This class was fascinating because I got to study an area of interest that I hadn't yet studied in college (Latin America) in a way that I wouldn't have expected to study it (a focus on interactions with nature). Environmental history can mean a lot of different things, but in this context, it refers to how people groups interact with an environment, and one another, over time through their lifestyle and how they use resources. It can be measured in the ways that people groups treat one another geographically, how people groups trade commodities with one another, how people groups directly affect the environment through resource extraction or their living, etc. It can really be interpreted in a lot of different ways: economically, politically, socially, culturally, religiously.
Why is this a good way to study Latin America? Because many of the squabbles that people have about Latin America have to do with resource allocation (bananas, sugar, rubber, trees, etc), land distribution (Amazon Rainforest), and indigenous peoples (where they are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do, etc).
We looked at resource allocation and land use in these contexts over time, from pre-Columbian indigenous use to the coming of the Spanish and Portuguese to modern day Communist states. A few things that struck me about our conversations were that most of the articles we read were written by so-called "Westerners," non-Latin-Americans. Having family in Brazil, I felt that I had a unique perspective in understanding their point of view that the Amazon belongs to them and not to the world. One perspective that I had not considered is the idea that a lot of members of the Global South have that we have no right over their environment just because we messed ours up -- they shouldn't have to change their consumption patterns because we didn't plan ours economically. Now, there are debates on both sides, and I don't know which one I agree with more, but I can definitely see their point.
I was also struck by how many differing ideas there are about Latin American history and interpreting it. A good way of looking at this is seeing where authors placed blame: on indigenous peoples, on the European conquerers, on Christianity, on governments (both colonial and modern), on capitalism, on communism, on the poor, on the rich ... I think every possible group of people was blamed somewhere in one of the articles we read, but the overarching blame was really placed on the Western world, especially the United States.
The thing that stood out the most to me is how our tastes and whims affect everyone else around the world. This is especially visible right now with the use of corn ethanol. Because we're using corn for fuel instead of food, thousands of people are starving worldwide because there is now a food shortage. This isn't affecting us in the United States so much, but it's affecting developing nations to a large degree ... and corn ethanol isn't even that environmentally friendly ...
Anyway, this was a great way to look at history. It provided a lens through which to look at events and really see why they matter. I think one of the main reasons people don't like history is because they don't see why history matters. Looking at history through a particular lens shows how history has affected people groups and continues to affect us today. Every article that we read said something about Latin America in the past and Latin America in the present, and about the rest of us. Understanding these truths about the past help us make more informed decisions for the future, and decisions that include the whole of creation, and that won't just benefit us, the Western Americans.
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