Alfredo Escudero

“The Land is the Laboratory” is a study of how, in the documentary genre known as visitas (land inspections) Spanish colonial inspectors and Andean Indigenous peasants engaged in the task of transforming qualitative, in-person observation into quantitative, paper-based information. In the Andes this transformation started in the sixteenth century, when Spanish colonizers sought to organize and commodify Andean nature through mandatory tribute payments. This tribute regime, I argue, became an emerging knowledge regime too. By testing European crops in the highlands, mixing agricultural and textile technologies or calculating seasonal production according to local demographic and geographic conditions, Andeans engaged in multiple scientific interventions over their lands and turned entire landscapes and populations into quantitative data. This process contributed to the formation of transnational networks of knowledge, in synchrony and interaction with the so-called “Scientific Revolution” in Europe and the building of modern states.