The urban experience in Latin America is explained less by the opposition between the countryside and the city, than by the image of a continuum—highlighting the integration of cities into rural economies, extractivist communities, and into the Latin American landscape in general.
The history of the tropical forests of Latin America and the Caribbean goes well beyond the much discussed deforestation that gathered such momentum starting in the 1960s and 70s. The extraction of timber and other resources, such as rubber, has altered the structure of some forests by depleting the species of precious woods and multiplying rubber trees. But despite efforts to nationalize these vast forested domains, their incorporation remains elusive.
The social history of the La Plata River Basin has been intrinsically tied to its landscapes and their transformation. This article divides the history of this region into three overarching periods in a process of intensifying natural resource use.
This article looks at the history of the plant Erythroxylum coca—a natural source of cocaine—which offers one way to trace the interaction between a physiological agent in history and the growth of empires.
Esta colección reúne a algunos de los académicos más destacados en el estudio de las historias ambientales de América Latina y el Caribe para proponer nuevas perspectivas sobre el desarrollo poscolonial del continente. Estos ensayos narran historias variadas de interacciones complejas entre grupos sociales, estados y sus ambientes, y proveen nuevos ángulos para enriquecer las interpretaciones más conocidas.
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This collection brings together leading scholars on the environments of Latin America and the Caribbean to give us new and alternative narratives of the postcolonial history of the continent.
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Sherry Johnson, Carson Fellow from January 2010 until July 2010, talks about her research on the history of disasters and climatology and the related environmental, social, and political changes.
Imperfect Balance offers a balance of accessible writing and scholarly approaches to understanding the Western Hemisphere’s incredibly diverse landscapes, the human forces that shaped them, and the impact of this interaction on sustained human settlement.
Reinaldo Funes Monzote traces the history of the Latin American and Caribbean Society of Environmental History, also known as SOLCHA.
Drawing on historical and environmental research, this essay examines long-term trends in the ways that mining affected labour and the environment in Latin America.
