Navegación e historia de la ciencia: el naufragio del Sirio / Navigation and history of science: the Sirio shipwreck

El 04 de agosto de 1906, el barco italiano Sirio embarrancó en unos bajos de la costa murciana. Desde Génova se dirigía a Argentina no sin antes hacer escalas en otros puertos, fuera de la ruta oficial, a fin de recoger emigrantes ilegales deseosos de ir a América aunque fueran alojados en las bodegas del barco. Al mando iba el Capitán Giussepe Piccone, con 46 años de navegación a sus espaldas, iba a ser su último viaje al mando del Sirio. Cerca de Cabo de Palos, navegando de forma inusualmente cercana a la costa, hacia las 16.00 horas embarrancó. En pocos minutos el Sirio quedó sumergido a popa y con la proa asomando desde el agua con escora a estribor. En el rescate intervino el pueblo sencillo, el patrón de un pequeño barco, el Joven Miguel y otros pescadores. Nunca se han conocido con certeza la lista de pasajeros, los fallecidos, desaparecidos y rescatados. La zona es hoy un lugar privilegiado para el submarinismo, paraíso para los amantes de los pecios. Cuando el Sirio finalmente se hundió el 13 de agosto, aún salieron a flote numerosos cadáveres. La avaricia de una compañía naviera tuvo mucho que ver con lo sucedido

On August 4, 1906, the Italian ship Sirio ran into some shallows on the Murcian coast. She went from Genoa to Argentina, but not before stopping at other ports, off the official route, in order to pick up illegal immigrants who wanted to go to America even if they were housed in the ship's holds. Captain Giussepe Piccone was in command, with 46 years of sailing behind him, it was going to be his last trip commanding the Sirio. Near Cabo de Palos, sailing unusually close to the coast, at around 4:00 p.m., she ran aground. In few minutes the Sirio was submerged aft and with the bow sticking out from the water with a list to starboard. The rescue involved simple people, the owner of a small boat, Joven Miguel, and other fishermen. The list of passengers, the deceased, disappeared and rescued, has never been known with certainty. Today the area is a privileged place for scuba diving, a paradise for wreck lovers. When the Sirio finally sank on August 13, numerous corpses still surfaced. The greed of a shipping company was a cause of everything happened

Lessons in ambivalence: The Shanghai Municipal Council's opium policies, 1906-1917.

BACKGROUND: Shanghai was considered to be a "capital of opium" in modern China, hence the history of opium in the city has received significant attention. In the Shanghai International Settlement, where Chinese and foreigners lived as neighbours, drugs were considered by the administration as both "trouble maker", and important financial resource. This paper explores how the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), the most senior governing body in the settlement, used its position to maximize political and economic profit from the trade and consumption of opium. METHODS: The paper is based on documentary analysis of records of the SMC board meetings and other related material stored at Shanghai Municipal Archives. Interpretive approaches were used to analyze the shifting SMC strategies on opium consumption, the competing power relations and the way they were negotiated between actors with a stake in the region, including semi-colonialism and world systems analysis. RESULTS: With the dual purpose of preventing damage and enhancing municipal management, the SMC introduced a licensing system permitting the consumption and trade of drugs. However, the anti-opium policies of the late Qing government and the Anglo-Chinese 10 Year Agreement meant SMC had to shut down opium "houses" (opium dens) and "shops" (for the sale of opium to be consumed off the premises). CONCLUSIONS: Over almost a decade, the SMC shifted emphasis from political regulation of a social, recreational practice to maximizing financial benefit. In the process, SMC made full use of the opportunities it gained from a period of ambivalent Chinese and British power relations and local community rule.

A Síndrome da Exclusão Social: compreensão das origens da violência/ contraviolência no Brasil / The social exclusion syndrome: comprehension of the violence/counter-violence origins in Brazil

A indiferença humana no Brasil desde o início da colonização tem produzido e perpetuado o fenômeno da exclusão social. Um exemplo é a escravidão que durou cerca de 350 anos. Esse fenômeno excludente materializa-se ao produzir uma diversidade de fatores de risco biopsicossociais impactantes desde a gestação e em todos os períodos do ciclo de vida, acumulando e deixando sequelas profundas. Na década de 80 ocorreu interação sinérgica perversa entre o fenômeno da exclusão social e a entrada das drogas no nosso meio. A criança maior, o adolescente e o adulto jovem, muitas vezes socialmente vulneráveis, encontraram nas drogas duas possibilidades: a primeira, usar e abusar de drogas por várias razões, entre elas, baixa autoestima, para aliviar ansiedade e depressão, raiva; devido a uma personalidade extrovertida, impulsividade e inclinação ao comportamento de risco. E a segunda possibilidade, "empoderadora", entrar para o tráfico como meio de subir na vida e também por razões subjetivas. Esses caminhos quase sempre resultam em dependência química, "overdose", hospitalizações, práticas de atos infracionais, prisões, mortes e homicídios. O estudo indica que primariamente ocorreu violência histórica contra esse contingente populacional e que, muitas vezes, essa violência desencadeia um fenômeno também complexo, a contraviolência. A abordagem da violência/contraviolência deve focar, simultaneamente, sua origem (cultura da indiferença) e as consequências (fatores de risco e impactos biopsicossociais).(AU)

The human indifference in Brazil since the beginning of colonization has produced and perpetuated the phenomenon of social exclusion. The example is the slavery, which lasted about 350 years. This exclusive phenomenon has materialized itself as it has produced a diversity of biopsychosocial risk factors, which has impacted the individuals in all their life cycle periods from the gestation, accumulating and leaving their effects. In the 80's there was a perverse synergic interaction between the phenomenon of social exclusion and the entrance of drugs in our environment. The older child, the teenager and the young adult, socially vulnerables, find in drugs two possibilities: first, use and abuse of drugs for many reasons such as low self-esteem, to alleviate depression, anxiety and anger; due to an outgoing personality, impulsivity and more inclined to take risks; second possibility, "empowering", entering the drug trade as a way of getting ahead in life and also for subjective reasons. These pathways often always result in addiction, "overdose", hospitalization, infraction acts practice and also, arrests, deaths and homicides. The study of these cases in our history context shows that we face a primary historical violence against a huge population group that often this violence triggers a complex phenomenon, the counter-violence. The approach of violence/counter-violence should focus, simultaneously, on both the origin (culture of indifference) and the consequences (risk factors and biopsychosocial impacts).(AU)

Analysis of México's Narco-War Network (2007-2011).

Since December 2006, more than a thousand cities in México have suffered the effects of the war between several drug cartels, amongst themselves, as well as with Mexican armed forces. Sources are not in agreement about the number of casualties of this war, with reports varying from 30 to 100 thousand dead; the economic and social ravages are impossible to quantify. In this work we analyze the official report of casualties in terms of the location and the date of occurrence of the homicides. We show how the violence, as reflected by the number of casualties, has increased over time and spread across the country. Next, based on the correlations between cities in the changes of the monthly number of casualties attributed to organized crime, we construct a narco-war network where nodes are the affected cities and links represent correlations between them. We find that close geographical distance between violent cities does not imply a strong correlation amongst them. We observe that the dynamics of the conflict has evolved in short-term periods where a small core of violent cities determines the main theatre of the war at each stage. This kind of analysis may also help to describe the emergence and propagation of gang-related violence waves.

Legislating thresholds for drug trafficking: a policy development case study from New South Wales, Australia.

BACKGROUND: Legal thresholds are used in many parts of the world to define the quantity of illicit drugs over which possession is deemed "trafficking" as opposed to "possession for personal use". There is limited knowledge about why or how such laws were developed. In this study we analyse the policy processes underpinning the introduction and expansion of the drug trafficking legal threshold system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. METHODS: A critical legal and historical analysis was undertaken sourcing data from legislation, Parliamentary Hansard debates, government inquiries, police reports and research. A timeline of policy developments was constructed from 1970 until 2013 outlining key steps including threshold introduction (1970), expansion (1985), and wholesale revision (1988). We then critically analysed the drivers of each step and the roles played by formal policy actors, public opinion, research/data and the drug trafficking problem. RESULTS: We find evidence that while justified as a necessary tool for effective law enforcement of drug trafficking, their introduction largely preceded overt police calls for reform or actual increases in drug trafficking. Moreover, while the expansion from one to four thresholds had the intent of differentiating small from large scale traffickers, the quantities employed were based on government assumptions which led to "manifest problems" and the revision in 1988 of over 100 different quantities. Despite the revisions, there has remained no further formal review and new quantities for "legal highs" continue to be added based on assumption and an uncertain evidence-base. CONCLUSION: The development of legal thresholds for drug trafficking in NSW has been arbitrary and messy. That the arbitrariness persists from 1970 until the present day makes it hard to conclude the thresholds have been well designed. Our narrative provides a platform for future policy reform.

The long postwar and the politics of penicillin: early circulation and smuggling in Spain, 1944-1954.

In this paper I explore the early circulation of penicillin. I review the early distribution in Spain of a scarce product, reflect on the available sources about the illegal penicillin trade and discuss some cases of smuggling. I argue the early distribution of penicillin involved time and geography, a particular chronology of post Second World War geopolitics. Penicillin practices and experiences belong to this period, in a dictatorship that tolerated smuggling and illegal trade of other products, some, like penicillin, produced in neighbouring countries. As a commodity that crossed borders, penicillin, transiting between the law and hidden trade, between countries and social domains--between war fronts and from a war front to an urban site to be sold--reveals practices of the early years of prosperity in the 1950s. These transits were permanent tests of a society based on taxes and exchanges, law and bureaucracy, control, discipline and the creation of standards.

Aproximación histórica a la cocaína. De la coca a la cocaína / No disponible

La utilización de las hojas de coca por parte de las culturas incaicas enmarcada en sus costumbres cotidianas como estimulante, ahorrador de energías y protector del hambre junto con algunos elementos chamánicos reservados a las castas religiosa o más altas, fue aprovechada por los descubridores españoles de las “Américas” para explotar laboralmente a las tribus indígenas. Su consumo, casi necesario, mascando las hojas de coca estuvo íntimamente ligado con las culturas precolombinas. La oposición de ciertos sectores eclesiásticos no tuvo respaldo entre los comerciantes y explotadores de campos y minas. Pero la verdadera eclosión se produce con el descubrimiento en el siglo XIX de su alcaloide: la cocaína. Ensalzada desde el punto de vista médico y social, hasta principios del siglo XX, prohibida posteriormente por la aparición de consecuencias sobre todo de orden psicológico y la constatación de su capacidad adictiva, no ha sido suficiente para que se haya convertido en nuestros días en una de las drogas más consumidas, como droga recreativa, originando pingües beneficios en el mercado negro y apareciendo nuevas formas adictivas más peligrosas y adictógenas que la propia cocaína (AU)

The use of the cocaine leaves by part of Incas cultures remains framed in their daily customs as a stimulant, economiser of energy and as a hunger protector joined with some charming elements reserved to the religious castes or higher castes at least. The cocaine leaves was profited by Spaniards discoverers of the “Americas” to exploit at working to Indigenous tribes. Their consumption almost necessary was by masticating cocaine leaves and was very tied with the pre- Colombian cultures. The resistance of certain ecclesiastical sector didn’t have support between traders and exploiters of arable lands and mines. But the true expansion was in the nineteen Century with the discovery of it alkaloid: the cocaine. It was prised from the medical and social point of view to the beginning of twenty Century. It was forbidden later by the appearance of consequences specially psychosocial order and the checking of addictive capacity. But this haven’t been enough to be considered as one of the drugs more consumed nowadays, not only as a recreational drug but causing benefits in the black market and appearing new addictive habits which are more dangerous and addictive than the cocaine itself (AU)