This article focuses on two aspects: the strong links between political context and museum creation in Latin America, and the development of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture to remedy the gap in high-quality scientific education. Our argument here is built up from four main angles: the context in which the first natural history museums were created, the emergence of scientific communities, the acknowledged need for science popularisation during the transition to democracy and the development, since 1978, of centres of scientific, technical and industrial culture.