Abstract Despite dramatic changes in rural Latin America over the past century that ofen excluded rural smallholders, peasants, and indigenous peoples, these same populations continue to assert agency and initiate solutions to meet their own needs and goals. Tis special issue focuses on transformations in rural Latin America, examining how marginalized and rural populations both already are and can increasingly become key actors in generating emancipatory transfor- mations within the context of a changing climate. Acknowledging that climate change is just part of a “tsunami of change” that rural people are facing, these papers explore how climate and other challenges are negotiated on the ground. In this introduction, we focus on transforma- tion as a concept, suggesting that it provides an important conceptual tool with which to inte- grate emancipatory politics into these multiple processes of change. Tis introduction draws out some considerations for emancipatory transformation. We suggest that climate change is, in some ways, a red herring, drawing atention away from the ways in which vulnerabilities are produced in particular spatio-temporal contexts. In addition, we suggest that transformations should be considered as hybrid, multiple, and intersectional; a static or monolithic vision of transformation belies the messy realities that rural people face in their everyday lives. Keywords: transformation, rural, Latin America, agrarian change, climate change, double exposure Resumen Los cambios dramáticos en las zonas rurales de América Latina durante el siglo pasado han excluido a los agricultores rurales, los campesinos y los pueblos indígenas, estas mismas perso- Rural Transformation in Latin America’s Changing Climate Benjamin P. Warner Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico Marygold Walsh-Dilley Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of New Mexico Jami Nelson-Nuñez Department of Political Science, University of New Mexico Chris S. Duvall Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY 19(3), 10–25