Natural Rights: People and Environment in Latin America

In this NACLA Report we look at both growing cooperation and continuing conflict in the name of protecting Latin America's tropical forests and wetlands. In the 1970s and 1980s, during the first flush of international interest in "saving the rainforest," many environmentalists focused on creating protected natural areas like parks that could be fenced off, literally or figuratively, from use by local people, especially poor people who had previously survived by exploiting park land and resources.