Contributions of Environmental History to the Agrarian History of the Cuenca del Plata, first half of the 19th century

A pedagogical-didactic proposal

Abstract

This communication proposes firstly, a revisit- in line with the contri-butions of Environmental History- to the classic interpretation of historical pro-cesses of the first half of the 19th century in the River Plate Basin, with emphasis on socio-agrarian systems and their relationship with the emergence of forms of political organization that would give way to the laborious and conflictive process of formation of National States, spanning much of that century. Possibilities and challenges of adding to the environment as a historical subject are analyzed, in a concrete space and temporality based on the centrality of a typical form of agrarian production that is the River Plate’s ranche, which for a long time shaped the social, political and cultural relations of the societies in the region and continue projecting themselves in the present, largely resignified, composing transnational territorial identities. Secondly, an institutional and pedagogical contextualization of such challenges is proposed based on the experience in teaching Latin American Rural and Agrarian History in the Postgraduate Program in “Ensino da História e da América Latina” of the Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-americana (UNILA), Brazil. Through the bibliographic review, it is verified that the “greening” of these epistemological area is still a possibility to be developed, regarding the topics and period considered here, but with great potential to renew and autonomize the theoretical-methodological assumptions of the mentioned disciplines.