Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Imperial science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Agricultural Science in Peru, 1940–1960

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09505430500110879

1470-1189

Chris Shepherd,

Politics and Society in Latin America

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments This essay was made possible through a grant received by the Rockefeller Archive Center to visit the facility in 2002 for which the author is most grateful. The author would also like to thank the Globalism Institute at RMIT University, Melbourne, for its support. In particular, the author would like to thank the editor, Claudia Castañeda, for her encouragement and valuable comments on earlier drafts, and Maureen McNeil and Les Levidow for their final comments. Thanks are also extended to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Notes 1 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 2 Foetal and other organic metaphors were common in the Foundation's discourse of the 1940s, although in the 1950s these tended to be replaced by similarly constructed notions of ‘underdevelopment’ (see Crush, 1995 Crush, J. 1995. “Imagining development”. In Power of Development, Edited by: Crush, J. 1–16. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). 3 In this sense, plans to develop the potato were consistent with ‘green revolution’ strategies to improve crops such as wheat, corn, and rice in the United States, Mexico, and in other parts of the world. 4 The land-grant system encompasses the agricultural colleges in the United States developed over a century through a series of legislative acts that allowed for federal funding to establish a college in each state and for these to expand and diversify through provisions for experiment stations, research, and extension capabilities. These developments were enclosed within a farming establishment that was progressively becoming middle class, commercialized and professionalized. See Fitzgerald (1994 Fitzgerald, D. 1994. “Exporting American agriculture: the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943-1949”. In Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America, Edited by: Cueto, M. 72–96. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 75–76) and for historical background, see True (1937) True, A. C. 1937. History of Agricultural Experimentation and Research in the United States, 1607–1925, Washington, DC: USDA Miscellaneous Publication 251. [Google Scholar]. 5 See Escobar (1995) Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar] for general background to the discourses that gave rise to the ‘Third World’ as a space ripe for intervention. 6 Fosdick (1952 Fosdick, R. 1952. The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, London: Odhams Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 205–206) emphasizes this shift in Foundation procedure. Among the scientists posted to Mexico were corn breeders Edwin J. Wellhausen and Louis A. Roberts, plant pathologist Norman E. Borlaug, soil scientist William E. Colwell, and economic entomologist John J. McKelvey. As Fitzgerald notes (1994, p. 77), all of these embodied the land grant university experience of the United States with a characteristic emphasis on commercial, large-scale farming underpinned by scientific research. 7 Excerpt from Trustees' Bulletin, March 1948, ‘The Natural Sciences in South America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 8 Warren Weaver inter-office correspondence to Chester I. Barnard, 21 September 1950, cited in Jennings (1988 Jennings, B. H. 1988. Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science and Politics in Mexican Agriculture, Boulder, CO & London: Westview Press. [Google Scholar], p. 59). 9 Defined narrowly, the Rockefeller network spanned the land grant colleges, United States agribusiness, the US government and its foreign departments, although Colby (1995) Colby, G. and Dennett, C. 1995. Thy Will be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, New York: Harper Collins. [Google Scholar], Arnove (1980) Arnove, R. 1980. Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, Boston: G.K. Hall. [Google Scholar] and Berman (1983) Berman, E. H. 1983. The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy, Albany: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar] explore the breadth and depth of this both philanthropic and imperial dominion in terms which, for Marcos Cueto (1994a Cueto, M. 1994a. “Introduction”. In Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation in Latin America, Edited by: Cueto, M. ix–xx. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 1–2) are ‘too simplistic’. 10 On the perceived threat of German expansion in the Western hemisphere, see Mitchell (1999) Mitchell, N. 1999. The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. [Google Scholar]. 11 Staff Conference, 18 February 1941, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 12 Weaver to Fosdick, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 13 This model came to be incorporated in the acclaimed International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) of which Lima's own International Potato Center (CIP), set up in the early 1970s, is one of many. Like Mexico's International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), CIP would not have emerged in its current form without the earlier RF programs. A vast critical literature has now analyzed the worldwide ‘green revolution’ spearheaded by the IARCs. See Shiva (1991) Shiva, V. 1991. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, London: Zed Books. [Google Scholar] and Gupta (1998) Gupta, A. 1998. Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, Durham, London: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] for contrasting accounts of green revolution agriculture in India. 14 Excerpt from Trustees Bulletin, 1944, ‘The Natural Sciences in Latin America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 15 This was a recurrent complaint about the Latin American university system which had been modelled on the French system. 16 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 17 Irving Leonard to Henry Allen Moe of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 1, Folder 1, RAC. 18 H. M. Miller, ‘Report to the Inter-divisional Committee on Latin America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 104, RAC. 19 Excerpt from Trustees Report, 1953, ‘The Natural Sciences in Brazil’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 20 Rick to Miller, RFA, R.G.1.1, Series 331, Box 4, Folder 32, RAC. 21 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 22 Trustees' Bulletin, March 1948, ‘The Natural Sciences in South America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 23 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 24 G. Bohrstedt, R. Bradfield, P. C. Mangelsdorf, E. C. Stakman, E. C. Young and J. G. Harrar, ‘Notes on South American Agriculture’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 105, RAC, 1952. 25 Staff Conference, 18 February 1941, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 26 Weaver to Fosdick, 1941, RFA, R.G. 300, Box 13, Folder 103, RAC. 27 Excerpt from Trustees Bulletin, ‘The Natural Sciences in Latin America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 103. RAC. 28 Popenoe to Miller, 1951, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 55, RAC. 29 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 30 Harry M. Miller, ‘Report to the Inter-divisional Committee on Latin America’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 104, RAC. 31 Popenoe to Miller, 1951, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 55, RAC. 32 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 33 Harry M. Miller, ‘Agricultural Education in Central and South American Countries’, 1941, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 34 E. C. Stakman, ‘Latin American Agricultural Institutions: Preliminary Report of Trip May 8 to July 14, 1947’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 300, Box 6, Folder 37, RAC. 35 Willits to Fosdick, January 1950, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 36 This point is most salient in regard to the Amazon basin where the Indians were identified as either a potential labour force for extraction industries or an impediment to development. On Rockefeller involvement there, see Colby (1995) Colby, G. and Dennett, C. 1995. Thy Will be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, New York: Harper Collins. [Google Scholar]. 37 Interviews: J. G. Harrar, 19 October 1954, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 331, Box 4, Folder 36, RAC. 38 Henceforth, I do not italicize ‘hacendado’ nor ‘hacienda’ [rural highland farming estates or ‘ranches’]. 39 G. Bohrstedt, R. Bradfield, P. C. Manglesdorf, E. C. Stakman, E. C. Young and J. G. Harrar, 1952, ‘Notes on South American Agriculture’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 300, Box 13, Folder 105, RAC. 40 Ibid. 41 The quote comes from Benjamín Quijandría, Director of Peru's PCEA (Programa Cooperativo de Experimentación Agropecuaria) in a report to the RF: ‘La selección de variedades y mejoramiento de métodos culturales de la papa en el Perú’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, 1958, RAC. 42 Or perhaps, as Gose (1994) Gose, P. 1994. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Google Scholar] would argue, none of the three. 43 On the Cuzquean significance of decencia and its fluid relationship to urban mestizo-hood, language use and upward mobility, see de la Cadena (2000) de la Cadena, Marisol. 2000. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991, Durham, SC & London: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. 44 I use the example of the Andean adoption/adaptation of the plough as metaphor to highlight the material ‘hybridity’ characteristic of much ethnology (see Gade, 1975 Gade, D. W. 1975. Plants, Man and the Land in the Vilcanota Valley of Peru, The Hague: Dr. W. Junk B.V. Publishers. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 45 The constituents of ethnicity and class in highland Peru are complex and continue to be widely debated. In no way are these self-evident categories. Here, I am partial to the perspective of Gose (1994) Gose, P. 1994. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Google Scholar] who prefers not to treat ethnicity and class as dichotomous as if the binaries that arise at the ‘moment of conquest’ can be indefinitely sustained. 46 I draw here on Thurner's (1997) paradoxical conversion of Benedict Anderson's ‘imagined communities’ to ‘imagined unimagined communities’. 47 As such, the potato had traditionally been a low profile crop in national agricultural terms as well as research. This was an agenda controlled by the coastal elite and plantation agriculturalists who looked not to the Andes but to the West for crop choice, markets, and inspiration. Indeed, the RF was in the process of reprioritizing Peruvian research commitments. 48 While hacendados exploited the labour of Indians, they shared and hybridized knowledge of crops, farming procedures, and technologies such that Indian farming and highland plantation agriculture within the hacienda system had more in common than the latter had with coastal plantations (see PRATEC, 1993 PRATEC. 1993. Afirmación Cultural Andina, Lima: PRATEC. (Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas) [Google Scholar], pp. 7–9). 49 Sauer to Willits, 24 March 1942, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 7, Folder 64, RAC. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Articulated by non-indigenous intellectuals throughout the twentieth century, indigenism sought political solutions to the ‘Indian problem’ by advancing the need for reform, cultural identity, and various modes of national integration. It is significant here that the 1940s marked a period in which indigenist discourses were moving beyond the idealist, romantic and mainly literary framework to be voiced by the social sciences and incorporated into political interventionary perspectives. Unquestionably Vargas had been influenced by the triumph of the social sciences and the ideological concern with agrarian issues. This neo-indigenist push was drawn into and led by the University of San Antonio Abad under the chiefdom of the indigenist Dean Federico Ponce de Leon (Tamayo Herrera, 1980 Tamayo Herrera, J. 1980. Historia del Indigenismo Cuzqueño, Lima: Edit. Lumen. [Google Scholar]). 53 All translations are my own. Original Spanish (henceforth Sp.): ‘Como Ud. sabe Mexico tiene muchos problemas similares a mi país, tanto en agricultura como en lo referente a su numerosa población indígena’. 54 Sp.: ‘conseguir una visión y apredizaje de los métodos agrícolas que están introduciendo, las plantas que procuran introducir’; ‘relacionados con la mejora social del indio’. 55 Sp.: ‘valioso contemplar tales problemas para resolver y afrontar el tan pesado problema agro-social del indio peruano y méxicano, que debe ser más o menos semejantes’; ‘mi plan es más amplio y tal vez de mejores proyecciones que la simple investigación de las papas, igualmente sus beneficios sería mayores para encarar y resolver nuestros problemas agro-sociales del indio peruano’. Vargas to Miller, 22 January 1944, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 7, Folder 64, RAC. 56 Miller to Vargas, 8 March 1944, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 7, Folder 64, RAC. 57 Sp.: ‘para realizar un viaje a México no fue precisamente fundado para la investigación de problemas conexos con situaciones políticas, lo cual no me agrada, ni por principio ni por disciplina científica’. 58 Sp.: ‘investigar problemas agrícolas relacionados con plantas autóctonos de México, comparándolos con los de Perú’. Vargas to Miller, 13 April 1944, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 7, Folder 64, RAC. 59 ‘Grant in Aid to the National University of Cusco, Peru’, 9 December 1949, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 7, Folder 64, RAC. 60 Many coastal laboratory investigations of Andean insects failed because these, which normally live above 3,000 meters, died in their new lowland habitats. See Willet to McKelvey, 15 April 1958, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box, 5, Folder 53, RAC. 61 John Niederhauser. ‘Report On Trip to Peru, March 2–March 19, 1953’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 The planting of degenerating seed at higher altitude to restore its health, the selection of small seed, and rotation, are features of highland agriculture now, in juxtaposition with the methods of agricultural development, routinely described as part of the local system of ‘Andean knowledge’ and ‘cosmology’ (see Morlon, 1992 Morlon, P. 1992. Comprender la agricultura campesina en los Andes Centrales: Perú y Bolivia, Edited by: Morlon, P. Lima and Cuzco: IFEA. (Institut Français d'Études Andines) and CBC (Casa Bartolomé de Las Casas) [Google Scholar]; Apffel-Marglin, 1998 Apffel-Marglin, F. 1998. “Introduction: knowledge and life revisited”. In The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronts Western Notions of Development, Edited by: Apffel-Marglin, F. 1–50. London: Zed Books. [Google Scholar]). 65 On ‘obligatory points of passage’ in the context of the actor–network approach in science studies, see Callon (1986) Callon, M. 1986. “Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St. Brieuc's Bay”. In Power, Action, and Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge? Sociological Review Monograph, Edited by: Law, J. Vol. 32, 196–233. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul. [Google Scholar]. 66 It is outside the scope of this essay to consider how successful this endeavour was. Suffice to say that it was not until the late 1970s that extension services began to deliver hybrid seed to Andean Indians on a large scale under the banner of Integrated Rural Development that was designed to bring the benefits of the green revolution to small-holders (Escobar, 1995 Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 156–158). It may also attest to the resilience of the Andean knowledge tradition and indigenous people that by 1980 only 14% of Peru's area under potato cultivation was planted with ‘improved’ seed as compared with significantly higher percentages in non-indigenous crops (CIP, 1988 CIP. 1988. Economía de la Industria de Semillas en el Perú con Enfasis en los Cultivos de Papa y Hortalizas, Lima: CIP. [Google Scholar], p. 8). 67 John Niederhauser, ‘Report On Trip to Peru, March 2–March 19, 1953’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 68 Harrar memo, 23 March 1953, RFA, R.G. 111, Series 331, Box 4, Folder 36, RAC. 69 Wellhausen to Harrar, 3 October 1958, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 70 Ibid. 71 Sp.: ‘estos dos enemigos de los cultivadores de papas’; ‘ninguna de las expediciones que llegaron al Perú con este fin tuvieron la oportunidad de explorar’. 72 Sp.: ‘quedando hasta hoy una gran laguna y una interrogante que el mundo científico especializado en esta materia reclama y espera su aclaración’. Carlos Ochoa, ‘Expedición Colectora de Papas Silvestres y Cultivadas al Norte del Perú’, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 331, Box 4, Folder 36, 1951, RAC. 73 Harrar Diary, 2 June 1952, RFA, R.G. 1.1, Series 331, Box 4, Folder 36, RAC. 74 John Niederhauser. ‘Report On Trip to Peru, March 2–March 19, 1953’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 75 Ibid. 76 Wellhausen to Harrar, 3 October 1958, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 77 John Niederhauser. ‘Report On Trip to Peru, March 2–March 19, 1953’, RFA, R.G. 1.2, Series 331, Box 6, Folder 60, RAC. 78 Ibid. 79 Gupta (1998 Gupta, A. 1998. Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, Durham, London: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 42–43) makes a similar point for ‘British’ India, with the interesting caveat that colonial notions of progress differed from post-colonial ones in so far as the former were grounded in the specific historical experiences of particular colonisers while the latter were framed as ahistorical. 80 As Marcos Cueto (1994b Cueto, M. 1994b. “Visions of science and development: the Rockefeller Foundation's Latin American surveys of the 1920s”. In Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America, Edited by: Cueto, M. 1–22. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 1–2) reminds us, this always occurred under the assumption that the donor knew what was good for the recipients. 81 On this ‘great divide’ see Latour (1993) Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. trans. C. Porter [Google Scholar].