Synopses & Reviews
In
La Frontera, Thomas Miller Klubock offers a pioneering social and environmental history of southern Chile, exploring the origins of todayandrsquo;s forestry andquot;miracleandquot; in Chile. Although Chileand#39;s forestry boom is often attributed to the free-market policies of the Pinochet dictatorship,
La Frontera shows that forestry development began in the early twentieth century when Chilean governments turned to forestry science and plantations of the North American Monterey pine to establish their governance of the frontierand#39;s natural and social worlds. Klubock demonstrates that modern conservationist policies and scientific forestry drove the enclosure of frontier commons occupied by indigenous and non-indigenous peasants who were defined as a threat to both native forests and tree plantations.
La Frontera narrates the century-long struggles among peasants, Mapuche indigenous communities, large landowners, and the state over access to forest commons in the frontier territory. It traces the shifting social meanings of environmentalism by showing how, during the 1990s, rural laborers and Mapuches, once vilified by conservationists and foresters, drew on the language of modern environmentalism to critique the social dislocations produced by Chileand#39;s much vaunted neoliberal economic model, linking a more just social order to the biodiversity of native forests.
and#160;
Review
andquot;La Frontera is a unique resource, based on outstanding empirical research. It is the first work that I know of to connect state-building in Chile with the settlement of the countryand#39;s southern provinces. Thomas Miller Klubock provides a fluid chronological analysis of the social, cultural, and environmental consequences of more than 150 years of different public policies, capturing the complexity of diverse constituenciesand#39; demands on forests, water, and other natural resources.andquot;
Review
andquot;La Frontera makes central contributions to Chilean historiography and to scholarship on environmentalism, labor history, and agrarian reform. By putting the forest and the evolving environmental crisis in broad historical perspective, Thomas Miller Klubock shows how deeply and fully environmental degradation was a part of the opening up the frontier. His combination of environmental history with social and revisionist political history is path breaking.andquot;
Review
andquot;La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chileand#39;s Frontier Territoryand#160;tells the compelling backstory to Chileand#39;s forestry boom. Indigenous people, settlers and foresters were pushed out through enclosure and fraud, as temperate rainforest was burned to make way first for agriculture, then sterile plantations of Monterey pine.andquot;
Review
and#160;andquot;A much-needed analysis of a region the history of which has been understudied.andquot;and#160;
Review
andldquo;La Frontera brings a great deal to the table; individual chapters provide enough fodder for a weekandrsquo;s seminar meeting. Undergraduates might feel overwhelmed, but as that list of themes indicates, they will find in the book many crucial features of the long twentieth century in Latin America as a whole.With Klubockandrsquo;s telling, we have new ways to understand how Chile experienced those processes.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;La Frontera makes its social subjects come alive. It convincingly shows that the debate over the forest has a long history and that we cannot understand forest policy without taking social history into account. This is political ecology at its best.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In La Frontera, Thomas Miller Klubock offers a pioneering social and environmental history of southern Chile, exploring the origins of today s forestry "miracle" in Chile. Although Chile's forestry boom is often attributed to the free-market policies of the Pinochet dictatorship, La Frontera shows that forestry development began in the early twentieth century when Chilean governments turned to forestry science and plantations of the North American Monterey pine to establish their governance of the frontier's natural and social worlds. Klubock demonstrates that modern conservationist policies and scientific forestry drove the enclosure of frontier commons occupied by indigenous and non-indigenous peasants who were defined as a threat to both native forests and tree plantations. La Frontera narrates the century-long struggles among peasants, Mapuche indigenous communities, large landowners, and the state over access to forest commons in the frontier territory. It traces the shifting social meanings of environmentalism by showing how, during the 1990s, rural laborers and Mapuches, once vilified by conservationists and foresters, drew on the language of modern environmentalism to critique the social dislocations produced by Chile's much vaunted neoliberal economic model, linking a more just social order to the biodiversity of native forests.
"
About the Author
Thomas Miller Klubock is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chileandrsquo;s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904andndash;1951, and a coeditor of The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics, both also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Maps x
Introduction 1
1. Landed Property and State Sovereignty on the Frontier 29
2. Natural Disorder: Ecological Crisis, the State, and the Origins of Modern Forestry 58
3. Forest Commons and Peasant Protest on the Frontier, 1920s and 1930s 90
4. Changing Landscapes: Tree Plantations, Forestry, and State-Directed Development after 1930 118
5. Peasants, Forests, and the Politics of Social Reform on the Frontier, 1930s-1950s 145
6. Agrarian Reform and State-Directed Forestry Development, 1950s and 1960s 176
7. Agrarian Reform Arrives in the Forests 208
8. Dictatorship and Free-Market Forestry 239
9. Democracy, Environmentalism, and the Mapuche Challenge to Forestry Development 268
Conclusion 298
Notes 309
Bibliography 361
Index 373