The dual myths of virgin land to conquer and El Dorado to exploit have been the central images in the imaginary of land usage in Latin American. These metaphors are essential to the understanding of the genealogy of the Anthropocene in the region from the Conquista up to today. We start with the idea that homo sapiens have always altered their habitats.

Since the colonial conquests, societal relationships with nature in many parts of the Americas have been dominated by the extraction of metals and mineral resources. – especially gold, silver, zinc, copper, coal, and oil. The history of the entire continent has been shaped by the flows of extractivism and by making available and extracting (first) human, biomass and (later) fossil energy that enabled and intensified these flows (Topik 2006; Bakewell 1971).

Within the theme of the Anthropocene as multiple crisis, we structure this volume about water around problems that each can encapsulate certain periods of time. Two beliefs brought us to propose this structure. First, both between the ones who first minted the term and the Latin American investigators that use it, it is mutually understood that the Anthropocene began at the end of the 18th century with the creation of the steam engine (i.e.