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This article begins by analyzing the possible interpretations of the Spanish word el monte. In Lydia Cabrera's El monte it is a cosmos or a setting where the spirits are born, where they reside, it is their oikos, their home, precisely where they decide on man's fate, and everything that is necessary to perform magic. In the monte of the herbalists and the santeros, everything that is natural is also supernatural. Through an ecocritical approach to Lydia Cabrera's representation of the monte —work considered to be the santería bible— this article analyzes Cabrera's monte not as a forest primeval or nature untouched but through Cuban environmental history. In other words, through the idea of nature regarded simply like a raw material to be exploited, as well as a history of indifference to the protection of the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]