Beyond Exports: Commodities, Society, and Environmental Change in Latin America

AHA Session 95
Conference on Latin American History 20
Labor and Working-Class History Association 8
Friday, January 8, 2027: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Napoleon Ballroom B1 (Sheraton New Orleans, 3rd Floor)
Chair:
John Soluri, Carnegie Mellon University
Papers:
Internal Circuits, Hidden Ecologies: Tobacco, Capital Circulation, and Environmental Degradation in the Colombian Andes
Nicolas Felipe Rueda Rey, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Avocados Without Borders? Ecology and Inequality in the NAFTA Era
Viridiana Hernández Fernández, University of Iowa
Production of Coffee by Means of Commodities in Early 19th-Century Brazil
Christian Robles-Baez, Stanford University
Microhistories of Capitalism and Global Goods in Mid-19th-Century Colombia
Ana María Otero-Cleves, University of York
Comment:
John Soluri, Carnegie Mellon University

Session Abstract

Few regions have shaped the material foundations of the modern world as profoundly as Latin America. Commodities cultivated, extracted, or produced in the region—such as avocados, coffee, textiles, tobacco, and other licit and illicit goods—have become embedded in everyday life far beyond their places of origin, while also driving major economic, political, and social transformations on a global scale. At the same time, these commodities have been fundamental to the making of Latin American economies and societies: they have generated national growth and wealth, but also entrenched inequalities, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation.

This panel brings together papers that examine the histories of commodities in modern Latin America from a multi-scalar and relational perspective. Rather than treating commodities primarily through the lens of export markets, the panel invites contributions that explore commodities across interconnected scales—local, national, regional, and global—and that analyze how commodities shaped, and were shaped by, local traditions, consumption patterns, political power, cultural practices, social relations, and environmental change.

By approaching commodities not merely as economic goods but as political, cultural, and environmental assemblages, the panel seeks to illuminate the complex processes through which commodity production, circulation, and consumption have structured Latin American societies. In doing so, it aims to contribute to broader debates about capitalism, sustainability, and the future of commodity-based economies in Latin America and the world

See more of: AHA Sessions
<< Previous Session | Next Session >>