The Legacy of Oil: The Oil City and the Social Struggle for Energy in Latin America

Diplôme Thèse The Legacy of Oil: The Oil City and the Social Struggle for Energy in Latin America eng 2025-12-08 2025-12-08 author Becker Lukas 405849 director Acker Antoine 403900 Département d'histoire générale (ISTG1) 270 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:190596 urn:nbn:ch:unige-1905966 L. 1197 This thesis investigates the oil city in Latin America in the 20th and 21st centuries as the key node in the long process of turning oil from a natural carbon sink – produced by planet Earth across millions of years – into an energy source and commodity by humankind. Through archival research and fieldwork in the cities of Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentina, Barrancabermeja in Colombia, and Ciudad del Carmen in Mexico, the thesis emphasizes the historical and contemporary significance of these oil cities. It explores how petroleum has shaped their social, cultural, and environmental landscapes. The thesis argues for the importance of studying these places as an ecosystem of archives and embodied habits crucial to a local understanding of the dynamics and realities of the Anthropocene on the ground. By examining these oil cities, the aim is to place Latin America at the forefront of global oil history, highlighting the region's critical role in energy production and the ongoing debates surrounding resource sovereignty, labor rights, and environmental justice. Particularly, Latin America offers a critical perspective on national control over energy sources, revealing how this carries both the potential for emancipatory ideals but also exclusionary politics. The thesis foregrounds the concept of memorialization, showing how oil’s legacy is actively remembered and reproduced through literature, monuments, festivals, and other cultural practices as well as in the minutia of daily life. The thesis argues that this memorialization has also created a cultural path-dependency tied to oil, revealing a further piece of the multi-faceted challenge of moving away from fossil fuels. Dewey 900 90 Département d'histoire générale 3H false 044a4f56-0489-48c2-8cee-b75d9aad4918 Thesis Public PhD_Thesis_Lukas_Becker_The_Legacy_.pdf 8984563 application/pdf 189148f3920e25bcedccdf74b611d683a4767343f0455aaea1e77f86d276e1dc ae39615e-76d6-4c54-9fc1-c09fbd614932 Imprimatur Public Imprimatur_BECKER.pdf 60951 application/pdf d6a80e884d8f933c32b3610487b4ce00c6752ff724a2ab6def266aca7d7e5dd9 openAccess Faculté des lettres / Département d'histoire générale

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The Legacy of Oil: The Oil City and the Social Struggle for Energy in Latin America				2025	22	5

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Becker, Lukas

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