The socio-environmental impact of mining in a peripheral Andean region, 1776–1831

Abstract

From an environmental-historical perspective, this research seeks to contribute to the characterization of mining and metallurgy developed in the late 18th and early 19th century in the Argentine Cuyo region (Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luis). It also examines their role in the region’s sociohistorical dynamics, particularly in the appropriation of available natural resources and the strategies employed in mining labor. The relationship among economic activities, the environmental configuration of the Cuyo territory, and the social agents that lived there have been analyzed through four case studies that allow an understanding of the central role of socio-political causes in the definition of environmental transformations.