Science and nature in the time of Simón Bolívar The protection of water, forests, agriculture, livestock, wildlife, mining, and land distribution

Abstract

This paper examines, in the time of Simón Bolívar, the relationship between science, nature, South American independence movements, and the formation of the new nation-states, whose initial and nascent treasuries were structurally bankrupt. Lacking the resources to lay the foundations of the state apparatus and sustain it over time, as well as without sustainable sources of funding for recurring public spending, they possessed only precarious colonial production systems affected by the aftermath of war. In this context of institutional fragility, the smuggling of natural and mineral resources was a “solid economy” that did not channel its revenues into the coffers of the new states. It is within this “semantic framework” that we understand the historical importance of the thirteen decrees issued by Simón Bolívar between 1820 and 1829, aimed at the control and management of forests, water resources, cattle ranching, mining, agriculture, and land distribution in Colombia and Peru. This article is situated within the history of Latin American "applied science" and environmental science by offering a reinterpretation of Bolivarian thought that goes beyond the military or institutional, highlighting its economic-naturalist dimension. Furthermore, we propose a critical reading that recovers these decrees not as direct antecedents of modern ecology, but as expressions of a political project that understood harmony with nature as a possible condition for the institutional development of the nation-state.