Laboratorios y experimentos: Democracia y política en la investigación industrial

in latin america the local experimental scientific activity is often invisible. lack of interest for the life of the laboratory seems to obey to reasons that are not alien to some generalized intellectual, social and technological structures in techno-scientific research during the last half century in countries with advanced science, and a whole range of social phenomena that surround and give entity to that science, establishing viability indexes that prevent an easy transference of concepts from those contexts to the latin american ones. it is often assumed that some ideas can only emerge from certain forms of international cooperation. in the present paper the contingency and determinism of industrial research is discussed, the example of orimulsion is revised as a national flagship technological development in relation to the notion of technology practice communities, and the distinction between policy and politics is debated, arguing that basic decisions about industrial r&d are political.