Main description:

Buenos Aires psychoanalysts resisting imperialism. Brazilian parasitologists embracing communism as an antidote to rural misery. Nicaraguan revolutionaries welcoming Cuban health cooperation. Chilean public health reformers gauging domestic approaches against their Soviet and Western counterparts. As explored in Peripheral Nerve, these and accompanying accounts problematize existing understandings of how the Cold War unfolded in Latin America generally and in the health and medical realms more specifically. Bringing together scholars from across the Americas, this volume chronicles the experiences of Latin American physicians, nurses, medical scientists, and reformers who interacted with dominant U.S. and European players and sought alternative channels of health and medical solidarity with the Soviet Union and via South-South cooperation. Throughout, Peripheral Nerve highlights how Latin American health professionals accepted, rejected, and adapted foreign involvement; manipulated the rivalry between the United States and the USSR; and forged local variants that they projected internationally. In so doing, this collection reveals the multivalent nature of Latin American health politics, offering a significant contribution to Cold War history.

Contributors. Cheasty Anderson, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Katherine E. Bliss, Gilberto Hochman, Jennifer L. Lambe, Nicole Pacino, Carlos Henrique Assuncao Paiva, Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, Raul Necochea Lopez, Marco A. Ramos, Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Contents:

Foreword / Gilbert M. Joseph ix
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction. Alternative Destinies and Solidarities for Health and Medicine in Latin American before and during the Cold War / Anne-Emanuelle Birn 1
Part I. Leftist Affinities and U.S. Suspicions
1. Under Surveillance: Public Health, the FBI, and Exile in Cold War Mexico / Katherine E. Bliss 31
2. National Politics and Scientific Pursuits: Medical Education and the Strategic Value of Science in Postrevolutionary Bolivia / Nicole L. Pacino 55
3. Cold War Mexico in a Time of "Wonder Drugs" / Gabriela Soto Laveaga 86
Part II. Health Experts/Expertise and Contested Ideologies
4. The Puerto Rico Family Life Study and the Cold War Politics of Fertility Studies / Raul Necochea Lopez 109
5. Parasitology and Communism: Public Health and Politics in Samuel Barnsley Pessoa's Brazil / Gilberto Hochman and Carlos Henrique Assuncao Paiva 132
6. Revolutionizing Cuban Psychiatry: The Freud Wars, 1955-1970 / Jennifer Lynn Lambe 158
Part III. Health Politics and Publics, with and without the Cold War
7. From Cold War Pressures to State Policy to People's Health: Social Medicine and Socialized Medical Care in Chile / Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney 187
8. "Psychotherapy of the Oppressed": Anti-Imperialism and Psychoanalysis in Cold War Buenos Aires / Marco Ramos 211
9. South-South Cooperation as a Cold War Tonic: Cuban Medical Diplomacy to Sandinista Nicaragua, 1979-1990 / Cheasty Anderson 241
Epilogue. A Lingering Cold (War)? Reflections for the Present and an Agenda for Further Research / Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raul Necochea Lopez 267
Contributors 295
Bibliography 299
Index