In the mid-twentieth century, two generations of German geographers studied agrarian colonization to the Caribbean lowlands of Central America, the plains of Colombia and Venezuela, the humid jungles of the Pacific, the inter-Andean valleys and the Amazonian plains. At that time, international scholars and local governments promoted internal colonization project, for economical or ideological reasons, with the idea of “transplanting” marginalized people from overpopulated areas to uncultivated land and transforming them into productive farmers promised solutions to socio-economic challenges and growing rural unrest. Geographers studied the new agrarian colonies. In my project I show how German geographers invented a tradition of German geographical thought in Latin America by reformulating classical concepts of German geography to explain agrarian colonization in Latin America. Using the classical ideas of German geography to understand the environmental and social problems associated with agrarian colonization, these two generations pointed out critical points of managed colonization such as the welfare of the colonists, the limits of the profitability of the colonies, and the lack of regional planning that would guarantee the insertion of the new colonies into the national market and society. In some cases, these findings were discussed with local officials and contributed to policy development. Thus, studies by German geographers on agrarian colonization in Latin America show different views of the Global North on modernization, developmentalism and the environment in Latin America during the Cold War.
