Transnational Science and National Identity Discourses. Cold War Astronomy in Chile in the 1960s.

• In Event: National Identities and Transnational Science and Technology during the 20th Century: Cold War

Abstract

National identities are complex imbrications allowing societies to work on social cohesion and the creation of a feeling of “belonging.” In these narratives, landscapes and geography have usually been addressed combining its physical dimension with its potential to identify their population. At the same time, science and technology have historically given a sense of future for nation building projects. For Third World countries, scientific and technological features also relates to the desire of accessing the modernization paradigm.
During the 1960s, a particular phenomenon took place in Chile. International holdings –Americans, Europeans, and Soviets– went to Chile and settled in the northern region of the country, the semi-arid area of the Atacama Desert, to build big-scaled astronomical observatories. By the end of the decade, they had built three massive telescopes.
This scientific infrastructure drastically changed the desert’s landscape. However, it also gave the country an argument to enhance the political commitment with progress and modernization, as some sort of prove of the country’s exceptionalism in the Latin American context. Simultaneously, politicians started to imbricate astronomical knowledge as and evidence that the desired modernization paradigm was taking place in the southern country. Chilean politicians and scientists gave meaning to astronomy into the national identity discourse, as an avant-garde science and technology. Until today, local agencies enhance the county as an “astronomical pole”, or a “natural lab”.
This paper examines how an international and ideological power dispute in the middle of the Cold War intersected national identity discourses and, at the same time, broadened spatial notions of identity. Through this case of transnational science, it is possible to analyze how international politics, geographical conditions, and technological projects can converge into national discourses, reshaping both the understanding of a particular place like the Atacama Desert and traditional ideas about national identity.

Author

• Barbara Silva, Universidad Catolica de Chile