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RESuMEn Este artículo examina la relación entre trabajos científicos y retórica del patriotismo criollo en la Capitanía General de Guatemala a finales de la época colonial, centrándose en las declaraciones del papel periódico patriótico la Gazeta de Guatemala sobre la fiabilidad de conocimientos científicos aportados por "expertos" extranjeros y su aplicabilidad a las circunstancias locales de la futura Guatemala. Eruditos guatemaltecos participaron en redes de intercambio de información científica dentro del imperio español, pero también construyeron sus propias redes de contactos dentro de Centroamérica, del Caribe, y aún Norteamérica, y compararon y evaluaron esas distintas fuentes de información. Aunque los sentimientos patrióticos criollos no se tradujeron en un movimiento político independentista hasta los años 1820, es posible observar con anterioridad una actitud patriótica en los argumentos sobre la ciencia y la fiabilidad de las fuentes científicas.Palabras clave: Guatemala, Centroamérica, Colonial, Ciencia, Redes de comunicación, Patria, Siglo XVIII. The Rhetoric of Patriotism and networks of Scientific Information inCentral America, c. 1790-1810 ABSTRACT:This article explores the relationship between scientific endeavours and the rhetoric of creole patriotism in the Spanish colony in Central America, the Captaincy-General of Guatemala towards the end of the colonial period. It focuses specifically on the statements made by the patriotic newspaper Gazeta de Guatemala about the trustworthiness of expert scientific knowledge and the applicability of foreign knowledge to Guatemalan circumstances. Guatemalan scholars participated in networks for the exchange of scientific information within the Spanish empire, but also built up their own network of contacts within the colony, the Caribbean, and even North America, and could pit these sources of knowledge against each other. Although feelings of creole patriotism were not translated into a political independence movement until the 1820s, it is still possible to observe a patriotic slant in arguments made about science and the reliability of scientific sources.

Rica, it had great natural advantages, from being a place where 'the most exquisite fruits of all climes grow in abundance' to possessing harbours on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Indeed, it might well be 'the best of all the King's possessions'. 1 Yet, as a contributor to Guatemala's newspaper remarked in 1803, 'this kingdom, which should be one of the most prosperous, is one of the most miserable ones in America'. How to square these contradictions, and help fulfil the true potential of the region, was the mission of a group of reformers who came together in patriotic associations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They believed that geographical, climatic, botanical, agricultural, and demographic knowledge held the key to 'enlightened' progress. True patriots would not just be content with gathering such knowledge. Instead, theirs was a practical Enlightenment that would offer prosperity by applying scientific knowledge to the management of landscapes. As this book argues, Central American reformers found the meaning of a homeland not in abstract ideas of idealised national landscapes, but in experiential engagement with them. By the early nineteenth century, reformers imagined a new region, one that was self-confidently connected to the rest of the world through scientific communication networks, and one whose inhabitants were dedicated to developing its bountiful landscapes into ever more prosperous spaces. Although patriotic identities of the eighteenth century map onto nineteenth-century nationalisms imprecisely at best, the legacy of new visions of Central 2

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