The start of the Cárdenas administration in 1934 is often seen as the moment when the promises of the Revolution were finally made real for the wide array of Mexicans who had fought in the decade-long conflict of the 1910s. Mexican citizens were able to farm land communally, had access to state-regulated education, had protected labor rights, had access to public health resources. But the progress of the 1930s brought a critical question to the fore: was Mexican economic and political life to be “top-down” or “bottom-up”? Was the health of the nation to be found in Mexico City, or the nation’s rural localities?
In this paper, I explore the relationship between national economic and political “health” and physical health during the period. By reference to medical journals, medical student theses, and health department memos, I show that physical health was not merely a practical concern for the state, the hope being to create scientifically literate, productive, “modern” Mexicans. Physical health also became a vital rhetorical space for Mexicans to negotiate the terms of Mexican progress, in domains such as labor organization, school curricula, ethnic and indigenous rights, and political representation. It was the language of health that served as the lingua franca for the ongoing negotiations which would determine the ultimate character of the Mexican state—and of Mexican development.
