While the recent Lava Jato financial crisis and impeachment of ex-president Dilma Rousseff have resulted in widespread repercussions across Brazil, this string of national events has been absorbed with a decolonial view that approaches these events as the latest wave in a series of violent oscillations understood as Brazilian history. This paper examines the ways in which Brazilian technological experts have constructed a culture of innovation despite, or because, of such contingencies and crises.
In a case study on computer innovation in Brazil, I analyze the National Computer Science Laboratory (LNCC) established in Petropolis in 1980. The LNCC has received recent media coverage for building South America’s largest supercomputer, “Santos Dumont”, and for its high profile international projects like “Pampa Azul”, which focuses on genetic mapping of the Zika genome. However, due to the LNCC’s most recent, highly publicized budget cutback in response to the crisis, the laboratory has placed a significant number of its projects on “stand by”, resulting in immediate questions of closure for the LNCC. Utilizing archival and ethnographic methods, this presentation examines the complicated business of scientific innovation in Brazil in crisis mode. The laboratory’s use of open-source software geared towards scientific discovery provides a unique example of national innovation while at the same time presenting a case for how the government continues to support its scientific platforms despite state-wide budget cuts.
