Transplanting, mapping and exploring: naturalist discourses on Central America during the 18th and 19th centuries

Abstract

This paper examines selected expeditionary texts that included Central America and were produced through various scientific channels during the 18th and 19th centuries. The study analyzes a corpus of botanical, geographical, and anthropological expeditionary literature, exploring how these expeditions functioned not only as territorial exploration but also as mechanisms of representation. Through an ecocritical approach, it identifies that such scientific enterprises responded to the political and economic interests of elites, oriented toward territorial control and the exploitation of natural resources under utilitarian thought. The results show that the scientific discourse employed was not limited to documenting nature but also legitimized racial hierarchies that marginalized alternative knowledge systems. It is concluded that expeditionary literature contributed decisively to the construction of national imaginaries and a Central American identity characterized by violence, mestizaje, and the foreign perception of the isthmus as a space of commercial exploitation.