Urban Science (1300+) – History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America is one of the most urbanized regions in the world. By 1990, over one-third of the area's population lived in forty-one cities of one million or more people each and, on average, the metropolises in Latin America are the largest on earth. Whereas the mean population for large cities in the U.S. and Canada is about 2.7 million, Latin American urban centers average about 3.6 million. Four of the world's fifteen largest cities are in Latin America, including two--Mexico City and Sao Paulo--that are among the world's five most populous urban centers. Despite U.S. stereotypes that characterize Latin America as a backwards rural region, major cities play a massive role in these countries' societies, economies, and cultures.

These cities, though, would be nothing without science. All Latin American (and world) cities, from ancient times to the present, have relied on a great variety of technologies and applied sciences that have shaped the cities and allowed them to function. Furthermore, cities provide a space for the educational and research centers that create and promulgate the techniques needed to build and operate a city.

Some areas of Latin America, especially Mesoamerica and the Andes, had very advanced cities long before the arrival of Iberian conquerors. Early cities in Mexico like Teotihuacan (seen in the Observatories topic) bear witness to the feats of the Amerindian engineers and cosmographers who built its giant pyramids and oriented them with the firmament. The Inca city Cuzco and the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (seen in the sources) were (c. 1500) among best designed and well operated urban centers anywhere on earth. These clean, beautiful, and sanitary cities made the most of their environs through creative engineering while, by virtue of their size and grandeur, acting as visible manifestations of real political power.

The Spanish conquerors quite literally replaced indigenous urban centers with their own landscapes of power, religion, and "civilization." New Spanish cities were built directly on top of Indian ones and pre-Columbian temples and sacred places were replaced by grandiose Christian cathedrals. Churches, viceregal courts, and standardized grid layout (see the source on Lima) were meant to embody the supposed superiority of European culture and make it clear that the landscape itself was now dominated by whites.

In the years following independence, progressive reformers focused many of their efforts on cities, both because urban centers were central to industrialization and commerce and also because they were sites meant to embody the image of greatness and modernity to which the new nation-states aspired. Around 1900, urban modernization was in full swing: new technologies like streetcars and telephones made cities more integrated, public health officials worked to defeat the deadliest epidemics, and advancements in sewers and waterworks made cities cleaner and healthier. Concurrently, criminologists and other social scientists tried to impose the same sort of order and progress in human society as engineers applied to new downtown buildings.

This elite, top-down, and (ideally) scientific vision of progress was not, however, shared by all urbanites. As Teresa A. Meade, Anton Rosenthal, and other historians have pointed out, the benefits of progress were not shared (or even desired) by everyone in a city. Improvements in sanitation, for example, were generally applied to wealthy downtown areas while the impoverished suburbs that suffered most from poor living conditions were often neglected by their governments. New communication and transportation technologies generally serviced only the wealthier parts of town, a circumstance that made poor areas even more peripheral to a city's commercial life. Such unequal distribution of modern amenities and the contrast between elite and non-elite visions of progress led directly to several strikes and riots that targeted the very edifices of modernity that were made by a for elites (Meade 1997; Rosenthal 1995).

In more recent years, Latin America's metropolises have developed several common problems, some of which are local while others are global. The massive increase in urban population caused by foreign immigration (largely from southern Europe) and rural to urban population movements within the region have led to mass urban poverty, especially in the suburbs. Latin American governments simply do not have the resources to extend urban infrastructures (clean water, sewers, electricity, etc.) to these constantly growing slums, thus they develop "informally" from the bottom up (Agnotti 1996; Manigat 1997). See the source on Port-au-Prince for an extreme example of this phenomenon. From an ecological standpoint, the struggle to modernize Latin America's cities has been devastating. Factories (often placed dangerously close to residential areas) pollute the air, raw sewage befouls the rivers, and complex river eco-systems (especially that of the amazon basin) are destroyed to provide electricity to the ever-growing urban centers. Although Latin America is far from the worst polluting region on earth, the long term effects on the environment--and short term impact on human health--could be terrible.

Although there is not sufficient space in this topic to discuss all the different aspects of science in Latin America's cities, attention is drawn to the major achievements, shortcomings, and conflicts within this field. The fact that over one-third of the region's population is directly impacted by how science, technology, and public health are applied in the region's metropolises underscores just how important urban science is to the people and nations of Latin America.

Questions for further exploration:

How have new technologies changed the way urban Latin Americans "experience" their cities? The Montevideo streetcars in this topics sources is one example, but try to include other important new technologies from other cities.
How has healthcare shaped Latin American cities and affected the people within them? Consider such things as public sanitation, advances in medicine, notions of "tropical medicine," public and private institutions, and who practices and receives certain kinds of medical care.
Aside from the various forms of science within a city, a city itself--seen as a whole--embodies a coherent scientific work. Consider any one city (ancient, colonial, or modern) and explore some of the meanings that it had for people within and around it. Some potential foci include the city as a visible center of power, city as center of modernity, city as source of wonder, city as economic center, and city as social ideal. Think broadly and be creative in your responses.
Look at how various urban sciences reflect (or affect) the crucial social divisions of race, gender, or class. Focus on only one of these social constructs, but you may incorporate as many cities and sciences as necessary to prove your argument.
Write a short history of science in one of Latin America's major cities, focusing on a few events or trends that you consider to be the most significant concerning science, public health, or social science. Why were these the most important?

Further reading:
Agostoni, Claudia. Monuments of Progress: Modernization and Public Health in Mexico City, 1876-1910. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003.

Angotti, Thomas. "Latin American Urbanization and Planning: Inequality and Unsustainability in North and South." Latin American Perspectives. 23: 4, The "Urban Question" in Latin America (Autumn 1996): 12-34.

Bliss, Katherine Elaine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Cahill, David. "Financing Healthcare in the Viceroyalty of Peru: The Hospitals of Lima in the Late Colonial Period." The Americas. 52: 2 (October 1995): 123-154.

Davis, Diane E. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

Higgins, James. Lima: A Cultural History. New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Gilbert, Alan. The Latin American City. London: Latin American Bureau, 1998.

Griffin, Ernst and Larry Ford. "A Model of Latin American City Structure." Geographical Review. 70: 4 (October 1980): 397-422.

Guillen, Mauro F. "Modernism without Modernity: The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, 1890-1940." Latin American Research Review. 39: 2 (2004): 6-34.

Koontz, Rex, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick. Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001.

Meade, Teresa A. "Civilizing" Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889-1930. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Pezzoli, Keith. Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Mexico City. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998.

Portes, Alejandro, Carlos Dore-Cabral, and Patricia Landoldt, editors. The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Rosenthal, Anton. "The Arrival of the Electric Streetcar and the Conflict over Progress in Early Twentieth-Century Montevideo." Journal of Latin American Studies. 27: 2 (May 1995): 319-341.

Map of Tenochtitlan

Date: 1524
Owner: Library of Congress
Source Type: Maps

The Aztecs, in one of the most spectacular applications of science and technology in the pre-modern world, transformed a brackish lake into a metropolis. Tenochtitlan, founded on a swampy island in Lake Texcoco around 1325, rivaled the greatest capitals of contemporary Europe and Asia in size, population, and beauty and, within two centuries of its founding, had become the administrative and religious center of a powerful expansionist empire.

From an engineering point of view, the city was a marvel, especially considering the inherent challenges of building on a lake without abundant freshwater or agricultural land. Perhaps inspired by the long-abandoned nearby ruins of Teotihuacan, the Aztecs built their city on a rectangular grid that expanded outwards from the temple complex in the center. The city's interior had both impressive architectural works, especially the sixty meter Templo Mayor, and centers of culture and scientific learning like Moctezuma's zoo and gardens. Three earthwork causeways connected the island to the mainland and facilitated the constant movement of goods, tribute, and people to and from the capital. Engineers built two aqueducts, each over four meters long, to carry fresh water into the city from nearby springs. Chinampas (seen in the Agriculture topic) were built on the lake further and further from the main island, a gradual terraforming project that greatly increased the area of the city. Waterways were left between each of the Chinampas that served as a comprehensive canal system (similar to that of Venice) in which canoes carried people, food, and other items to almost every part of the expanding city.

Tenochtitlan's sanitation infrastructure was superior to that of many modern cities. Barges collected garbage along the canals and took it outside of the city and private homes and public spaces both had latrines. To a large degree, this cleanliness was the product of a well organized top-down administration that closely regulated development, thus preventing the kind of informal urban additions that have become sites of such squalor in many of Latin America's current metropolises.

Hernan Cortes, who created this map, razed Tenochtitlan after conquering the city in 1521 and built Mexico City on its ruins. This city has grown to one of the largest urban centers on earth and continues to alter the local landscape in profound, though often environmentally destructive, ways.

DIGITAL ID: 12597

Mexico City Pollution

Date: 2006
Owner: Fotoreisebericht.de
Source Type: Images

The sanitary and environmental conditions in Mexico City are notorious. About two-thirds of its residents have substandard housing and inadequate access to water, sewage, hospitals, and schools. Mexico City also has perhaps the worst air quality of any urban area on earth. The thick layer of smog visible in this photograph, the majority of which comes from automobile emissions, contains dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide and many other toxic chemicals as well. Although the percentage of car owners is less in Mexico than in the U.S., the state has encouraged consumers and industries to use gas-powered engines to fuel plans for economic growth. The government thus provides drivers with cheap gasoline (much of which is but poorly refined) to power cars that, to a great extent, would not meet the emission standards of the U.S.

Cheap gas cannot, of course, be blamed as the only cause of Mexico City's air pollution, but it indicative of the struggles to modernize that Mexico and other Latin American countries have faced during a century of enormous urban growth. According to Thomas Agnotti, a scholar of urban planning and the environment, Mexico City and other Latin American metropolises have experienced the same kind of massive urban growth as cities in the U.S., but Latin American governments have not had the resources necessary to prevent and ameliorate the sanitary and ecological results of urbanization. This is due in large part to the disparity between the economies of the two regions: whereas many U.S. capitalists made their money in the domestic market (thus contributing to more widespread national wealth), the export economies of Latin America provided little surplus money for the citizens of its own cities and countries. As a result, Latin American economies on the whole did not possess enough capital to regulate and improve urban conditions like the mass poverty found in many of the "informal" metropolitan suburbs (Angotti 1996).

Sadly, the problems of pollution and poverty are often mutually reinforcing. In Sao Paulo, for example, the country's largest petrochemical plant, which emits 1,000 tons of pollutants everyday, is located less than eighty kilometers from some the city's poorer residential areas. Children in these favelas near the plant have a mortality rate of 30% and about 80% suffer from respiratory problems. Poverty also aggravates environmental problems: dirt roads decrease air quality, old cars and appliances produce smog, and raw sewage is dumped directly into the city's streams and rivers. It should be kept in mind though that, on the whole, the U.S. and Canada produce four times more pollutants than all of Latin America and the U.S. is the world's leading source for CO2, one of the main factors accelerating global warming.

Reference: Angotti, Thomas. "Latin American Urbanization and Planning: Inequality and Unsustainability in North and South." In Latin American Perspectives, vol. 23, no. 4, The "Urban Question" in Latin America (Autumn, 1996), pp. 12-34

CITATION: Smog and mountains in Mexico City. September, 2006. Image courtesy of Fotoreisebericht.de.
DIGITAL ID: 12842

Modernism

Date: 1961
Owner: Wikimedia
Source Type: Buildings

Built circa 1960 to be a geographically central capital for Brazil, Brasilia is the most pronounced example of the architectural school of modernism that was very popular in Latin America from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. Designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemayer, the city was meant to embody the mix of practicality, economy, and simple elegance characteristic of modernism. Whereas the former capital of Rio de Janeiro was a hodgepodge of 450 years of building, Brasilia was to stand as visible proof that ordem e progresso, the longstanding goal of Brazilian elites, finally flourished. In a direct reflection of the machine age, the city is laid out in the shape of an airplane. In keeping with the school's belief that urban design could foster social progress, Brasilia's planners created residential superblocks that would minimalize class distinctions among residents and promote a sense of collective life. Yet the exigencies of urbanization soon overwhelmed the modernists' best laid plans and Brasilia emerged as four semi-distinct cities, three of which do not reflect any grand plan. Furthermore, many Brazilians consider the city heartless; methodically arranged buildings like the one pictured here just do not have the same 'soul' as Brazil's older urban centers.

Modernism caught on in Latin America only a few years after its emergence in Europe yet, according to scholar Mauro F. Guillen, Latin America co-opted modernist architecture at a time when it remained decidedly un-modern. Intellectual life, especially in Brazil and Mexico, was well ahead of technology and industry, but the modernist style meshed well with the visions of progress forwarded by technocratic politicians, many of whom were engineers that valued sound and economical designs (Guillen, 2004). In Mexico, architect Juan O'Gorman (who designed the UNAM library seen in the Scientific Institutions topic) fused elements of modernism with local art forms, especially that of muralists like Diego Rivera. Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx developed a style that historian Nancy Leys Stepan classified as tropical modernism, one that fused the abstract and stark shapes of modernism with plants from Brazil's tropical jungles. Stepan argued that Burle Marx's gardens and parks created a discordant space where the centuries-old Brazilian conflict between "civilization" and tropical nature were forced to interact, creating landscapes that were both bizarre and beautiful (Stepan 2001).

It is perhaps surprising that Buenos Aires, the richest and most modern early twentieth century Latin American city, did not take up modernism with the same gusto as Mexico and Brazil. Although the curricula of architecture degree programs were important in this regard, the nationalistic government of Juan Peron preferred building with colonial and classical designs that were considered better monuments of national glory (see the Museo de La Plata for an example of this style).

References: Guillen, Mauro F. "Modernism without Modernity: The Rise of Modernist Architecture in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, 1890-1940." In Latin American Research Review, vol. 39, no. 2 (2004), pp. 6-34.

Stepan, Nancy Leys. Picturing Tropical Nature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001

CITATION: Marcelo Metal. Palácio da Justiça, Brasília, Brazil. May, 2006.
DIGITAL ID: 12148

Plan of Lima

Date: 1758
Owner: John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
Source Type: Images

This 1758 map of Lima illustrates clearly the regular grid structure of straight streets moving out from a central square that was the hallmark of Latin American cities founded during the colonial era. The conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded this so called "City of Kings" in 1535 on the site of an indigenous settlement. The most obvious reason why he chose this spot to build the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru was that, as the Inca well knew, it had the significant natural advantages of fresh water, timber, and access to the sea. Yet the symbolic reasons for building Lima at this site were no less important than the practical ones. The deliberate changes to the landscape, such as the grid structure and the cathedral built directly on top of a razed Inca temple, all sent a clear message that Spaniards and Spanish civilization were now the dominant force in the region.

The city expanded gradually throughout the colonial period until1746, when Lima was devastated by one of the worst earthquakes in world history. Over 10,000 people died from the disaster itself, yet it is believed that even more died in the months following the quake from lack of food and the diseases that festered amidst the many unremoved corpses in the streets. It took Lima several decades to recover from the earthquake.

One of the lasting effects of the quake was that it destroyed the very healthcare structure needed to tend the sick and injured populace. In the mid eighteenth century, Lima had eleven hospitals and a handful of hospices, orphanages, and houses of deposit for wayward women. At the time, hospitals were largely responsible for their own funding (through renting out properties or selling medicines, clothes, and even eggs), and the economic aftermath of the 1746 quake left most hospitals bankrupt.

Lima's hospitals embodied the social divisions of race, class, and gender that were so prevalent in colonial Lima. Some hospitals were meant to serve only male Spaniards, others were for Indians, some for rich or poor women, and others for slaves and free blacks. The San Bartolome hospital, number 47 on this map, was for "negros y otras castas" and was originally built on the cheap because such institutions were primarily used for "dropping off" slaves that were so sick that they would soon die anyway. The shoddy construction meant that San Bartolome was completely destroyed by the quake and, being for blacks, it was one of the last hospitals to be rebuilt (finally finished in 1773).

References: Cahill, David. "Financing Healthcare in the Viceroyalty of Peru: The Hospitals of Lima in the Late Colonial Period." In The Americas, vol. 52, no. 2 (Oct., 1995), pp. 123-154.

Higgins, James. Lima: A Cultural History. New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

CITATION: Plan of the city of Lima, Peru. In: Lopez de Vargas Machuca. Atlas geographico de la America septentrional y meridional. Madrid: Casa de Antonio Ssanz Plazuela de la Calle de la Paz, 1758. Accession no. 06599. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
DIGITAL ID: 13127

Port-au-Prince

Date: 2008
Owner: Jan Sochor
Source Type: Images

Who designs a city? The metropolises of Latin America have all undergone several phases of planned building at various stages of their development. Mexico City, to cite an extreme example, began as a lake, was transformed into a city of pyramids that were razed to make room for the distinctive central plaza found in nearly all Spanish American cities before several different generations of leaders--each with their own agendas--added to this core. By the dawn of the twentieth century, it was generally considered the government's responsibility to dictate the shape of development, provide sanitation services, and monitor criminal elements in Latin American cities. Although the leaders of Latin American cities met with mixed success, the various manifestations of science in a city--engineering, public health, criminology, etc.--were the domain of professionals who were usually employed by the state or some other authoritative institution.

Not so in Port-au-Prince, the long-beleaguered capital of Haiti. Since at least the 1980s, the city's ostensible leaders have abandoned Port-au-Prince, making little to no effort to maintain the city's existing infrastructures (sewers, electricity, police) and doing even less to extend them into the rapidly overflowing suburbs. In effect, the role of urban planner has been taken over by the masses, the migrants who flock to the capital and reshape the city on their own. The city's interior has simply been overwhelmed by a kind of development from below that has made Port-au-Prince one massive slum. On the outskirts, Haitians erect entire new neighborhoods in a matter of weeks that are without even the most basic services. Some entrepreneurs practice only the most elementary kinds of engineering (like welding and plumbing) to help build this city.

This kind of informal development, though taking place in a shared environment, is strictly personal, an effort to create a space for one's own survival. Large scale urban improvement just does not happen under such fractured circumstances. Indeed, according to Haitian scholar Sabine Manigat, development in Port-au-Prince has become so chaotic that it is unlikely that any comprehensive plan can remedy it.

So is this kind of development from below "scientific"? It does require rudimentary technological skills, but Port-au-Prince is being shaped far more by necessity than science, especially if that term is used in its elite sense. Although almost all Latin American metropolises have this informal developmental element (very pronounced in the favelas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), few other New World cities are created in the same ad-hoc way as Port-au-Prince. This impoverished city is an important reminder of just how dependent all cities are on the sciences that design, protect, build, clean, heal, and, in a word, civilize them.

Reference: Manigat, Sabine. "Haiti: The Popular Sectors and the Crisis in Port-au-Prince." In The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy. Alejandro Portes, Carlos Dore-Cabral, and Patricia Landoldt, editors. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

CITATION: Jan Sochor. Women of the La Saline Market, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. July, 2008.
DIGITAL ID: 13125

Progress of Montevideo

Date: 1906
Owner: Library of Congress
Source Type: Images

In 1906, two foreign owned companies launched electric streetcars in Montevideo, Uruguay. For urban elites and technocratic politicians, these electricos embodied modernity and progress and promised to reshape their city to better fit their vision. Indeed, the streetcars did reorder Montevideo's social space by bringing previously disparate neighborhoods, parks, beaches, and commercial areas "closer" to each other and, by sharpening the distinction between center and suburb, improving the potential for economic development downtown. The electricos seemed to be fulfilling the dream of unlimited urban growth and progress through technology.

Yet not everyone shared this elite view of the streetcars, nor was there agreement as to what exactly progress should entail. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Montevideo swelled with immigrants from southern Europe who, for the most part, took up jobs as industrial workers and brought anti-capitalistic ideologies with them, most prominent of which was anarchism. For this group, streetcars became a visible symbol of the misplaced priorities of the modern era: foreign dominance, the commoditization of the popular classes, and a heartless kind of technology-driven ethos that put money before people. They preferred a kind of progress that emphasized education, social equality, increased freedom, and a movement away from capitalism.

Perhaps ironically, it was the streetcar workers themselves who were the first to actively oppose the elite vision of progress. Streetcar drivers, mechanics, inspectors, etc. were subject to the full brunt of industrial discipline that accompanies mechanization, and the rigors of meeting the standards imposed by their foreign bosses (such as strict timetables) led them to question the value of technological progress. Anarchism provided an alternative. In May of 1907, streetcar personnel led Montevideo's first general strike and this popular protest severely damaged the image of streetcars as modern marvels. In the wake of the strike, Uruguayans continued to ride the cars in increasing numbers but they also began to view them with suspicion as pernicious and oppressive foreign technologies.

New technologies--of transportation, communication, architecture, water, sewer, electricity, etc.--can have a dramatic impact on the social, economic, and cultural life of a city. In fin-de-siecle Latin America, governments and elites usually equated technology with progress, but it is important to keep in mind that alternative visions of progress existed in which technology did more harm than good.

Reference: Rosenthal, Anton. "The Arrival of the Electric Streetcar and the Conflict over Progress in Early Twentieth-Century Montevideo." In Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 27, no. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 319-341

CITATION: Uruguay--Montevideo-Plaza de Constitution. 1880-1900. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-115486.
DIGITAL ID: 13124

Sanitation in Rio de Janeiro

Date: 1904
Owner: Wellcome Library, London
Source Type: Images

Brazil's early efforts to centralize and implement plans for urban renovation in Rio de Janeiro reached their climax after the 1902 election of President Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, who instituted a comprehensive plan to beautify Rio and eliminate the diseases that had long plagued the city: smallpox, bubonic plague, and yellow fever. Engineers and construction crews thus dramatically revamped downtown Rio while the elimination of diseases was entrusted to Dr. Oswaldo Cruz.

Cruz and his teams of "mosquito inspectors" (like those pictured here) travelled around the city to destroy disease vectors. They thus drained stagnant water, killed rats, and, most importantly, sought out the larvae of the Aedes aegypti mosquito that, as had been recently proven by Carlos Finlay, were responsible for spreading yellow fever. Cruz's war against disease in Rio was one of the most impressive public health campaigns in history: by 1909, yellow fever had been completely eliminated from the city. His sanitation techniques were lauded and, with varying degrees of success, replicated throughout Latin America.

Although it might seem obvious that these efforts to improve conditions in Rio would have been supported by the city's people, such was not necessarily the case. Rio's poor were, sometimes violently, opposed to Rodrigues Alves' renovations. The downtown construction projects had in fact further marginalized them from the Rio's economic and cultural life. For example, beautiful new trade houses were constructed that facilitated the export economy that made Brazil's elites rich while the trade of the poor was made more peripheral because new streetcars and trains did not service their neighborhoods.

The poor also resisted the public health campaign because, for many, the "mosquito inspectors" created more problems than they solved. They destroyed unsanitary buildings, but the poor often had no where else to go. They quarantined infected persons who, for the most part, then died in isolation. In 1904, a government bill that required everyone to receive smallpox vaccinations--a poorly understood and feared procedure--catalyzed a massive riot in which the poor targeted precisely those urban improvements made by and for the rich, streetcars, electric lights, and modern new buildings. The unequal and, according to many of the poor, insidious application of elite science to early twentieth century Rio illustrated some of the challenges and conflicts inherent in "modernizing" an urban space that was understood and experienced very differently by various population groups.

Reference: Meade, Teresa A. "Civilizing" Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889-1930. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997

CITATION: "Spraying roofs to prevent Yellow Fever." From: Cruz, Oswaldo. Os servicos de saude publica no Brasil: especialmente na cidade do Rio de Janeiro: de 1808 a 1907. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. L0040955.
DIGITAL ID: 13126

Source References

Web Sites
Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI)

Museo Nacional de Antropologia (Museo Nacional de Antropologia)

Museo Nacional de Historia (Museo Nacional de Historia)

Aztec Tenochtitlan (Aztec Brands Inc.)

Teotihuacan: The City of the Gods (Archaeological Research Institute, Arizona State University)

Centro de Tecnologia Mineral (CETEM)

Mexican Society for the History of Science and Technology (SMHCT)

Publications
Almondoz, A. Planning Latin American Capital Cities1850-1950. London: Routledge, 2002.

Anderson, Robin L. "Public Health and Public Healthiness, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1876-1893." Journal of the History of Medicin and Allied Sciences. 41 (1986): 293-307.

Armus, Diego. "Salud y anarquia: la tuberculosis en el discurso libertario argentino." Salud, cultura y sociedad. p. 111-133.

Aveni, Anthony F. Maya City Planning and the Calendar. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986.

Avery, Ralph Emmett. The greatest engineering feat in the world at Panama: Authentic and complete story of the building and operation of the great waterway--the eighth wonder of the world. New York: Leslie-Judge Co., 1915.

Bakewell, P.J. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Bliss, Katherine E. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Burns, E. Bradford. The Poverty of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Cueto, Marcos. "La Ciudad y las Ratas: La Peste Bubonica en Lima y en la Costa Peruana a Comienzos del Siglo Veinte." Historica. 15 (1991): 1-26.

Deustua, Jose R. Bewitchment Of Silver: The Social Economy of Mining in Nineteenth-Century Peru. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000.

Dore, Elizabeth W. The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.

Fenn, Mark E. and L.I. de Bauer, Tomas Hernandez-Tejeda. Urban Air Pollution and Forests: Resources at Risk in the Mexico City Air Basin. New York: Springer, 2002.

Griffin, Ernst and Larry Ford. "A Model of Latin American City Structure." Geographical Review. 70: 4 (October 1980): 397-422.

Guillaume, Herbert. The Amazon provinces of Peru as a field for European emigration: A statistical and geographical review of the country and its resources, including the gold and silver mines. London: Wyman & Sons, 1888.

Guy, Donna J. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Harvey, H.R. Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico: a Two Thousand Year Perspective. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.

Hassig, Ross. Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico. Norman: Univeristy of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Kaufmann, H.W. Fortifications of the Incas. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2006.

King, Heidi. Rain of the Moon: Silver in Ancient Peru. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.

Koontz, Rex, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick. Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001.

Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage Press, 2006.

McEwan, Colin. Pre-Columbian Gold: Technology and Iconography. London: Routledge, 2000.

McMahon, Gary and Felix Remy. Large Mines and the Community: Socioeconomic and Environmental Effects in Latin America, Canada, and Spain. Ottawa: IDRC Books, 2002.

Meade, Teresa. "Civilizing Rio de Janeiro: the Public Health Campaign and the Riot of 1904." Journal of Social History. 20 (1986): 301-322.

Miller, Robert Ryal. Daily Life in Colonial Mexico: The Journey of Friar Ilarione Da Bergamo, 1761-1768. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

Needall, Jeffrey. "The 'Revolta contra vacina' of 1904: the Revolt Against 'Modernization' in Belle-Epoque Rio de Janeiro." Hispanic American Historical Review. 67 (1987), 233-270.

Olsen, Patrice. Artifacts of Revolution: Architecture, Society, and Politics in Mexico City, 1920-1940. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

Opher, Philip and Xavier Sanchez Valladares. Mexico City: A Guide to Recent Architecture. London: Ellipsis Arts, 2000.

Pezzoli, K. Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability - The Case of Mexico City. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.

Pick, James B. Mexico Megacity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Rodriguez, Martha Eugenia. Contaminacion e insalubridad en la ciudad de Mexico en el siglo XVII. Mexico: Facultad de Medicina, UNAM, 2000.

Romero, Aldemaro. Environmental Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Springer, 2005.

Schuetz, Mardith K. Architectural Practice in Mexico City: A Manual for Journeyman Architects of the Eighteenth Century. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987.

Stein, Stanley J. Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

West, Robert Cooper. In Quest of Mineral Wealth: Aboriginal and Colonial Mining and Metallurgy in Spanish America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Wright, Kenneth R. Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2000.

Wright, Kenneth R. and Gordon Francis McEwan and Ruth M. Wright. Tipon: Water Engineering Masterpiece of the Inca Empire. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2006.

de Azeredo, Paulo Roberto. "Clase Social e Saude na Cidade no Rio de Janeiro: Primera Metade do seculo XIX." Revista do Museu Paulista. 25 (1978): 129-165.

Films and Videos
Los Olvidados (Connoisseur Video, 1950)

Mexico City: The Impossible City (Films Media Group, 2005)

Mexico: Land of Paradox (Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 1994)

Sentinels of Silence: The Ruins of Ancient Mexico (ALTI Publishing, 1971)

The Human Race: Escaping from History (Bullfrog Films, 1995)

undefined (Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2001)