La invención de la selva austral. Bosques y tierras despejadas en la cuenca del río Valdivia (siglos XVI-XIX)

Abstract

This project studies the relationship between cleared forests and lands in the Valdivia region during the 16th and 19th century, understanding that this interaction indicates intervened spaces; human population intervening these forests with aims of making the territory suitable for agriculture and ranching. Since the middle Holocene until the middle of the 19th century, the Valdivia River basin had forests as a main component of its environment. Since the Conquista there was a progressive increase of forests in comparison with cleared lands arranged for agriculture or other human activities from the Tolten River towards south. Nonetheless during the 16th century there was less forest and more cleared and populated areas than in the 19th century and part of the exuberant vegetation found by the voyagers and explorers had less than two centuries of existence due to the demographic decrease forced by the Conquista and the colonization. Moreover there was a strategic change in the form of inhabiting the territory not only by native communities but also by foreign ones, which would have allowed the increase of forests in the region during the 17th and 18th centuries