An Environmental History of Latin America

by Shawn William Miller

• ISBN13: 9780521848534
• ISBN10: 0521848539
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A narration of the mutually mortal historical contest between humans and nature in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with Amerindian civilizations and concludes in the region's present urban agglomerations, the work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin America's environmental history and argues that tropical nature played a central role in shaping the region's historical development. Human attitudes, populations, and appetites, from Aztec cannibalism to more contemporary forms of conspicuous consumption, figure prominently in the story. However, characters such as hookworms, whales, hurricanes, bananas, dirt, butterflies, guano, and fungi make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanity's role in history. Seeing Latin America's environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that human civilizations, ancient and modern, have been simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable than previously thought.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Props and Scenery	p. 1
An Old World Before It Was "New"	p. 8
Shaping Fertile Landscapes	p. 11
Attitudes toward Nature and Consumption	p. 26
People Eating People	p. 36
The Question of Sustainability	p. 40
Nature's Conquests	p. 49
Pestilence	p. 50
Biodiversity's Gains	p. 56
An Enriched Platter	p. 61
Responding to Alien Natures	p. 65
The Colonial Balance Sheet	p. 77
Consuming Sugar	p. 79
Deadly Silver	p. 87
Handcuffed Colonists	p. 91
Tropical Determinism	p. 105
Racist Dogmas	p. 106
Tropical Diseases	p. 112
Natural Disasters	p. 119
Plant Maladies	p. 125
Human Determination	p. 136
Mountains Moved	p. 139
Guano Happened	p. 147
Rivers Reversed	p. 155
Asphyxiated Habitats	p. 167
Urban Traditions	p. 169
Automotive Carnage	p. 176
Curitiba's Present	p. 183
Demographic Futures	p. 189
Developing Environmentalism	p. 193
Conservationism and Wilderness	p. 195
The Limits of Popular Environmentalism	p. 204
Invasions of Paradise	p. 219
Epilogue: Cuba's Latest Revolution	p. 229
Suggested Further Readings	p. 237
Index	p. 249
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