Landscape construction in the modern history of Chile and Latin America. Approaches from animal domestication, technology, and infrastructure.

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Our panel examines different approaches to studying environmental history in modern Chilean and Latin American history. From the domestication of animals in the north, the engineering technocracy around hydroelectricity in the central valley, to the birth of ecotourism in the south after the great Valdivia earthquake of 1960 and the insertion of large technical infrastructures in Santiago de Chile. The panelists will discuss how their work has incorporated theoretical and methodological contributions from environmental history; what new perspectives environmental history has brought to their studies; when it presents alternative periodization to the national state, and the consequences for historiographic narrative proposals. This panel joins the strong development of environmental history in Chile and Latin America and it wishes to contribute with approaches that complexity the relationships of the environment with technology, infrastructure, and animals. To this end, panelists will draw on textual and visual evidence to analyze the intersection between history and environment and the construction of landscapes, both extractive and tourist ideals. Ángela Vergara examines the domestication of the chinchilla in the early 20th century in northern Chiles, analyzing how extractive landscapes are not static. Jimmy Del Rio explores the consequences of the development of ecotourism after the Valdivia earthquake and the birth of specific tourist landscapes linked to the beauty of southern Chile. Peter de Montmollin explores how scientists and engineers understood and managed uncertainty in the water cycle during the 20th century. Finally, Yohad Zacarias presents the insertion of electrical substations in Santiago de Chile as the connection between the urban and the rural through electrical technology and the construction of techno-electrical landscapes.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• Domesticating Extraction: Chinchilla Farms and Breeders (1900s-1940s) - Ángela Vergara, History Department California State University, Los Angeles.

• Valdivia: Selling the Environment, Creating Ecotourism during the Cold War - Jimmy Del Río, Universidad de Oklahoma

• Making Predictable Rivers: Experts, Droughts, and Floods in 20th Century Chile - Peter de Montmollin, University of British Columbia

• Substations and technological spaces: energy and representations in Santiago de Chile during the first part of the 20th century. - Yohad Zacarias, The University of Texas. Austin

Chair

• Timothy Lorek, College of St. Scholastica