matanza

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

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 […]

[…] 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.

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

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 […]

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