Since pre-Colonial times, Latin American history has been molded by humankind's relationship to its environment. Not only have humans manipulated the land for agricultural, economic and geopolitical gains, but Latin America's diverse environments also have shaped and been shaped by numerous social imaginaries. Such "social uses of nature"-to use sociobiologist Neil Evernden's term-determine cultural identities and how different cultures understand and interact with their environments and each other (The Social Creation of Nature 1992). Beginning with key indigenous texts, we will look at how non-Western cultures both conceive of and use nature in order to question our own views and uses of what is "natural." Moving chronologically from the age of first contacts to the present, we will also take stock of how gender, class, ethnic and postcolonial issues inflect representations of humanity's relationship with the environment.