ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Remote Sensing and the Contradictions of Surveillance in Latin America

• In Event: Shifting Narratives in Space Science and Technology (2)

English Abstract

Drawing on multi-archival research spanning U.S., European, and Latin American government records, and international organization documents (UNODC), this research examines the deployment of remote sensing technologies—radar, laser, and satellite systems—across Latin America from the 1970s to 2000s, revealing how these technologies enabled multiple, overlapping, competing, and contradictory forms of surveillance.
Technologies initially developed to map and extract mineral deposits and plan infrastructure projects in tropical regions were subsequently used to track forest loss and support conservation initiatives. Remote sensing projects supporting rural programs aimed at reducing poverty, promoting economic progress, and preventing communism relied on the same surveillance systems used to combat guerrilla movements and to detect illicit crops. Remote sensing enabled states to simultaneously pursue resource extraction and environmental protection, rural development and population surveillance, counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations. These tensions reveal how technologies acquired conflicting meanings as geopolitical priorities shifted and environmental consciousness emerged.
By integrating previously disconnected histories—the history of Cold War surveillance technologies, environmental monitoring systems, development programs, and drug war operations—this paper challenges linear narratives of technological progress and policy transitions, revealing how remote sensing technologies became key sites of contestation over competing visions of modernity, security, and environmental futures.
This simultaneity of contradictory applications demonstrates the contested nature of technological modernization in Latin America and the enduring legacies of these hybrid surveillance systems in contemporary debates about sustainability, security, and development in the Global South.

Author

• Sebastián Díaz Ángel, History of Science Institute, Autonomous University of Barcelona