In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS
  • José G. Rigau-Pérez
Diego Armus , ed. Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. viii + 326 pp. Ill. $64.95 (cloth, 0-8223-3057-1); $21.95 (paperbound, 0-8223-3069-5).

In this "account of the state of historiography of disease in modern Latin America" (p. 1), Diego Armus and ten contributors from the United States and South America present their investigations on problems of local and global concern. Armus shows in the first essay ("Disease in the Historiography of Modern Latin America") that disease and its social implications have been a subject of inquiry in the region for decades. His bibliography illustrates the types of historical writing (new history of medicine, history of public health, sociocultural history of disease) and the most productive topics (the social and political aspects of epidemics, the development of public health policies in tension with external pressures and state-building processes, and the cultural uses of disease). The book's essays are then arranged in general chronological and geographic order.

Nancy Leys Stepan's account of malaria control in the Brazilian Amazon around 1900-1920 integrates the history of knowledge about malaria with a comparison of countries and episodes in different historical periods. Gabriela Nouzeilles explores hysteria as an indicator of modernization in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Marilia Coutinho presents the development of Chagas' disease research in Brazil, and the malady as a mirror of how Brazilians see themselves and their country. Armus looks at gender and tuberculosis in Buenos Aires using unconventional sources: poetry and tango lyrics from 1900 to 1940. Diana Obregón reveals how leprosy incidence rates were exaggerated to bolster medicalization and stronger governmental authority in modern Colombia.

Anne-Emanuelle Birn's depiction of the Rockefeller Foundation's hookworm campaign in 1920s Mexico is full of paradoxes: control efforts did not address the most lethal, but rather the most treatable disease (an arguable point in public health to this day); and the campaign was appreciated as consistent with the Mexican revolutionary goals (universal education and the provision of rural health services), in spite of the "not infrequent instances of poisoning by antihelminthics" (p. 169) and the disdain with which Foundation officers regarded local politics. Katherine Elaine Bliss examines state and popular perspectives on the risk of acquisition of syphilis in Revolutionary Mexico, attitudes made palpable by the neologisms and euphemisms in the texts she quotes—for example, sifilicomio,prostitutólogo, and "temples of rented love" (brothels). Ann S. Blum presents the effort to reduce infant mortality in Mexico City from 1920 to 1940 through the development of urban clinics, a renovated foundling home, and a specialized pediatric hospital, but also through the recognition that institutionalized care had to be accompanied by a more nurturing environment, keeping infants with their mothers or placing them immediately with substitute mothers. The scientific attention provided at the foundling home often resulted [End Page 741] in "hospitalism" (strikingly illustrated on the book's cover), in which "healthy babies often sank quickly into an unnatural apathy, sickened, and died" (p. 211).

Ann Zulawski examines the criteria for diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in Bolivia (the Pacheco insane asylum, 1935-50), and documents dramatic differences according to income, race, and gender, in what amounted to euthanasia by poor care (p. 261). The careful reasoning in Marcos Cueto's article about the 1991 cholera epidemic in Peru stands in stark contrast to the havoc caused in part by the social dynamics of the epidemic. A sanitary campaign resulted in the perception that victims were at fault for their poor hygiene; it failed to coordinate ministries and private interests to improve the water supply and sewage disposal, which resulted in the public's loss of confidence in the government's ability to improve public health. The final essay, by Patrick Larvie, examines the influence of the AIDS epidemic in redefining a new sexuality. The interaction of two key constructs in Brazil, the concept of sexual uniqueness and the imperative of developing a modern nation-state (p...

pdf

Share