Wilderness as an Adjective—Latin American Spanish

This chapter of the “Wilderness Babel” exhibition, written by geographer María José Barragán-Paladines, highlights the immense spectrum of variations of wilderness within the Spanish-speaking world that make the term a rich and complex source for semantics.

Wilderness Babel: What Does Wilderness Mean in Your Language?

What does wilderness mean in your language? Listen to words for “wilderness” and learn about their political and historical meanings in different regional contexts. “Wilderness Babel” is a collaboration with the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, edited by Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg. Its international contributions are still growing.

This version 2, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition (view PDF here) and applies the Environment & Society Portal’s responsive layout.

Marcus Hall and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, eds.

About the author

Barragán Paladines, María José

Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research GmbH (ZMT), Germany

María José Barragán-Paladines obtained a PhD in Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. After her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, she pursued a MSc degree in Sustainable Resource Management at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where she addressed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and wildlife management. Later, a shift in her interests and research focus took her to Canada where she brought together the human dimensions perspective and the interactive governance approach, applied to marine resources governance and protected areas settings. In past years she conducted research about MPAs governance (e.g., Galapagos Marine Reserve) in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, integrating small-scale fisheries, tourism, and coastal-marine resources and communities. She was formerly involved with the Too Big to Ignore (TBTI) Project–Global Partnership for Small-scale fisheries Research. Currently, she is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the “Development and Knowledge Sociology” Working Group at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, ZMT, in Bremen, Germany. Her current research focus concerns governance of coastal-marine resources in Latin America, with special attention to the small-scale fishing resources and fishing communities. She can be reached at mariaj.barraganp@leibniz-zmt.de.