Nature’s Empires in the Ibero-American Borderlands

Environmental history for Latin America has developed an impressive literature over the past quarter century, focused on a number of themes, including the ecological and impacts of the European invasions of the Americas, the kinds of colonial entreprises that fueled the early modern trans-oceanic empires, the dislocation of many indigenous communities, and the development of new settlements and of both indigenous and mixed populations. Environmental, labor, and economic history have often intersected with significant analyses for the topics of mining, sugar plantations, and European livestock for both North and South America. The environmental and imperial histories of the Ibero-American borderlands in the arid mountain ranges and intermontane plains and valleys of northern Mexico or in the internal riverine networks of South America, have adapted these themes to the mobility of the native peoples and to the dispersed patterns of colonial settlement in these regions. The title of this presentation emphasizes the importance of “nature” as an actor in the historical processes that conditioned the uneven development of imperial regimes. The argument on which it centers does not espouse a view of environmental determinism; rather, it underscores the ways in which nature and culture were entwined in the historical construction of borderland spaces in both Spanish and Portuguese America.