Insects, illness, and other biological contestations

For eight consecutive years, from 1798 to 1806, locust swarms repeatedly afflicted a significant portion of colonial Central America and southern Mexico. The locusts had economic, food supply, and biological effects on human populations far beyond the areas of the swarms' physical and temporal presence. They also intersected with significant outbreaks of epidemic disease, including smallpox, measles, and typhus, during the same time period. These events, and economic, political, and religious responses to the insects, provides a case study in colonial food security, where various regions in Spanish America shared information on the swarms and their movements and came to each other's aid with food supplies and seeds. They diverted tributary Indigenous labor from agricultural production to locust-killing campaigns. Local elites and members of scientific societies attempted agricultural innovation strategies and searched for new locust-killing methods amid this multiyear swarm.