Argentina -almost 3 million km2- is linked economically, socially and politically to the rural production and trade. First, it was linked through livestock (jerky, fat, and leather), and by the end of nineteenth century through extensive agriculture, joined to rail expansion and massive...

While most Latin American countries followed outward-looking policies of agrarian development, since the 1990s Cuba shifted towards food self-provisioning, internal liberalisation and sustainable small farming to face the harsh crisis that followed the Socialist demise of the late 1980s....

The production of yerba mate was a determining factor in the colonisation of the province of Misiones (Argentina) and is a central point in its economy. The period studied here begins in 1926, when President Marcelo T. de Alvear passed a number of decrees allowing the first agricultural colonies...

Costa Rica has been a great example of the neoliberal approach to agricultural policy implemented during the last two decades in most Latin American countries. Costa Rica shifted from import substitution industrialisation (ISI) to export-led growth and what the government and international...

This study aims at evaluating the land registry records of the mid-1850s in Brazil as a source capable of delivering consistent elements for the analysis of the process of occupation and use of the land, particularly regarding the natural conditions or limitations determined by the relief and...

The aim of this work is to exploit the information contained in an isolated but very dense source: the cash book of the Spanish merchant Esteban Gonzalez de Linares. Moved to Caracas between 1785 and 1791 to manage the liquidation of the estate of Sebastian de Mier y Terán, a wealthy landowner...

In times of Modern Argentina (1880-1930) marginality is part of the agro- export model; structured around Buenos Aires port and the Pampas livestock-cereal, the recipient of massive immigration, growing urbanization and foreign investment concentration. Marginality does not always mean...

While the rest of Latin America followed outward-looking policies of agrarian development during the 1990s and early 2000s, Cuba implemented an inward-looking model during this period. In the midst of the most severe crisis in its history, the Special Period, Cuba dramatically shifted from...

This paper focus on the history of River Plate’s exports of hides from 1760 to 1860, a century that ran from the beginning of the Bourbon reforms in America until the beginning of the “first globalization”. The aim of this paper is to show some basic magnitudes of this crucial commodity in...

The aim of this paper is to show that rather than the municipality and the crown playing no role in water management in the Huerta de Valencia (the fertile farming lands around the city of Valencia), they were in fact political authorities that were heavily involved in this decision-making. I...