Caminos, ciencia y Estado en el Perú, 1850-1930

Abstract

ResumenEl objetivo de este estudio es brindar una visión panorámica de la relación entre el desarrollo de los estudios naturalistas con el control del territorio en el Perú desde mediados del siglo XIX hasta las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Durante esta etapa se produjo un notable desarrollo científico -tanto de investigadores como de instituciones académicas -que recibieron el respaldo del Estado peruano que empezaba a contar con mas recursos después del periodo de relativa inestabilidad que se sucedió a la Independencia en 1821. Aunque este desarrollo fue fragmentado y discontinuo permitió la elaboración de los primeros mapas, estudios geográficos y naturalistas, establecimiento de vías de comunicación y estuvo justificado por su potencial contribución a una economía de exportación y al prestigio cultural de elites civiles.

INICIOS DE LA PSICOLOGÍA OBJETIVA EN EL INTERIOR DEL PERÚ (1910 y 1935)

“…A partir de 1890 se produce una serie de cambios en Arequipa con repercusiones en regiones vecinas (Contreras & Cueto, 2008). La extensión del ferrocarril hacia Cusco y Puno y el auge de los precios de la lana de camélidos y del caucho de la selva multiplican los negocios: las minas (con capitales estadounidenses y británicos), las empresas de transporte, de construcción civil, agrícolas e industriales, además de curtiembres, fundiciones y molinos.…”

Extractivist Geographies: Mining and Development in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Peru

“…In recent years scholars have called into question the extent of mining stagnation during the nineteenth century, noting that representations like Raimondi’s of an economy in decline overlooked both mining activities undertaken by indigenous miners in places like Huancavelica (Díaz and Contreras, 2008) and significant regional economic impacts of mining activity organized and controlled by nonindigenous miners in places like Cerro de Pasco (Deustua, 2000). Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century, modernizing Peruvian elites commonly considered mining an underdeveloped industry, one that with proper state support, infrastructural development, and capital investment could be catalyzed to stimulate economic development, increase government revenues, and support state efforts to integrate the country’s diverse peoples and regions into the Peruvian nation (Contreras and Cueto, 2008; Cueto, 1989).…”

“…Among the subsequent efforts by state actors to encourage mining and other resource development in Peru’s Andean region was the direct and indirect sponsorship of mining-related technoscientific development, including expedition-based scientific inquiry directed at identifying and cataloging the country’s mineral and other resource endowments (Contreras and Cueto, 2008). According to Marcos Cueto (1989), during the late nineteenth century Peruvian elites, influenced by the positivism emanating from Europe, thought that developing the country’s economy and unifying the nation required systematic knowledge of Peruvian territory and its resources, which, until then, had been largely unknown from an empirical and scientific perspective.…”

“…The Peruvian state thus fostered an expansion of “resource science” by funding individual scientists—for instance, Raimondi, who was given the title “Geólogo Consultor del Estado” (Consultant Geologist to the State)—and by supporting the creation of scientific institutions. These included the Escuela Especial de Construcciones Civiles y de Minas (Special School for Civil Construction and Mining), founded in 1876, and the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima (Lima Geographical Society), established in 1891 as a unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Contreras and Cueto, 2008; López-Ocón Cabrera, 1995; López Soria, 2012). These institutions sponsored expeditions into Peru’s interior that were aimed at generating knowledge of its territorial features, including its minerals.…”

“…He was not alone in this. Indeed, such thinking underpinned a “scientific nationalism” that emerged in Peru in the late nineteenth century (Contreras and Cueto, 2008). Meanwhile, the support of Meiggs signaled that Ancash was being positioned not just for national integration but also for international integration as a mining frontier for the late-nineteenth-century global economy.…”