Peripheral Nerve

Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Raúl Necochea López, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Raúl Necochea López

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781478009566
  9781478008682
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478012221
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

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 Assunção Paiva, Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, Raúl Necochea López, Marco A. Ramos, Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword / Gilbert M. Joseph
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Alternative Destinies and Solidarities for Health and Medicine in Latin America before and during the Cold War / Anne-Emanuelle Birn
• Part I: Leftist Affinities and U.S. Suspicions
• Part II: Health Experts/Expertise and Contested Ideologies
• Part III: Health Politics and Publics, with and without the Cold War
• Epilogue: A Lingering Cold (War)? Reflections for the Present and an Agenda for Further Research / Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index