Introduction to Section III

Abstract

As outlined in the introduction to this volume, one of the characteristic qualities of Latin American science is its close and complex imbrication with politics in the region. Among other spaces, eighteenth-century criollo critiques of metropolitan political power in the Americas were also played out in the theater of science. This is evident, as Antonio Lafuente has demonstrated, in such examples as the botanical study carried out in Mexico between 1801 and 1804 by Mariano Mociño and Luis Montaña to test the validity of each plant’s medicinal qualities; this set of experiments became a platform on which local scientists contested the imposition of European methods and theories by the metropolis....