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This chapter introduces the subject of Peruvian responses to climate change and ensuing glacier catastrophes from 1941 to the present. In Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range, which towers above the Callejón de Huaylas valley in the Ancash Department, 25,000 people have died from glacier-related disasters (glacial lake outburst floods and avalanches). The chapter places this study within current historiography on climate history, the history of science and technology, environmental history, Peruvian history, Latin American history, disaster studies, and glacier-society relations both globally and in the Andean region. The chapter then demonstrates why glacier retreat in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range is an ideal case study for understanding long-term human adaptation to climate change, as well as analyzing how science evolves in societal context following climate change and natural disasters. Responses to climate change, which brought scientists and engineers to the Cordillera Blanca, unleashed a process called disaster economics: the use of catastrophes or disaster mitigation programs to promote and empower a range of economic development interests in both the public and private sectors. Climate change triggered historical processes and scientific developments far beyond the immediate disasters caused by melting glaciers.

In 1950, the Los Cedros glacial lake outburst flood destroyed the nearly constructed Cañón del Pato hydroelectric facility. President Manuel Odría responded by creating the Control Commission of Cordillera Blanca Lakes to prevent additional floods caused by climate change and glacier retreat in the Andes. The Lakes Commission achieved marked success in glacier science and glacial lake engineering during the 1950s and 60s, including a glacial lake inventory, lake classification system, and engineering projects to drain and dam glacial lakes. Government support for the Lakes Commission was often motivated by and facilitated coast-focused economic development initiatives through the Peruvian Santa Corporation rather than humanitarian concerns for vulnerable populations. These hazard mitigation programs ultimately made the state responsible for disaster prevention, and in the process facilitated nation building and gave the government more control over Andean space and resources, in part with local support because residents wanted to prevent floods.

The Control Commission of Cordillera Blanca Lakes, which was established in 1951 to prevent glacial lake outburst floods caused by climate change and glacier retreat in the Andes, had far-reaching effects on the economic development of Ancash and the Callejón de Huaylas. Engineers who examined glacial lakes brought development interests that had long inspired Peruvian policymakers and developers. They hoped to exploit Andean natural resources to promote national economic development and modernization. Glacial lake flood prevention programs provided a springboard for the expansion of hydroelectricity, road building, tourism, and wage labor. This process whereby disaster spurred economic development is referred to as "disaster economics," which the Lakes Commission carried out after 1951. Economic development directly and indirectly followed the science, technology, engineering, and policies implemented after catastrophes to prevent additional disasters, thereby revealing the social construction of science and engineering.

This chapter analyzes the onset of Cordillera Blanca glacier disasters in 1941 through an examination of a glacial lake outburst flood that killed 5,000 people and destroyed one-third of the Ancash capital city of Huaraz in the Callejón de Huaylas. In the aftermath, Peruvians scrambled not only to survive and rebuild but also to determine the cause of the flood. While hazard mitigation began right after the catastrophe, it progressed haphazardly during the 1940s. Just as the 1941 flood made urban residents in Huaraz intimately aware of the previously unrecognized melting glaciers over their city, the glacial lake disaster made Peruvians in Lima and elsewhere significantly more aware of the Andean mountains—both their peril and their possibilities. Local urban and rural residents, engineers, scientists, and government officials who began studying glacial lake hazards after 1941 all brought their own perspectives about glaciers, construing them simultaneously as hazards and resources.

This chapter examines disaster responses and environmental perceptions of climate change and glacier retreat through an analysis of the 1941 Huaraz and 1945 Chavín de Huantar glacial lake outburst floods, which killed 5,000 and 500 people, respectively. For the people most affected, the urban Huaraz population, the disaster not only leveled physical structures but also toppled symbols of social standing, wealth, status, and even the culturally constructed racial categories that supposedly distinguished Indians, mestizos, and creoles (whites). Essentially, the floods erased supposed boundaries between highland and lowland, countryside and city, and nature and civilization. Conceptualizing Cordillera Blanca glacial lake disasters as the combination of societal and environmental forces illuminates the culture of climate change and reveals why residents later rejected hazard zoning. It also explains why Huaraz urban inhabitants turned to state science and technology to protect them from glacier retreat.

Chapter 7 focuses on the adaption of the mountain conception imported to the colonies. Indeed, the conception does not simply follow a copy paste model from the metropolises to the colonies. Colonization also proceeded by adopting modes for managing places and developing resources. Here again, references to the mountain were common and usually conceived in terms of Western models. Colonization, whether conceived solely as occupation or also as the exploitation of resources, was thus based on the deployment of forms of geographical knowledge that had originated in the West. That deployment preceded or went hand in hand with the deployment of men, capital, and techniques for development. The colonial powers approached the worlds they had discovered and made their own by means of categories that standardized descriptions and conditioned practices. The “tropical mountains,” along with other objects, emerged in the wake of that colonial expansion and territorial appropriation. They were the product of a set of images, facts, resources, and projects that articulated the European model in terms of similarities but also well-understood differences. The nation-states that emerged from decolonization usually retained that highly standardized model to configure the mountains.