Technology

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Technology

Europeans arrived in the New World to find advanced civilizations coexisting with less advanced tribal organizations. The archaeological sites of Machu Picchu, Teotihuacán, and Tikal testify to the remarkable construction and architectural skills of pre-Columbian civilizations. Mayan knowledge of astronomy, the pre-Incan irrigation works (1300–1400 bce) in northern Peru, and the terraced agricultural system of the Incas are additional evidence of advanced indigenous technology. Indigenous peoples had accomplished stunning advances in breeding and disseminating corn, potatoes, and many other plants. They also developed a method for predicting climate by observing astrological, atmospheric, and oceanic phenomena as well as the behavior of flora and fauna. Other indigenous groups continued to practice more traditional slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting.

Since the European conquest, Latin America has relied heavily on technology from abroad. Despite the steady introduction of new technologies to advanced economic sectors, they have had only a small impact on vast segments of Latin America's population. The importation of new technologies has often failed to produce sustained domestic technological advance. In some cases Latin Americans have made important technological innovations of their own.

MINING, SUGAR, AND HENEQUEN

Indians mined silver, gold, copper, and lead, usually from shallow pits, long before the arrival of the Spaniards. During colonization the Spanish introduced deep-shaft mining techniques that significantly increased the amount of ore that was accessible, and a major technological breakthrough was achieved at the Purísima Grande mine in Pachuca, Mexico, in the mid-1550s when Bartolomé de Medina developed a new amalgamation process for silver, which used large amounts of mercury to extract prodigious amounts of silver from mines in such areas as Zacatecas, Mexico, and Pachuco, Peru. Although the basic technology remained in use for about three centuries, small technological innovations did generate significant increases in productivity. For example, improved furnaces for processing mercury were introduced in Peru in 1633 by Lope de Saavedra, and steam engines were used in mining from the early 1800s.

During the late nineteenth century, sugar from the Pernambuco region was Brazil's leading export. The Pernambuco sugar industry demonstrated an ability to incorporate both superior species of cane and more efficient equipment. In the first part of the 1800s creole sugarcane was replaced by cayenne cane, which was larger, had more extensive branching, contained greater amounts of sugar, and more effectively withstood drought. After 1879 a disease afflicting the cayenne cane motivated the importation of species from Java and Mauritius. In the mid-nineteenth century, sugar producers began shifting from vertical rollers for grinding cane to horizontal rollers that applied greater pressure, faster grinding, and better distribution of the cane on the rollers. In the 1870s vacuum pans were introduced to speed evaporation. Steam engines gradually replaced animals as the major source of power for sugar mills.

The production and export of Yucatán henequen fiber expanded rapidly in the 1880s. Equipment for stripping the fiber was invented in the Yucatán, but interests from the United Kingdom and the United States took over most of the production. By 1880 replacement parts were being produced in the Yucatán, and by 1910 local shops built defibration machines and henequen presses. Innovators in the Yucatán were able to improve on designs and increase operating efficiency, and production reached a peak with World War I.

While the mining, sugar, and henequen industries all enjoyed a period of success and demonstrated an ability to adopt new production techniques, none of these activities launched sustained technological innovations that could spread to other sectors. Cheap land and labor blunted the incentive to modernize production techniques and held the rate of technology adoption far below optimum.

ECONOMIC CHALLENGES

When considered as components of a productive system, imported technologies were not always unequivocally superior. Spanish agricultural methods, for example, did not surpass the chinampa agricultural technique used by the Aztecs, and probably the Mayans, which featured raised fields, intensive cultivation, and a variety of crops.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, saladeros (beef drying and salting plants) along the Río de la Plata began to operate for an export market. In the 1870s freezing and insulation technologies gave rise to the frigoríficos (refrigeration ships) that began to replace the saladeros. Further advances in temperature control led to significant exports of beef and mutton to Great Britain beginning around 1900. Although Argentine entrepreneurs recognized a high profit opportunity, virtually all of the frigoríficos were operated by foreign interests. The refrigeration technology itself posed no problem for national entrepreneurs, but the main difficulty lay in mastering the complex "soft technologies," which involved the precise timing of receiving beef consignments and loading, unloading, and wholesaling the product, with little room for error. Without these organizational, managerial, and marketing capacities, Argentine entrepreneurs faced high risks.

Between 1944 and 1955 a Mexican monopoly, Syntex Company, gained complete dominance over European competitors in the production of steroid hormones. The firm's success was based on three discoveries. In 1949 barbasco was discovered in Mexico. This plant had much higher yields of steroids and was in greater supply than alternative sources. During the same year, two researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the United States found that cortisone was helpful in treating the symptoms of arthritis. And in 1951 the Upjohn Company discovered an inexpensive technique for altering the molecular structure of the steroid. This meant an increased demand for barbasco-derived progesterone that could now be used as an intermediate material for the production of cortisone. Syntex thrived during the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s steroid hormone production was once again controlled by foreign enterprises and exports had shrunk from 545 pounds in 1969 to 260 pounds in 1976.

Technological breakthroughs outside the region have occasionally hurt Latin American development. A classic example was the drastic decline in Chile's nitrate exports after introduction of the Haber process, a method of synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, developed in the early 1900s by the German Fritz Haber.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

Mexican research led to the successful development and export of glass manufacturing equipment. It also developed technologies for deep drilling in petroleum extraction and for a method of producing paper from bagasse.

Brazil's production of ethanol from sugarcane and other vegetation is an impressive technological achievement, although it is controversial in terms of economic justification and environmental impact. In 1975 Brazil launched its huge research and development program to produce and substitute ethanol for gasoline. Brazilian researchers were able to upgrade older fermentation methods and achieve necessary technological changes in processing equipment, automobile engines, and sugar production. As of 1990 ethanol accounted for about 15 percent of Brazil's liquid fuel requirements.

The first nuclear power in Latin America was produced at the Atucha I plant in Argentina in 1974, a year during which Brazil and Mexico began to install nuclear power reactors. During the 1970s Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela had working nuclear centers, while Bolivia, Ecuador, Jamaica, and Uruguay announced intentions to establish their own centers. Cuba signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to install nuclear stations, but after a long series of difficulties, Cuba finally stopped construction in 1992. Chile and Peru have been in the forefront of experimental research to commercialize the extraction of copper through a process of microbial leaching. In Mexico, iron ores are transported by the most advanced, computer-driven pipeline system in the world. Many Latin American manufacturing firms have improved productivity by a constant stream of minor intraplant innovations.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s many of the larger nations of Latin America, including Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, established or significantly strengthened their national councils for science and technology. During the same period, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the Andean Pact established measures to regulate the importation of technology; this was meant to eliminate imperfections in the transfer of technology that Latin American countries felt put them at a disadvantage. At the same time, there was an increase in the importation of technology along with an emphasis on fostering internal technological capacity. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico began exporting capital goods, consulting contracts, civil engineering contracts, and turnkey plant facilities, and made some foreign investments that involved technology transfers.

TRENDS SINCE THE 1990S

After the fiscal crises and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, most Latin American states have reduced their investments in technological research and innovation. They have also privatized many state-owned technological enterprises. Private enterprises—both domestic and foreign—have become major forces both for the introduction of new technologies and for fostering domestic technological innovation.

Some Latin American technological enterprises have flourished in the new economic environment. Brazil has developed a thriving small-and medium-size aircraft industry. Based largely on Brazilian design and technical innovations, the industry has been able to adjust rapidly to changing global technological and market conditions. The most successful of these companies is the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. The Brazilian government privatized Embraer in 1994. Since then, the company has gradually become a global player in the aircraft industry, specializing in creating a line of short-haul regional jets.

Latin American research institutions have played a significant role in biotechnology. They have propagated potato cultivars through tissue-culture techniques in Argentina, developed a new strain of inocula for soybeans in Brazil, and produced single-cell proteins in Mexico. The boom in biotechnology research in the 1990s is the product of collaborative initiatives between researchers in the public and private sectors. One of these organizations, the Brazilian Organization for Nucleotide Sequencing and Analysis (ONSA), has conducted pioneering genomic research on citrus crops and sugar cane.

A number of countries in Latin America have also embraced the computer revolution. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have national policies that promote local production of computers and associated peripheral equipment. In the 1990s local and state governments in Latin America began seeking collaborative relationships with global technology companies. For example, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul convinced Dell Corporation to establish a computer manufacturing plant to produce computers for the Brazilian and Latin American markets. Significantly, even some of Latin America's smaller countries are participating in these global processes. In 1996 Intel established a center for parts assembly, semiconductor design, and software development in Costa Rica. Other companies have since followed Intel to Costa Rica.

The use of the Internet in Latin America has also grown explosively since the mid-1990s. More than 5 million Latin Americans had access to the Internet in 1999, and the number has continued to grow rapidly. In Latin America the Internet has been used for a wide range of purposes, from e-commerce to education, government, and political protest. Activist organizations from the EZLN in Mexico to indigenous groups in the Amazon have used the Internet to build international political alliances. As with other technological systems, the comparatively high cost of computers and Internet access has meant that Internet users have been predominantly from the upper sectors of society. The proliferation of cybercafes in cities and in some rural areas has, however, broadened access.

Latin American cities have played a globally important role in the innovation of mass transportation. Here, technological innovation has been focused not on developing new technologies but rather on using existing technologies in new ways. Rather than building expensive metro systems, many Latin American cities have instead built relatively inexpensive busways, with dedicated lanes for public transportation. The Brazilian city of Curitiba—now a global model for transportation planners—inaugurated its busways in the mid-1970s. Many cities in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America have followed suit. Most of these busways, such as Bogota's TransMilenio, were built through partnerships between public and private enterprise.

These new mass transportation systems are a form of technological innovation that benefits the mass of ordinary Latin Americans. Similarly, cellular telephones have become ubiquitous across Latin America. The impact of technological innovation and industrialization has not, however, been uniformly positive. For example, the opening of the Trans-Ecuadorean oil pipeline has facilitated petroleum exploitation in the Ecuadorean Amazon. While the expanding petroleum industry has generated considerable profits over the short term, oil spills, forest clearances, and road-building associated with the industry have harmed both the region's landscapes and its indigenous groups. The development of maquiladoras, factories along the U.S.-Mexican border, has generated significant pollution problems for the people and landscapes of northern Mexico. The privatization of utilities has also generated popular backlashes. Utilities—such as water, gas, telecommunications, and electricity—are essentially large technological systems for the delivery of basic services. Many Latin Americans fear that the privatization of these utilities will drive up prices, effectively preventing many people from having access to these essential technologies.

Paradoxically, some of the most significant technological innovations in Latin America have involved abandoning the high technologies of the twentieth century. Cuban farmers have embraced organic agriculture on a large scale, forced to do so by economic and political pressures following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. This is not simply a return to older farming practices; organic farming on a large scale requires significant scientific and technological innovation. Organic agriculture is not limited to Cuba. In order to produce certified organic coffee, some coffee farmers in Mexico and Central America are eliminating the high-tech agricultural inputs introduced in the 1970s and 1980s. This technological shift was driven both by a catastrophic collapse in coffee prices in the 1990s and increasing overseas demand for organic produce.

The years since 1980 have been a period of rapid technological innovation and change in Latin America. Partnerships between governments and private enterprise have helped introduce and produce new technologies, many of which are now reaching sectors of Latin American society that had been largely untouched by technological innovations in earlier periods. In some instances, Latin America has even begun to export technologies across the globe. But the benefits of these technological transformations are not equally shared by all Latin Americans. Conversely, their social and ecological costs are frequently borne by the most disadvantaged sectors of Latin American society. The challenge for the future is to ensure that Latin America's technological growth becomes and remains economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable.

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Dilmus D. James

Stuart McCook

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture