Why Chuño Matters: Rethinking the History of Technology in Latin America

Abstract

This article examines the over-attention historians pay to innovation and high technology compared to local production through a brief review of the historiography of technology in twentieth-century Latin America. Following Svante Lindqvist’s approach to “technological land-scapes,” it argues that the current history of technology in the region favors change over continuity, thus perpetuating a modernist and industrial per-spective of technological dynamics. Based on a case study of chuño (frozen-dehydrated potatoes) production and consumption on the Altiplano of Peru and Bolivia, this article shows how historians could incorporate local and long-standing knowledge and use into the history-of-technology canon.