Landscapes of Freedom

Claudia Leal is an associate professor in the Department of History at Universidad de Los Andes in BogotÁ, Colombia. She has served as co-president of the Latin American and Caribbean Society of Environmental History (SOLCHA).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsVoyages into the Rainforest: An Introduction in Three ActsPART I: AN EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY1. Slave Mining and Emancipation2. Freedom and the Persistence of Extraction3. Traders in Natural Commodities4. The Politics of Natural Resource AccessPART II: RACIALIZED LANDSCAPES5. Blackness, Forests, and Nation6. Urban Dreams and NightmaresConclusion: A People and an Environment with HistoryNotesBibliographyIndex

““The book is an important contribution to the emerging body of historical literature on Afro-Colombia, the environmental history of the Pacific, and the perennial question of how to study tropical resource extraction.”- Choice;“Landscapes of Freedom offers a significant alternative historical trajectory by demonstrating how Afro-Colombians’ experience of freedom has been mediated by a particular rainforest environment. This book should be read not only by Latin American environmental historians but also by any scholar interested in the dynamic political economies and ecologies of natural resource extraction.”- Environmental History;““Claudia Leal successfully presents an enjoyable account of overlooked as-pects in the scholarship such as the constant defense of autonomy in the Pacific lowland rainforest. The book's success is its turn away from the exploitative emphasis the extractive economies to uncover the lowland rainforest landscape as a historical setting in which oppressed people exercised agency.”- European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies““This may be the most significant scholarly work on Colombia’s Pacific lowlands in the last fifty years. Its content is totally new and original. Leal straddles environmental history, social history, economic history, and geography, showing a mastery of each.”- Kris Lane, author of The Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires““This book examines a unique region of Latin America, the Pacific coast rainforests of Colombia, that we have long needed to know more about. Connecting Afro-Latin American history to environmental history, it makes major contributions to both fields. And it forcibly reminds us of the immense importance of tropical rainforests—both their presence and their absence—in our collective past and present.”- George Reid Andrews, author of Afro-Latin America: Black Lives