Julia Rodriguez

Cold War, deadly fevers: Malaria eradication in Mexico 1955–1975

Marcos Cueto has written an important, engaging book, on the Cold War politics of malaria eradication, as they played out metaphorically, and literally, in fascinating ways in mid-century Mexico. He shows how the global politics of the era interacted with national and local forces, and were accompanied by multiple forms of resistance. One North American nurse captured the spirit of the top-down eradication programme when reminiscing about her time in Mexico: ‘What an exciting fight this could be! To liberate an entire country from malaria! . . .This would be our war, a fight to finish war, a constructive war where enemy germs were killed. This was the kind of war to which I could give myself wholeheartedly’ (p. 103). Clearly, many international public health officials and Mexican politicians had good intentions. Yet, as Cueto shows, the programme failed, both in the short and long term, and, moreover, exacerbated conflict within Mexican society. Cueto, a distinguished and highly respected historian of medicine and public health, frames his concise, yet detailed, history of malaria eradication programmes in Mexico within a larger argument about the overall goals of, and approaches to, public health in the developing world, both past and present. His underlying argument is, that in order to truly address the chronic and devastating public health problems that plague many nations, officials must step back from an over reliance on technological ‘quick fixes’ and create a more balanced approach that incorporates medical technology with culturally sensitive and community-based preventative programmes, especially in terms of improvement of basic quality of life. In Cueto’s words, public health officials must strive to ‘[build] local and sustainable human capacities’ as a prerequisite to health (p. 14). He urges the development of a ‘longterm, flexible, and integrated public health perspective’ that surpasses what he terms the ‘culture of survival’ (p. 14). In other words, Cueto believes that people have the right not just to survive, but to thrive, and that public health has a key role to play. To illustrate this point, Cueto details the historical case study of the Mexican campaign against malaria. The selection of Mexico is important because it was identified as a ‘receptive’ country by US government and international agencies, that saw it as a potential ally in the global Cold War, and because of its powerful, centralised, and activist state in this period, a state that prioritised rural health programmes in order to increase population and to create a stronger citizenship. The book encompasses an impressive range of themes, including medical imperialism, race, environmentalism, political ideologies, economic development, socioeconomic inequality, foreign relations, NGOs, and indigenous medicine. The study is built upon a vast array of sources, including government documents from the USA and