symbiosis with their environment, and is used to remedy the effects of colonialism and consumerism on the natural world.

Therefore, a tunal is not a food forest in the modern sense of the word, but in the primordial sense. The tunal is a place where well-aged arborescent nopales, monumental mesquites, and hundreds of other kinds of flora and fauna naturally create a biome within a bigger landscape which is mutually beneficial for the life forms therein. In particular, the southern Guachichiles inhabited these tunales and lived in constant conversation with them as part of the delicate web of life which defined the region. 

The habitat which is typical of the Rio Grande Delta is called the Tamaulipan Thornscrub. It is characterized by the same flora and fauna that typify the tunales of La Gran Chichimeca - and similarly bears life sustaining food. In fact, the two habitats seem to be separate mostly only in nomenclature - because they exist on two sides of a border. Our Tamaulipan Thornscrub ecosystem has been nearly eradicated by modern industry, but we believe that the tunal forests of places like Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, Mexico are beacons of light for how the rewilding of south Texas could look and function. If the tunales of northern Mexico are natural food forests, then our precious Thornscrub lands are equally so.