Engineering

Engineering is a discipline that puts scientific knowledge to practical use by utilizing natural resources for the benefit of society. Throughout history, engineering has enabled the building of structures, the manipulation of natural energy sources, and the creation of new technologies. There are at least thirty-five subfields of engineering, including civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, metallurgical, and geologic. Scientific discoveries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries opened up the new subfields of electronic, computer, genetic, nuclear, environmental, biomedical, and aerospace engineering. Most engineering projects, such as building a bridge or a pipeline, involve several of these fields.

PRECOLONIAL AND COLONIAL ENGINEERING

Precolonial engineers contributed much to Latin American civilization. The Maya mastered the principles of stress to construct corbeled arches (vaults) in their palaces, and raised lofty pyramids that supported temple structures, such as those in Tikal, Guatemala, and Chichen Itza, Mexico, which is one of the seven New Wonders of the World. In South America, the Inca constructed the great sawtoothed fortress of Sacsayhuaman near Cuzco, Peru, and the 2,250-mile road system that stretched from Quito to Santiago. Perhaps most emblematic of the Inca engineering acumen is Machu Picchu, a ruined city situated almost 8,000-feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. Such engineering feats attest to the ingenuity of the pre-Columbian era.

In the colonial era the Spanish and Portuguese built massive public-works projects, including ports, roads, forts, mines, buildings, churches, and cities, to reflect the flavor of European metropolitan life. Engineering facilitated metropolitan civilization in town squares throughout the colonies.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The region's most impressive engineering achievement of the twentieth century was the Panama Canal, an artificial waterway that connects the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Opened in 1914, the canal is 50.72 miles long. The United States invested more than $352 million in its construction. Yellow fever and other diseases took an extraordinary toll on the construction workers.

The canal has six locks at three separate locations. The locks are flooded to lift ships, which are then pulled through the canal by trains on either side of its banks. At its widest point the canal is 163 square miles (Gatun Lake); the narrowest point is 300 feet wide. Approximately 5 percent of the world's seagoing traffic passes through the Panama Canal. In 2006 Panamanian voters passed a referendum with 78 percent support that provided for an enlargement of the canal to accommodate roughly twice as many ships.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries engineering underpinned the Latin American ethos of "order and progress." Railroads and telegraphic lines crisscrossing the Andes and connecting Rio to the mountains and the interior provinces to the great harbors of Buenos Aires, Santos, and Veracruz, sparked an era of global capitalism. The rail line between Rio and São Paulo, Brazil, that passed through the Pariacuteba Valley was essential for the growth of the coffee economy. One of the most technically difficult railway engineering achievements was the building of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad in the Amazon.

The Cananea copper mine in northern Mexico was Latin America's largest at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1915 Chuquicamata, Chile, located 8,860 feet above sea level, had replaced it as the world's largest open-pit copper mine. Carajás, in southern Pará, Brazil, is the world's largest iron-ore mine, with 18 billion metric tons of confirmed reserve. Seven times the size of Switzerland and five times that of Texas, Carajás is connected to the port of São Luís, Maranhão, via 540 miles of railroad through the tropics. The rail line was the first in Latin America designed with environmental protection as a primary goal.

The two hydroelectric power plants on the Parana River testify to the achievements of integrated civil engineering technologies. The Itaipu dam is a binational project built, owned, and operated by Brazil and Paraguay. Constructed between 1975 and 1982, the dam houses twenty turbines generating 14,000 megawatts. Some 100,000 workers were involved in building the dam, which is 5 miles wide and 643 feet high, and is the world's largest hollow-gravity dam. Brazil and Paraguay spent more than $15 billion to complete the power station. Downriver, Argentina also shares a hydroelectric dam with Paraguay. Although construction began on the Yacyreta dam in 1983, it was not operational until 1994 due to political instability and corruption in Argentina. Because of miscalculation, the dam generates only about 60 percent of its planned power.

The Rio-Niterói Bridge in Brazil is among the world's most notable bridges. Brazil's military junta, fashioning itself as a modernizing technocratic regime, dedicated itself to material progress. The urban congestion of Greater Rio required a rapid transportation system that would connect Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, across the Guanabara Bay. The Rio-Niterói Bridge spans 8.25 miles (5.5 miles over water) and opened for traffic in 1974.

Argentina, Brazil, and Chile possess the engineering capabilities required to build sophisticated defense industries. During the 1960s and 1970s all three countries were denied access to the world arms market and so became self-sufficient in small arms, munitions, and motor vehicles, as well as aircraft, ships, tanks, armed personnel carriers, and a line of rockets and missiles. By 1990 Brazil had emerged as the seventh-largest arms maker in the world.

It is the knowledge, talent, and vision of engineers that make such accomplishments possible. Until recently, however, the training of engineers in the region was left to the military academies. These institutions bred the notion that a better society could be constructed via technical and scientific education and by emphasizing material progress. This became the harbinger of Latin America's modernization drives.

With assistance, Latin America entered the nuclear age. In Brazil two nuclear power plants, Angra I and Angra II, were built by Westinghouse and Siemens AG, respectively. Siemens AG also built Argentina's first nuclear power plant in the late 1960s, Atucha I. Construction of Atucha II was started in 1980, but has never been completed. A third plant, built at Embalse, was contracted to Canada and Italy in 1972 and was operational in 1984. In both Brazil and Argentina, the navy played a key role in nuclear technology and development. Given Latin America's wealth of natural resources, and the commodity demand that underpins the growth of emerging markets, the region was expected to continue to host some of the world's largest and most exciting engineering projects.

See alsoMining: Modern; Nuclear Industry; Railroads.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Diehl, Richard A. The Olmecs: America's First Civilization. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Gibson, Charles. The Aztecs under Spanish Rule. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964.

Lins Ribeiro, Gustavo. Transnational Capitalism and Hydropolitics in Argentina: The Yacyreta High Dam. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.

Maldifassi, Jose O., and Pier A. Abetti. Defense Industries in Latin American Countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.

McCullough, David. The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.

"Panama Votes for a Bigger Canal." Economist, October 23, 2006.

Summerhill, William R. Order against Progress: Government, Foreign Investment, and Railroads in Brazil, 1854–1913. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Turolla, Pino. Beyond the Andes: My Search for the Origins of Pre-Inca Civilization. New York: Harper and Row, 1980.

                                             Eul-Soo Pang

                                         Sean H. Goforth