Ciencia, mar y poder. Historia sociopolítica del Instituto Oceanográfico de Venezuela (1958-1969)

Abstract

This work consists of a socio-political history of the Instituto Oceanográfico de Venezuela (IOV), a research center with which the field of Marine Sciences began its process of academic institutionalization in Venezuela. The initial decade (1958-1969) of the institute meant a start and boom of research in the Venezuelan seas, even in the context of controversies and confrontations for the control and direction of the institute, which in turn were directly influenced by the Venezuelan political climate of the time and because the IOV was also the academic center that made was possible to create the Universidad de Oriente (UDO) in 1958 in the city of Cumaná (Sucre state, Venezuela), a higher education center created in 1958 in the city of Cumaná (Sucre state, Venezuela), Venezuela), a center of higher studies created by the new political elite of the nascent Venezuelan representative democracy. The analysis was based on primary documents from the archive of Pedro Roa Morales, academic archives of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and the UDO and the Oriente Universitario (UDO’s newspaper in the 1960s). These are letters, minutes, telegrams and manuscripts that were made available to us by Evelyn Zoppi de Roa - Pedro Roa’s widow - in 2017. As a university project that summoned scientific and political leaders, the UDO was born as a space where science converged with political- partisan practice through ideological loyalties and confrontations, features that did not take long to appear in the IOV. Thus, politicians (and politics) prevailed over scientists even in an academic institution, putting in check the project that gave rise to it.