Eugenics In Latin America

Controversial at first, the Darwinian theory of evolution had become widely accepted around the world by the end of the nineteenth century. Not far behind was a wave of theorists that expanded the realm of natural selection to social—and then inevitably, political—spheres. This was the rise of eugenics: a pseudo-science then accepted as hard scientific fact that promoted the idea that there were distinct categories of people who were genetically superior or inferior, and that if one could manipulate the lives and procreation of these genetic categories, a theoretical “ideal race” could be constructed (Stepan, 1991). This scientific population control spread worldwide; from Northern Europe to Latin America. To the modern ear, this philosophy stings both of racism and genocide—and it was the main scientific theory behind Nazism in 1930s Germany. Nazism was an extreme extension of “scientific eugenics” that was not only popular but thriving worldwide from 1900 until the end of World War II (Cueto and Palmer, 2015) . This dramatic genocidal crescendo to what had previously been a widely accepted movement turned the word “eugenics” from something touted to something completely taboo so abruptly that many of us today are largely unaware of the extent of its impact on the public health resources upon which we all commonly rely.

Just as it had spread from Great Britain to Northern Europe and to the United States, the eugenics movement spread to Latin America at the turn of the 20th century. However, as the result of a variety of international influences, the brand of eugenics that became widespread in Latin America was subtly but vitally different from the brand of eugenics that was exploding throughout the United States and Europe (Stepan, 1991). A Lamarckian— rather than Darwinian-Mendelian—theory of evolution was more widely accepted in Latin America (Cueto and Palmer, 2015). Lamarck, a French naturalist from the 18th century, had argued that individuals could change within their lifetimes as a result of environmental influences; this was in contrast to Darwin and Mendel's theories that genetic differences already encoded within organisms at birth—that were then selected for or against by the environment—were what determined the nature of a species (Cueto, 2016; Souza, 2016). What may seem like a semantic difference in the science had a profound impact on how those theories looked when combined with the sociopolitical influences of eugenics. Latin American eugenicists put much more emphasis on environmental impacts in their development of racial categories, and as a result, many eugenics policies and programs looked much more like what we would recognize as public health initiatives today (Zimmerman, 1992; Stern, 2016). In North America and Europe, however, forced sterilization and even euthanasia was promoted by a eugenics community that believed that the unwanted aspects of humanity were encoded in the very nature of their citizens (Cueto, 2016; Souza, 2016).

In combination with a focus on Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolutionary theories, the prevalence of Catholicism in Latin America was instrumental in informing the type and extent of eugenics-based governmental policies (Souza, 2016). The Catholic Church, as well as Church-funded hospitals and medical organizations, balked at the concept of meddling with the fundamental workings of life. The concept of evolution was itself controversial; and so applying an already blasphemous scientific theory to humans—those created in God’s image—was understandably met with significant resistance (Stern, 2016). Religious groups heavily resisted measures that most directly controlled the reproductive capacity of individuals—such as forced sterilization or outright euthanasia (Souza, 2016). This resistance influenced governments to implement population control measures in more indirect ways; one of the primary tools used in Brazil, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, for example, was the requirement of medical clearance for marriage certificates (Armus, 2016). Several other Latin American countries had additional laws that gave the government power to terminate marriages if one of the partners was diagnosed with a transmissible disease (Dávila, 2003; Stern, 2016).

Not all Latin American countries, however, experienced this same level of influence from the Catholic Church; Cuba, for example, had only tenuous ties to the Church, and much closer ties to scientists and organizations in the United States. Cuban eugenicists were in close communication with groups like the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, led by Charles Davenport, one of the most prominent leaders of the American eugenics movement and one of the loudest proponents of “Anglo-Saxon” eugenics (Miranda and Vallejo, 2012). This alignment with the more blatantly racist policies in North America and Northern Europe that emphasized direct control via sterilization was reflected in the types of policies that Cuban eugenists pushed for, such as heavy promotion of white immigration in order to “improve” the Cuban race (Schell, 2010). Cuba was the host of the first of three Pan American Conferences of Eugenics and Homiculture, where Cuban eugenicists proposed concepts that closely reflected the racial science of Cold Spring Harbor (Miranda and Vallejo, 2012; Schell, 2010). These policies, however—especially forced sterilization—were largely rejected by most other Latin American countries (Carter, 2018). Argentina in particular pushed for a more population-based approach with a focus on biotypology; a systematic classification of citizens based upon physical characteristics. Argentina was the home of the Argentine Association of Biotypology, Eugenics, and Social Medicine; a powerhouse of systematic biometric classification that collected an exhaustive amount of data with the goal of eventually using the information to construct and manipulate population-wide phylogenies (Reggiani, 2010). The focus of Latin American biotypology was less the broad, system-wide racism of their North American counterparts, and morso a method of classifying populations into different degrees of eugenic (desirable) and dysgenic (undesirable); this was a more nuanced and fluid approach -- but was still clearly racist (Stepan, 1992). Since eugenics fell out of favor, biotypology has remained instrumental in modern sciences such as criminology and criminal psychology.

The rise of eugenics resulted in governments across Latin America moving into social and ideological spheres from which they had previously been excluded -- such as family matters, gender, sexual intercourse, and fertility (Stern, 1999). Child development in particular was the subject of heavy scrutiny; the discipline of “puericulture” was introduced, which essentially was the tracking, recording, and classifying of various aspects of childhood development (Birn, 2007). Latin American eugenicists promoted the idea that, through scientific control of the development of a child from birth well into schooling, they could create an ‘ideal’ population of citizens that would bring their countries increased economic and social development (Stern, 2016). This was an era in which the power, modernity, and control of science was glorified (Rodriguez, 2011). Proponents of eugenics were in line with this larger philosophy; they believed that humanity could be methodically guided away from all of its problems via the power of modern, scientific population control (Souza, 2016). The object of these projects was therefore the mother and the child, and with the promise of a utopian, racially desirable future, the government moved to legislate family life with little hesitation (Stern, 1999).

This intense governmental focus on childhood, birth and reproduction inevitably intersected with and influenced the way that women were viewed in society. Women were not asked about their reproductive preferences or their own opinions on how their children were to be raised—they were simply meant to put into action the policies handed to them by medico-civil eugenics societies (Stern, 1999). Because of their role as the mothers of the “children of the state”, or the new generation of “ideal” babies that governments wanted to raise, women were essentially treated as property of these governments. Women were glorified in their matrimony, but as is often the result of this false pedestal of idealized womanhood as motherhood, these eugenicist policies resulted not in the increased well-being of women, but rather in the commodification and nationalization of their bodies and lives for the purpose of advancing political policies.

After World War II, eugenics rather immediately fell out of favor. Nazi Germany had taken the most extreme eugenics theories that had been debated for nearly 50 years and implemented them in reality; this harsh demonstration of what these theories actually meant in terms of morality, humanity, and ethics was a moment of awakening for the academic community, globally and in Latin America (Dikötter, 1998). Eugenics societies were disbanded, political policies that openly promoted eugenic concepts were quietly shuffled out of commission, and any program or organization that bore the name “eugenic” hurried to erase all mention of the word (Stepan, 1991). Particularly in Latin America, many of these formerly eugenic programs were rebranded rather than abolished; after all, eugenics-based population control had been a primary driver behind a wide swath of what we would today recognize as public health measures (Stern, 1999). Government funding of pre- and postnatal care in many Latin American countries had its start in puericulture, and many programs focusing on diseases such as tuberculosis or syphilis -- at the time, both were believed to be hereditary—had their start in eugenics (Stern, 2016). Born from an era of industrial and scientific revolution, eugenics has played a pivotal role in the creation and development of modern public health programs -- even though these roots may not be apparent to us today.

Related Articles

• Luis Morquio-A Pioneer in Pediatric Medicine

References

Armus, D. (2016). Eugenics in Buenos Aires: Discourses, Practices, and Historiography. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, 23.

Bashford, A. (2010). Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenics. The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics, 154-172.

Birn, A. (2007). Child Health in Latin America: Historiography Perspectives and Challenges. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 14(3).

Carter, E. D. (2018). Population control, public health, and development in mid twentieth century Latin America. Journal of Historical Geography, 62, 96-105.

Cueto, M. (2016). Latin Eugenics in Comparative Perspective. Hispanic American Historical Review, 96(1): 203-205.

Cueto, M., and Palmer, S. (2015). Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History. Cambridge University Press.

Dávila, J. (2003). Diplomas of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945. Duke University Press.

Dikötter, F. (1998). Race culture: recent perspectives on the history of eugenics. The American Historical Review, 103(2), 467-478.

French, W., E. and Bliss, K., E. (2007). Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Hedrick, T. (2003). Mestizo modernism: race, nation, and identity in Latin American culture, 1900-1940. Rutgers University Press.

Miranda, M., & Vallejo, G., eds. (2012). Una Historia de la Eugenesia Argentina y las Redes Biopolíticas Internacionales, 1912-1945. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.

Rahier, J. M. (2003). Introduction: Mestizaje, mulataje, mestiçagem in Latin American ideologies of national identities. Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 8(1), 40-50.

Reggiani, A. H. (2010). Depopulation, fascism, and eugenics in 1930s Argentina. Hispanic American Historical Review, 90(2), 283-318.

Rodriguez, J. (2011). A complex fabric: intersecting histories of race, gender, and science in Latin America. Hispanic American Historical Review, 91(3), 409-429.

Sequeiros, J., Gibbon, S., & Clarke, A. (2015). Genetics and ethics in Latin America. Journal of community genetics, 6(3), 185–187.

Souza, V. S. (2016). Brazilian Eugenics and its International Connections: an Analysis Based on the Controversies between Renato Kehl and Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1920-1930. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, 23.

Stepan, N., L. (1991). The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America. Cornell University Press.

Stepan, N. L. (1992). Race, gender and nation in argentina: The influence of Italian eugenics. History of European Ideas, 15(4-6), 749-756.

Stern, A., M. (1998). Unraveling the History of Eugenics in Mexico. Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, 8(1).

Stern, A., M. (1999). Eugenics Beyond Borders: Science and Medicalization in Mexico and the U.S. West, 1900-1950. University of Chicago.

Stern, A., M. (1999). Responsible Mothers and Normal Children: Eugenics, Nationalism, and Welfare in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1940. Journal of Historical Sociology, 12(4): 360-397.

Stern, A., M. (2016). Eugenics in Latin America. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History.

Wade, P. (2001). Racial identity and nationalism: a theoretical view from Latin America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(5), 845-865.

Zimmermann, E. A. (1992). Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916. The Hispanic American Historical Review, 729(1): 23-46.