Patrick Chasse PhD

Patrick is a Ph.D. candidate studying environmental history in Guatemala. He graduated with an M.A. in history from the University of Victoria in 2007. He documented the short-lived Scottish colony established in the Darien Gap between Panama and Columbia at the turn of the 18th century. This project was his first exploration of themes that continue to guide his work, including environment, ideas about food, and indigenous issues in Latin America. In 2008, Patrick travelled to Guatemala as a CIDA intern. He lived in remote a Kaqchikel community, teaching History and English and harvesting corn and tomatoes in his spare time. In 2010, he spent several months learning about organic coffee production from the CCDA, an indigenous-campesino group advocating for sustainable agriculture. Patrick began his Ph.D. in 2010. His dissertation explores the environmental and social consequences of the industrialization of agriculture in Guatemala. His case study is the Pacific Coast cotton boom, 1949-1980. He is using historical GIS techniques, maps and records from the agrarian reform (1952-1954) and census data to reconstruct land use and displacement in this understudied region. He is a member of the Sustainable Farming Systems (SFS) project based at the University of Saskatchewan. In May 2014 Patrick will be undertaking a research sojourn to work with SFS partners at Pablo de Olavide University in Sevilla.