February 2020
Moises Santiago Bertoni. Source: Wikipedia
The trajectory of the Swiss naturalist and botanist Moisés Santiago Bertoni is the subject of the article “About my love for Paraguay and the Guarani race:” the ideas and projects of the naturalist and botanist Moisés Santiago Bertoni (1857-1929) by Eliane Cristina Deckmann Fleck. The author, who is professor and researcher in the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul), affirms that in his struggle to contradict the ideas held by intellectuals who supported positivist evolutionism and nineteenth-century liberalism, Bertoni made a solitary effort defending the superiority of the indigenous Guaraní people, and above all their hygiene and medicine, as both his biographers and critics attest.
Unlike the classic travelers and naturalists contemporary to him, Bertoni traveled to the Americas to found an agricultural colony, first in Argentina, and later in Paraguay. In addition to corresponding with intellectuals and international research centers, he devoted himself to the study of flora and the native populations, as well as writing articles and texts such as La civilización guarani.
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