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Accepted Contribution:
Poorer farmers, poorer soils: environment and tenure in Uruguay’s frustrated land reform
Emiliano Travieso
(Carlos III University of Madrid)
My research interests: My contribution to the “Water, Land, and Power in the Twentieth Century” roundtable examines Uruguay's land reform project of the 1960s. I use this (ultimately frustrated) initiative as a vantage point to examine the interaction between land tenure and environmental degradation in the country, with reference to preceding history since late-colonial times. I map and analyse data on land ownership, land use, and erosion to show that in the twentieth century Uruguay’s grasslands deteriorated while tenure institutions and landholding patterns were unable to change in response to these new environmental conditions. I argue this story challenges the standard economic history approaches to the environment, which usually frame it as a time-invariant set of variables (in models inspired by development economics) or as a deep structure that only changes at a glacial pace (in the Braudealian framework).
My interest in this panel: This roundtable brings economic and environmental history into dialogue with one another in potentially novel ways. It will provide an opportunity for reciprocal comparisons of historical experiences where economic logic and concerns about environmental sustainability interacted.