"She neither Respected nor Obeyed Anyone": Inmates and Psychiatrists Debate Gender and Class at the General Insane Asylum La Castaneda Mexico, 1910-1930

On 28 September 1911 Luz D. arrived with her husband at the admissions office of the General Insane Asylum La Castañeda, the largest state institution devoted to the care of the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Mexico. ¹ Following the rules of the establishment, the Ds provided basic identification data before an asylum intern performed a routine physical and psychological examination designed to determine her mental condition. Because Luz D.'s affliction did not prevent her from understanding and answering questions, she actively participated in the institutional psychiatric interview--an interrogatory ritual structured around questions included in an official medical questionnaire--that would decide her admission status. Later, after she became an inmate, Luz D. chose to write the narrative of her illness on her own, on a separate sheet of paper:

I was born in 1874 . When I was six years old, I suffered from scarlet fever, thereafter I grew up healthy and strong. I had my period at 13 , with no derangement, and at 15 I became nervous. I got married at 17 , and my health improved. After four years, and because of moral mortification and physical losses, my nervousness came back. I got better again, but after five years I suffered from puerperal fever, which gave me an acute nervous condition. Later on, with distractions and traveling, I got better. At that time I drank alcohol by medical prescription. Then, in 1899 , I suffered an outburst of dipsomania, which was originated by a change in my moral and physical life. At that time, the man, my husband brought another woman and ever since I have not lived intimately with him. The emptiness of my soul was reflected in my physical parts. I did not drink until 1901, when, because of my drinking, I was committed to La Canoafor three months. ² I was in perfect shape once again until 1906 , when, because of excessive work, moral mortification, and terrible quarrels, I turned to drinking again, and once again returned to La Canoa. . . . [W]hen I can use my reasoning, I can bear great grief, and I do not lose the control I must have, given my difficult situation and my exaggerated way of feeling, this way I get carried away with passion and the most complete excitement. ³

Luz D.'s ability to elaborate the story of her own experience with illness was not widespread among asylum inmates, but it was not unique either. ⁴ In different formats and with diverse degrees of articulation, some inmates--especially those who did not suffer from severe mental conditions--participated in the elaboration of what Arthur Kleinman called illness narratives, stories in which "the plot lines, core metaphors, and rhetorical devices that structure illness are drawn from cultural and personal modes for arranging experiences in meaningful ways and for effectively expressing those meanings." ⁵ Asylum narratives, however, were hardly free-flowing constructions of life history. Constrained by an institutional setting that emphasized doctors' authority and a medical questionnaire that provided limited space for inmates' answers, these narratives brought together state health authorities and inmates as they engaged in a contested dialogue over the medical and social meanings of mental illness in Mexico. This article explores the tense and at times contradictory nature of such dialogue as it developed during the first three decades of the twentieth century, a period in which the insane asylum--established during Porfirio Díaz's last year in office--strove to address the public health needs and welfare expectations of nascent revolutionary regimes. Based on close examination of the language used by psychiatrists and female inmates, I argue that the discussion on the proper place of poor women in society played a fundamental...