Bridges in Latin America - their history

These reflexions on the history of bridge building in Latin America begin with the pre-Hispanic period, when the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and Mayans in Central America and the Incas in the Andean countries flourished. The building materials taken from nature were used with skilful building techniques. Stone slabs were employed to make corbelled arches; clay bricks were used even to build pyramids; natural fibres from grass, reeds and lianas were braided into load-bearing ropes or bundled into floating bodies; wood and bamboo made beam constructions possible. With the entry of the Spaniards into the history of the continent in 1492, new construction techniques, along with imported iron tools - previously unknown due to a lack of raw materials -, were welcomed by the local population as improvements: Now stone arches are also used to build bridges and aqueducts, and European new carpentry techniques improved wooden constructions. The independence movements that began in 1810, went hand in hand with the technical innovations of the industrial revolution and the first wave of globalization around 1900. The construction of a railway network is a crucial characteristic of this period, determined by iron as a building material. Today, the continent is part of our globalized world, also in terms of technology.