Applied environmental history and the armed conflict in Mexico. Reflections for the construction of future emancipators

Abstract

In recent years, applied environmental history in Spanish-speaking countries has exposed a diversity of bridges outside the academy, most of them aimed at the construction of sustainable environments with important social participation. On the other hand, the environmental history of war is a historiographical movement that has been developing in the English language for just over a decade. Most of his contributions focus on the world conflagrations of the 20th century as global history and the impacts they had at national and regional levels. However, in the Global South and specifically in Latin America, this proposal is still very recent. However, there is a wide field of study in which internal armed conflicts with state actors, guerrillas, paramilitaries and organized crime are found. In this sense, the present proposal seeks to create a bridge between applied environmental history and the environmental history of war to study the armed conflict in Mexico. To do this, I take a tour of my professional training so that the events that prompted me to develop both currents are related. In the second instance, some of the most important proposals of applied environmental history are taken up. Subsequently, the approach to the Mexican case is developed; to conclude with the bridge between both fields, by presenting a cartography of the armed conflict in northwest Mexico.