6 - The Greenhouse Gaze: Climate and Culture in Colombia (1808–1934)

Summary

Conservative political leader Laureano Gomez intervened in a long-standing public debate in Colombia about “racial degeneration” in 1928. He argued that because of Colombia's location in the tropical zone—in the same latitude “as Malaca, French Congo, Niam-Niam y Liberia” (28)—and the fact that its population comprised “lesser races,” the country would not be able to partake in “the concert of Western Civilization” unless a “greenhouse culture,” commanded by whites inhabiting the temperate Andean highlands, reoriented the nation toward civilization. These talks, which initially took place in Bogota's Teatro Municipal and were later published as Interrogantes sobre el progreso de Colombia, were attended by an audience composed not only by lettered elites but also by a rising middle-class.

Gomez's lectures made a deep impression at the time, arousing passionate debates in the national media. His topic (Colombia and world progress) and his argument—that Colombia could not progress because of its tropical nature—provoked all sorts of reactions. Giving voice to an elite angst concerning the slow progress of the Colombian civilizing project in comparison not only to the United States but more unsettlingly to other Latin American countries, Gomez argued that Colombia's hot climate— and in particular its jungle—stood in the way of it becoming a civilized nation. If not addressed, disease, humidity, deceiving abundance, and “degenerate races” threatened to invade the civilized centers of the temperate highlands. This is how Gomez imagined a primeval jungle taking over the center of the country, as an anticivilizing force that only a greenhouse culture could subdue: “Si con la imaginacion suprimieramos de nuestro territorio los levantamientos andinos, veriamos la manigua del Magdalena juntarse con la del Patia y el San Juan, el Putumayo y el Orinoco. La selva soberana y brutal, hueca e inutil, o las vastas praderas herbaceas y anegadizas se extenderian de un mar a otro mar apenas pobladas por tribus vagabundas.” (28; If with imagination we were to suppress the Andean upheavals from our territory, we would see the Magdalena jungle join the Patia and San Juan, Putumayo and Orinoco.