matanza

plural matanzas

1. USA place where animals are slaughtered, for their hides, meat, tallow, etc, particularly in a Latin American context; a slaughterhouse.

   There is a great variety of products of the matanza. Here I describe three of the most widely appreciated ones: the dried ham, whose fat is choice tocino, the sausage called chorizo and the preserved loin and ribs of pork.

   1997, Jessica Kuper, The Anthropologists' Cookbook, →ISBN, page 30

   3 more examples

   Captain Hall has given a very excellent description of a matanza, the slaughtering place of a large hacienda, where cattle are killed in numbers with the view of making charqui : the fleshy parts alone are used, all the soft fat being carefully cut off […]

   1826, John Miers, Travels in Chile and La Plata, page 310

   […] a "tramp bitch," whose puppies had been captured in the neighborhood of the matanza. The beef-packery is guarded at night by a dozen ugly-looking mastiffs, and the tramp dogs generally give the establishment an extensive berth; but […] They used to sit in groups on the slope of a little hill near the matanza, appealing to the charity of the proprietor by yelping in chorus every now and then. There was so much waste stuff around the place that the captain concluded to grant their petition, and, by way of encouragement, sent them a car-load of beef-bones and "rippings," instructing the driver to scatter the scraps between the hill and the bone-pit.

   1882, Felix Leopold Oswald, Zoological Sketches, page 179

   Before the matanza could open for business (and stay in business), nine different regulating authorities had to sign off, including organic certification, transportation, the state Environment Department, weights and measures licensing, the Livestock Board, the USDA, and even Homeland Security.

   2015, Courtney White, Two Percent Solutions for the Planet, page 45

2. USA slaughter, as of cattle or pigs (for their hides, meat, etc), of tuna, or of people; the act of butchering or slaughtering.

   […] but this wasn't a matanza with family and vecinos helping, this was Sonny lying in the dark forest […]

   2015, Rudolfo Anaya, Jemez Spring, Open Road Media, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   The slaughtering period (matanza) lasts usually a month, and is a holiday for the shepherds, […] and fatten themselves and their families for a long time with sheep's heads and livers. The cooked meat, from which the fat has been extracted (carne de chito), lies there in complete mountains after a matanza : it is bought up by the dealers and conveyed to the villages, where the Indians buy it at the market for a mere trifle […]

   1859, Carl Christian Wilhelm Sartorius, Mexico: Landscapes and popular sketches, page 190

   A matanza was another busy time for the Spaniards. This was the butchering or killing of the cattle for their hides.

   1903, Rosa Viola Winterburn, The Spanish in the Southwest, page 189

   […] the Genoese established a colony at Tabarka on the coast of Tunisia between 1540 and 1742 specializing in coral-fishing, and where Tunisian fishermen have now joined Sicilian fleets in the matanza, the great seasonal slaughter of tuna.

   2011, David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 641

   Tomorrow he would help his grandpa and the neighbors in the matanza. It was early in the morning; Diego was already awake, anticipating the job that his grandpa had given him. Today is the matanza; Grandpa was having his usual […]

   2020, Marvin Guadalupe Romero, Mestizo the Old Man, →ISBN