Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present (2020)
Ben Nobbs-Thiessen (Author)
University of North Carolina Press
Edition Details: Book Series: Flows, migrations, and exchanges
Physical Details: 342
Language: English
In the wake of a 1952 revolution, leaders of Bolivia's National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) embarked on a program of internal colonization known as the "March to the East." In an impoverished country dependent on highland mining, the MNR sought to convert the nation’s vast "undeveloped" Amazonian frontier into farmland, hoping to achieve food security, territorial integrity, and demographic balance. To do so, they encouraged hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Bolivians to relocate from the "overcrowded" Andes to the tropical lowlands, but also welcomed surprising transnational migrant streams, including horse-and-buggy Mennonites from Mexico and displaced Okinawans from across the Pacific. Ben Nobbs-Thiessen details the multifaceted results of these migrations on the environment of the South American interior. As he reveals, one of the "migrants" with the greatest impact was the soybean, which Bolivia embraced as a profitable cash crop while eschewing earlier goals of food security, creating a new model for extractive export agriculture. Half a century of colonization would transform the small regional capital of Santa Cruz de la Sierra into Bolivia's largest city, and the diverging stories of Andean, Mennonite, and Okinawan migrants complicate our understandings of tradition, modernity, foreignness, and belonging in the heart of a rising agro-industrial empire.
...MoreReview Erick D. Langer (2022) Review of "Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present". American Historical Review (pp. 527-528).
Review Hanne Cottyn (2021) Review of "Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present". Agricultural History (pp. 202-204).
Review Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas (2022) Review of "Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present". Transfers (pp. 91-99).
Review Leo Chu (2023) Review of "Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 124-126).
Similar Citations
Article
Michael J. Dockry;
Nancy Langston;
(January 2019)
Indigenous Protest and the Roots of Sustainable Forestry in Bolivia
(/isis/citation/CBB998291742/)
Book
Kregg Hetherington;
(2020)
The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops
(/isis/citation/CBB011486830/)
Book
Natalie L. Kimball;
(2020)
An Open Secret: The History of Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion in Modern Bolivia
(/isis/citation/CBB499531185/)
Book
Benjamin Wilkie;
(2020)
Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians
(/isis/citation/CBB747309718/)
Book
Alex Blanchette;
(2020)
Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm
(/isis/citation/CBB310405339/)
Book
Robins, Nicholas A.;
(2011)
Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes
(/isis/citation/CBB001212498/)
Article
Counihan, Christopher;
(2009)
"Going Global": Why Do Multinational Corporations Participate in Highly Skilled Migration?
(/isis/citation/CBB044614191/)
Article
Sabet, M. Gamal;
(2008)
Notes from the Field: Scientific researchers and mobility in the Asia-Pacific region
(/isis/citation/CBB443278394/)
Book
Eagle Glassheim;
(2016)
Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland
(/isis/citation/CBB728021043/)
Article
Chinmay Tumbe;
(2022)
Globalization, Cities, and Firms in Twentieth-Century India
(/isis/citation/CBB177933640/)
Book
Neel Ahuja;
(2021)
Planetary Specters: Race, Migration, and Climate Change in the Twenty-First Century
(/isis/citation/CBB971550548/)
Book
Mark Dowie;
(2011)
Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples
(/isis/citation/CBB236676536/)
Book
Matthew C. Canfield;
(2022)
Translating Food Sovereignty: Cultivating Justice in an Age of Transnational Governance
(/isis/citation/CBB207043598/)
Article
Courtney Fullilove;
(2022)
“Famine Foods” and the Values of Biodiversity Preservation in Israel-Palestine
(/isis/citation/CBB413280713/)
Article
Gael Keig;
Robin L. Hide;
Susan M. Cuddy;
Heinz Buettikofer;
Jennifer A. Bellamy;
Pieter Bleeker;
David Freyne;
John McAlpine;
(2019)
CSIRO and Land Research in Papua New Guinea 1950–2000: Part 2: Post-Independence
(/isis/citation/CBB549870452/)
Chapter Enrique Antonio Mejia; Five decades of soybean agriculture: Soil nitrogen exports and social costs in the Argentine Pampas, 1970-2021 (/isis/citation/CBB119242934/)
Chapter
Evelien de Hoop;
Vleuten, Erik van der;
(2022)
Crisis Narratives from the Dutch Soyacene: Regional Sustainability Histories at Sites of Soy Consumption
(/isis/citation/CBB696556827/)
Article
Amin, Latifah;
Ahmad, Jamil;
Jahi, Jamaluddin Md.;
Nor, Abd. Rahim Md.;
Osman, Mohamad;
Mahadi, Nor Muhammad;
(2011)
Factors Influencing Malaysian Public Attitudes to Agro-Biotechnology
(/isis/citation/CBB001250090/)
Article
Diego Silva;
(September 2021)
Keep Calm and Carry On: Climate-ready Crops and the Genetic Codification of Climate Myopia
(/isis/citation/CBB760093068/)
Book
Amalia Leguizamón;
(2020)
Seeds of power: Environmental injustice and genetically modified soybeans in Argentina
(/isis/citation/CBB173880529/)
Be the first to comment!