The Transnational Formation of a Healthy Nation: Travelling Reformers in the "República Batllista" (1903-1933)

• In Event: New Histories of Public Health and Social Policy in Latin America

Abstract

This paper analyzes the transnational movement of Uruguayan health reformers and its impact on the creation and shaping of public health institutions and instruments during the República Batllista (1903-1933). These decades are known in Uruguay for a radical reformism as well as for the consolidation and expansion of the state. In the realm of social assistance, the creation of the Asistencia Pública Nacional in 1910 marks a turning point. The newly created state agency centralized the protection of poor, sick, and old citizens, of children in general and orphans in particular, and of pregnant women and young mothers. The hospitals, asylums and nurseries under the Asistencia’s umbrella were directed by a prestigious group of public health reformers – physicians, nutritionists, nurses – who played a prominent role in shaping their design and defining their purpose. What this heterogenous group of experts had in common was their mobility and participation in the international, transnational, and Pan-American networks of knowledge on how a modern nation state should take care of its citizens’ health. Tracing individual trajectories of these health experts, the paper will map the transnational dimension of public health during the República Batllista, adding both to the history of the Uruguayan welfare state and to the dimensions and modes of transnational social reformism in the early 20th Century.

Author

• Teresa Huhle, Universität Bremen