When they introduced cattle into Guatemala in the 16th century, Europeans also brought a whole new industry involving ranches, slaughterhouses, and new forms of labor. On the one hand, cattle producers had to treat the animals as intact living organisms requiring care and nurture to maintain and increase the herds. Those animals were grown by the ranchers for specific purposes. In the first place, colonial Mesoamerican cattle were raised to produce hides and leather for intercontinental trade with Spain. The regularized disassembling of the bovine bodies created these new products, but it also had some unintended consequences, namely the generation of new subject positions among the indigenous workers of these facilities. New forms of butchering techniques aimed at extracting animal parts were unlike the indigenous practices of animal hunting and exploitation, which aimed at preserving the physical integrity of the animals’ bodies. The newly introduced techniques that involved the compartmentalization of animal bodies also involved an increased compartmentalization of labor, accompanied by new body techniques and gestures. As the butchers and the tanners became enskilled, their bodies changed and so did their hexis. To operationalize these ideas, technological approaches combined with zooarchaeological (butchery marks), ethnographic, and historical evidence are used to investigate how humans and cattle mutually grew each other’s matter and subjectivities.

16世纪，当他们将牛引入危地马拉时，欧洲人还带来了一种全新的产业，包括牧场，屠宰场和新的劳动形式。一方面，养牛者不得不将动物视为完整的活生物体，需要照顾和养育以维持和增加畜群。这些动物是由牧场主为特定目的种植的。首先，饲养中美洲的殖民地牛来生产生皮和皮革，用于与西班牙的洲际贸易。牛体的定期拆卸创造了这些新产品，但也带来了一些意想不到的后果，即在这些设施的土著工人中产生了新的主体职位。旨在提取动物部分的新形式的屠宰技术与本地的狩猎和剥削做法不同，后者旨在维护动物身体的生理完整性。涉及动物身体分隔的新引入的技术还涉及增加的劳动分隔，并伴随着新的身体技术和手势。随着屠夫和制革商的技能增强，他们的身体发生了变化，他们的身体也发生了变化。hexis。为了使这些想法付诸实践，将技术方法与动物考古学（屠杀标记），人种学和历史证据相结合，用于研究人与牛如何相互发展彼此的事物和主观性。