Astronomy with Two Surnames: In Defense of Science Made in Latin America | Future America

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“Which of these is a family name?” The tone and every word, spoken in an English accent of unintelligible origin, indicated that this was not a simple question to complete the procedure. “If it is a family name, why is it not hyphenated?” It was like asking why the highway from Alaska to Patagonia is called the Pan-American Highway if it does not cross the Darien Gap. But this man did not want to hear ecological, historical, or sociocultural explanations. I had a ruler to measure the world, and my existence did not fit into it. “Occupation?” Astronomer. “Can you learn that in your country?”

Professional astronomers and astronomers are few in the world and in Latin America. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the international organization responsible for the advancement of astronomy worldwide, lists 12,734 registered professionals in 85 countries. About six out of every 100 professional astronomers in the world live in the Romance-speaking countries of the Americas, what we commonly call Latin America. This percentage does not include the hundreds of Latin American astronomers who practice their profession in other countries and are registered through other national associations, but it is not far from the proportion of the world’s population living in these areas; about eight out of every 100 people on the planet live in Latin America. So those of us who come from this part of the world are not exceptional in the international astronomical community. However, our representation in the collective imagination is limited, even in our own countries.

Ask someone close to you to close their eyes and think of someone who does astronomy. Is it a woman or a man? What language do you speak? What color are you? The answer may vary, but it’s highly unlikely that they’re picturing Guillermo Haro Barraza, Jorge Arias de Greiff, or María Cristina Pineda Suazo. Have you ever seen or heard an astronomer explain their discovery on the radio or television in your language? In your country, as in mine, does discussion of geomagnetic storms have to compete with the entertainment news? Do they also invite a tarot reader to comment on the Nobel Prize in Physics? Does your local newspaper have more space for zodiac signs than for science news? Considering how little we see of our astronomers in Latin America – and our scientists in general – it’s a miracle that we continue to produce them. Where do these characters come from then, who put on the shirts of their countries to represent them to the world, if they cannot train by kicking a rag ball in a pasture or singing in the streets, like many of the athletes and artists who are the international image of Latin America?

Hugo Levato, the Argentine astronomer who compiled one of the few handbooks on formal astronomical education in Latin America, divided our countries into three categories. The first category consists of those who are completely absent from the international panorama of astronomy. As if Paraguay, Nicaragua or El Salvador did not look at the sky. In this category there are also countries with only one or two IAU members, which I fondly imagine as proud Don Quixotes watching the sky from Bolivia, Cuba or Peru, although the name of the latter country is inscribed in the history of modern astronomy.

Near Arequipa, at the Harvard College Observatory station, the positions and spectra of light from tens of thousands of southern hemisphere stars were observed in the early 20th century, and these were later to play a decisive role in determining the composition and nature of this type of celestial body. objects. One version of the story, published in the Harvard University student newspaper, tells of local workers employed exclusively in construction and of low-paid women in charge of analysis. Another version tells of civil wars that bled Peru dry and kept foreign astronomers at the mercy of a military commander on duty with suitcases in hand and holes in the ground ready to hide expensive lenses during the raids of each new militia. The fact is that Peru, with its exceptionally clear skies, is missing from the panorama of modern astronomy.

The second category of research consists of countries with at least a dozen researchers where astronomy was offered as a physics major. Among them were Uruguay, Honduras, and Colombia, though much has changed in the fifteen years since that paper was published. Costa Rica can now be added to the list, which in 2002 received its first planetarium, thanks to a donation from the Japanese government, and today sends talent to complete its studies at the world’s best universities. Colombia has also moved a little closer to the sky, offering doctoral programs and consolidating itself as a country exporting scientific talent, though its results on international tests of physics and mathematics, the basic skills for astronomy research, show that most of its high school graduates are below the industrialized-country average.

The last category includes five countries that have closed the loop on training astronomers at the doctoral level, maintaining a research ecosystem with research institutes, postdocs, and professors. Political and social crises have cost Venezuela its leadership in the region and destroyed a system that had supported, despite restrictions, high-level astronomical research. Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil are regional powers in the natural sciences, although changes in government have raised concerns about their stability. Whether it is the perceived tension between the natural sciences and cultural traditions, or the relentless financial adjustments to anything that does not bring immediate economic returns, the earthly connects those who have dedicated themselves to understanding the universe in these countries.

Chile deserves a special category as the door to the most transparent sky on the planet. The exceptionally clear and dry sky of the Atacama Desert, clear almost 300 days a year, has attracted more than half of the world’s infrastructure dedicated to astronomy. It is impossible to imagine modern astronomy without the observatories of Cerro Tololo, La Silla or Las Campanas, without ALMA or without the antennas of Llano de Chajnantor. It is impossible to imagine the future of astronomy without the Giant Magellan Telescope, without the Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory or without the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. What seems like a luxury in other Latin American countries is an opportunity for researchers, engineers, teachers, students, amateurs and, above all, for the global image of the southern country.

Chile’s astronomical riches extend beyond its borders. Maria Teresa Ruiz and her Children of the Stars spread across the pages and screens of Latin America, just as Carl Sagan and his television program had done before. SpaceWhere are the seeds that she and so many other astronomy popularizers sowed in our countries? I like to think that they made our societies, so complex and unequal, a little better. Perhaps some children realized that the popularity of horoscopes reflects the pulse of society’s gullibility. Perhaps some girls realized the fundamental role of women in expanding the boundaries of human knowledge. And perhaps some young people were equipped enough in their heads to understand that the heritage of our indigenous peoples and the heritage of Western science can coexist to build a better world.

This suspicion becomes a certainty when I see the faces of young researchers attending LARIM, the Latin American regional meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), or read the words of many others who are seeking an exchange or a PhD. I see the passion and rigor with which they approach their work, and I hide behind a smile as wide as a tent all the disappointments that I, like many Latin American researchers, carry. I forget the visa queues with which we justify our existence in countries with the resources to realize our talent. Memories of the prejudices, ignorance, and mistrust encountered along the way fade. I keep the bad memories to myself because I am witnessing a miracle: someone in our corner of the world who feels that he can push the boundaries of human knowledge into a distant part of the Universe.

Each of them is a “Latin American astronomer”, so they have two surnames to distinguish themselves from the others, not with the surnames that they have to cut out or hyphenate to sign their discoveries to the world, but with the ones they carry in their hearts, because they have decided to explore the universe. They are teachers who have decided to stay in their countries, even though they know that the potential of their students is only appreciated in other territories. They do not need to return to the Mayans or the Incas with nostalgia, thinking about a time when we could understand the sky. They have decided to look at the sky in societies where it is easier to continue looking at the earth. They are not yet Edwin Hubble or Cecilia Payne Gaposchkina, but they look at the universe with a passion and creativity that is only just emerging in our countries. They must persevere and do their utmost to see everything, to understand everything, and then to tell about it, because they come from a garden of ramifications where a visa or a prejudice may close the door on them, and they will have to invent another way. They must tell it so that others will know that there is someone like them, someone who has seen beyond the atmosphere and heard the secrets of the universe in our languages ​​and in our accents. They must tell it so that the flame of curiosity will not be extinguished in our countries, and so that we will never feel that we have less right than anyone else to understand the sky that encompasses us all.

The author thanks Luis Núñez de Villavicencio Martínez, Santiago González Gaitán, Anaïs Moller, Yara L. Jaffe, and Juan Rafael Martínez Galarza for conversations that inspired this article.