Understanding commodity frontier expansions in Latin America

Understanding commodity frontier expansions in Latin America: Combining environmental history and political economy

This seminar traces my research trajectory that combines insights from environmental history and political economy to analyze the social-ecological transformations of agrofood commodity expansion in Latin America. I focus on commodity frontiers: dynamic zones where capital, nature, and social relations are reconfigured to incorporate new lands and resources into global circuits of production, often through processes of extraction, displacement, and ecological simplification. My doctoral work on subnational soybean commodity frontiers in Argentina revealed the role of history and place in the dynamics of expansion and attendant soil nutrient losses, a structural cost of global market integration. My current research shifts to Mexico, tracing how a U.S.-dependent industrial livestock sector drives demand for cheap animal feed, pressuring smallholder farmers and maize agrobiodiversity, creating a new frontier of conflict.

Building on this, I am developing a new project to examine the subnational maize frontier in the Valles Abajeños of Guanajuato, Mexico. Using a longue durée perspective and mixed methods, it aims to understand how history, trade, and technology drive industrial maize production for feed rather than food, threatening genetic diversity and forcing farmers to navigate adoption, adaptation, and resistance. Collectively, this work shows how commodity frontiers evolve—from Argentine soy to North American industrial livestock to Mexican maize—systematically displacing social and ecological costs. By linking historical legacies with contemporary pressures, my research aims to inform more equitable and sustainable rural futures.

Enrique is currently a guest  at the Centre for Anthrpocene History.