Placing her study at the intersection of ecocritical, labor, ethnic, animal, and women's studies, Beatriz Rivera-Barnes demonstrates how exploitation cheapens humans, animals, and nature's bounties.

Rivera-Barnes explores the treatment of nature, animals, and fellow human beings in what Cary Wolfe describes what is ontologically and chronologically “before the law.” Offering close readings of canonical Hispanic texts largely focusing on the 20th century, the author utilizes ecofeminism to explore instances of degradation of nature, animals, and women in these texts.