Latin American political ecology is a theoretical framework for thinking about nature-society relations and the ecological transition that has emerged over the last 25 years and today represents a veritable reference in the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking world. This article presents the trajectory and ramifications of this ‘encompassing’ theoretical framework. It shows how it developed within and in response to the Anglophone literature of political ecology, but has since asserted its own influences and objects of study, drawing on elements shared with broader paradigms of the social sciences —such as post-structuralism and the ontological turn— but also on its own epistemological references —notably Latin American critical thought, decolonial studies, and various key concepts developed from this specific Southern geography, as well as a perhaps unparalleled partnership between academic and activist circles. We show that this framework, in which emancipation plays a key role for conceiving sustainable futures based on the creative potential of everyday actors, offers an interesting conceptual lens for the thinking of current social and ecological crises and specifically for an empirical analysis of the agroecological transition of food systems.