Overpopulation or Overconsumption? A Brazilian Scientist Critiques International Development Discourse during the Early Cold War

• In Event: Public health, population, and contested development politics in Cold War Latin America

Abstract

In 1952, Brazilian nutritionist Josué de Castro (who had just become president of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) published an incisive critique of American conservationist William Vogt's 1948 book Road to Survival. Vogt, who would soon direct the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, believed that curbing population growth was an urgent priority for developing nations. De Castro's alternative framing of the relationship between population, hunger, and social peace blamed U.S. and European imperialism for crises in food supply. The Brazilian scholar argued that the resource demands of a growing human population required more equitable distribution of agricultural land and food. Geography of Hunger was translated into over twenty languages during the 1950s; it received both widespread acclaim and scathing criticism in the global press. During the two decades following the publication of this book, De Castro vocally opposed international development policies rooted in the identification of overpopulation as central global challenge. He engaged with a wide-ranging network of left-leaning intellectuals who questioned the scientific and ideological basis of overpopulation discourse. De Castro and his eclectic contacts asserted that the purported concern with overpopulation masked a continuation of eugenicist ideologies and Euro-American imperialism. This paper examines these arguments in the context of early Cold War science and politics, with particular attention to the intellectual network that de Castro cultivated during his years with the FAO in Rome and while exiled to Paris after the rise of Brazil's rightwing military dictatorship in 1964.

Author

• Eve E Buckley, University of Delaware