IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB330526938

Health, sanitation, hygiene, and welfare: Public policy in the age of the Mexican Revolution (2010)

Brian Ellis Cassity (Author)
Rosales, Arturo (Advisor)

Arizona State University
Rosales, Arturo
Publication date: 2010
Language: English

URI: https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/docview/504840775/abstract/BFE353EB7BF742F4PQ/378?sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

Publication Date: 2010
Physical Details: 278

Outside Links

Health policy Public health Hygiene Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) 20th century, early Mexico

The present dissertation examines public health and public welfare policy during the Porfiriato, the Maximato, and the revolutionary administrations of Lázaro Cárdenas and Manuel Ávila Camacho. The study analyzes policy from both before and after the Mexican Revolution, shows where continuities existed between these periods, and questions key assumptions made by previous historians about the relative importance of Porfirian and revolutionary policies. The dissertation proves that public health policy following the Mexican Revolution drew directly from earlier Porfirian policy. Subsequent administrations did go beyond the Porfirian agenda. The administrations of the Maximato brought existing welfare institutions under government control, and the Cardenas administration expanded welfare and offered it to any who asked. Motivated by a sense of social justice, revolutionary welfare programming also had the aim of social control, especially of the ignorant masses who lived in poverty. As had nineteenth-century positivists, revolutionary policymakers believed the Catholic and Indian ought to be redesigned. However, welfare expansion under Cárdenas was short lived, and after 1940 the government combined health and welfare into one institution in an effort to control spending. The Ávila Camacho administration justified its reform as a return to realistic policy that still benefitted the masses, one that contained within it the positivistic emphasis of science, reason, and public health programs. As a result, the administration expanded the construction of hospitals throughout the country to a degree never before witnessed in Mexico. Contrary to scholarly consensus, the present study finds that the Cárdenas administration alone did not realize the only achievements of the Mexican Revolution in terms of health and welfare policy. The dissertation shows that developments both before and after Cárdenas were equally important. It also breaks with the conventional analysis that revolutionary policy was always benevolent and beneficial, while Porfirian or conservative policy was either dictatorial or indifferent.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB330526938

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Mraz, John; (2011)
War Is Hazardous for Your Health: Photographs and Testimonies about Death, Wounds, Disease and Medical Care during the Mexican Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420543/)

Article Molina, Andrés Ríos; (2013)
“Dictating the Suitable Way of Life”: Mental Hygiene for Children and Workers in Socialist Mexico, 1934--1940 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320227/)

Article Christopher S Rose; (2023)
Trial by Virus: Colonial Medicine and the 1883 Cholera in Egypt (/p/isis/citation/CBB354810722/)

Book Santiago, Myrna I.; (2006)
The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900--1938 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000950072/)

Book J. Justin Castro; (2016)
Radio in Revolution: Wireless Technology and State Power in Mexico, 1897–1938 (/p/isis/citation/CBB127828189/)

Book Christopher R. Boyer; (2015)
Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (/p/isis/citation/CBB929213871/)

Book J. Justin Castro; James A. Garza; (2022)
Technocratic Visions: Engineers, Technology, and Society in Mexico (/p/isis/citation/CBB524423162/)

Thesis Castro, Joseph Justin; (2013)
Wireless: Radio, Revolution, and the Mexican State, 1897--1938 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567438/)

Article Oosterhout, Aaron Van; Smith, Benjamin T.; (2010)
The Limits of Catholic Science and the Mexican Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB000933707/)

Book Wolfe, Mikael; (2017)
Watering the revolution: an environmental and technological history of agrarian reform in Mexico (/p/isis/citation/CBB630915743/)

Book Alistair Ritch; (2019)
Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834-1914 (/p/isis/citation/CBB200868576/)

Article Alessandra Maria Balestra; (2018)
The industry of butter made with pasteurised cream as a defence against Tuberculosis transmission (/p/isis/citation/CBB096991992/)

Book Aro Velmet; (2020)
Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (/p/isis/citation/CBB544344699/)

Article Costanza Bonelli; (2023)
“Some Typically African Risks”: Safeguarding the Health of Italian Settlers During the Fascist Empire (1935–1941) (/p/isis/citation/CBB527491500/)

Chapter Luisa Meneghini; (2019)
Il governo delle acque e la salute pubblica nel Vicentino tra Otto e Novecento (/p/isis/citation/CBB958167017/)

Article Takenori Matsumoto; Seung Jin Chung; (2018)
The Penetration of ‘Sanitary Discipline’ in Colonial Local Society: Hygiene and Medical Care Problem in the Honam Plain in Korea (/p/isis/citation/CBB712454394/)

Article Aistis Žalnora; (2018)
The role of the Hygiene Department of Stephen Bathory University in the development and promotion of Public Health in Vilnius in the years 1922–1939 (/p/isis/citation/CBB773746411/)

Article Rune Svarverud; (2020)
Ventilation for the Nation: Fresh Air, Sunshine, and the Warfare on Germs in China's National Quest for Hygienic Modernity, 1849-1949 (/p/isis/citation/CBB487888506/)

Article Neswald, Elizabeth; (2013)
Strategies of International Community-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Metabolism Research: The Foreign Laboratory Visits of Francis Gano Benedict (/p/isis/citation/CBB001252353/)

Article Bu, Liping; (2009)
Public Health and Modernisation: The First Campaigns in China, 1915--1916 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000932797/)