Thirsty Country: State, Water, and the “War on Drought” in Chile in the 1960s

Abstract

Objective/Context: This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries. Methodology: Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature. Originality: This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises. Conclusions: In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile.