An environmental history of Latin America

ABSTRACT

This book, in a series of short historical episodes, narrates the mutually vital and reciprocally mortal relationship between tropical nature and human culture in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with ancient Amerindian civilizations and concludes in today’s pulsating cities, work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin America’s environmental history and argues that tropical nature has played a central role in shaping the region’s historical development. Human attitudes 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, and guano make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanity’s preeminent role in history. Seeing Latin America’s environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that former American civilizations were more powerful than previously thought, and that current civilizations are potentially as vulnerable.