Introduction to the Dialogues on Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Since colonial times, natural resources in the Americas have allowed for a new energetic pattern of rationalized extraction to emerge globally. During the nineteenth century, as Latin American independent nations began to emerge, nature was a key focus of the local societies: debates on national identity, energy, agriculture, economy, progress, and civilization all revolved around the management of the environment. Colonial traditions of extraction and nonsustainable practices embedded in hegemonic cultural models were entangled with alternative subjectivities of ecological sensibility and agents of local resistance that arose in the same period, creating a particularly rich ecosystem. In this panorama, art and visual culture played a fundamental role in promoting ideas, creating mental images, and shaping practices toward different environments. The essays presented here aim at reflecting on the entanglements of art and ecology throughout Latin America during the nineteenth century. We focus on two central themes: landscape as the site of different socioecological processes and extractivism as the predominant operative form of capitalism from the sixteenth century on. Our hope is that examining the specificities of the Latin American case will reveal the complexities that connects Latin America to global environmental histories, contributing to the conversation on art and ecology in the face of the environmental crisis.