A Sacred Plant, a National Myth: Seth Garfield on Guaraná, Indigenous Science, and the Making of Brazil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2026v16i2.p639-659Abstract
Seth Garfield is Professor in the Department of History and former director of the Brazil Center at the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research spans Brazilian history, environmental history, commodity history, indigenous policy, and the history of race and ethnicity in Latin America. This interview was conducted by Marcos Colón and is published here in recognition of Garfield's singular contribution to Amazonian environmental history — a body of work that reframes the Amazon not as a passive backdrop to Brazilian modernity, but as a site of contested knowledge, indigenous agency, and ecological consequence that scholarship in this field can no longer afford to ignore.
References
Garfield, S. (2001). Indigenous struggle at the heart of Brazil: State policy, frontier expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937–1988. Duke University Press.
Garfield, S. (2013). In search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the nature of a region. Duke University Press.Garfield, S. (2022). Guaraná: How Brazil embraced the world's most caffeine-rich plant. University of North Carolina Press.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Marcos Colón
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