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Abstract
This article discusses the incorporation of ideas about hygiene and public health into urban projects in Santiago de Chile. Changes in the institutional framework were supported and led by professionals that worked closely with the State. The article covers the period from 1892, when the Hygiene Council (Consejo de Higiene) was founded, to 1927, when the Ministry of Welfare (Ministerio de Bienestar) was created to take charge of public health. By focusing on institutional components rather than theoretic discussions, this paper also intends to contribute to an understanding of urban modernization in Latin America during the twentieth century. While hygienic issues appeared from the late nineteenth century as an explicitly urban concern, precedents can be dated back to the late Colonial era when the Bourbons raised similar questions, with more or less effectiveness, in most Hispanic colonial territories. For this reason, the article includes a first section that deals with the notable efforts of that period to improve urban hygiene – efforts that are crucial to understanding the contemporary Latin American city.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Macarena ibarra is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Masters Programme at the Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Research Fellow at CEDEUS, UC (Centro de Desarrollo Urbano Sustentable, CONICYT/FONDAP 1511020). She holds a Ph.D from the School of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. Her research and publications focus on urban and planning history of Chile and Latin America and on urban heritage.
Notes
1. Ibarra, “Conquistas del higienismo.”
2. Almandoz, Modernización Urbana, 137.
3. Meade, Civilising Rio.
4. Ibid.
5. Zulawski, Unequal Cures.
6. Parker, “City of Kings.”
7. Rodríguez, Civilising Argentina.
8. Instituto de Salud Pública de Chile, Historia del Instituto.
9. Ríos González, La higiene, 36.
10. Vicuña Mackenna, transformación de Santiago.
11. Larraín Bravo, La Higiene aplicada.
12. Cueto, Marcos, The Value of Health.
13. Agostoni, Monuments of Progress.
14. Caponi, Entre miasmas y microbios.
15. Armus, La ciudad impura.
16. Dávalos, Basura e Ilustración.
17. Warren, Medicine and Politics.
18. Foucault, hombres infames, 99.
19. Foucault, El nacimiento, 44.
20. Foucault, hombres infames, 94.
21. Ibid., 100.
22. Alinovi, Historia de las epidemias, 40.
23. Foucault, hombres infames, 94.
24. Quoted in De Solano, Ciudades hispanoamericanass, 150.
25. De Ramón, Santiago de Chile, 113–115.
26. Escobar Wilson-White, Vida, resurrección y muerte.
27. León, Sepultura sagrada, tumba profana, 30.
28. Ibid., 25–27.
29. According to the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE), extramuros means all what is outside of a village or town.
30. Foucault, El nacimiento, 12.
31. Ibid., 44.
32. INE, Census of 1907.
33. BMCS, 715, 1927.
34. Vicuña Mackenna, La Transformación de Santiago. My translation.
35. Alinovi, Historia de las epidemias, 40.
36. Quoted in Caponi, “Entre miasmas y microbios”, 1665–1674.
37. Larraín Bravo, Apuntes sobre las casas, 102. My translation.
38. Ibid, 103. My translation.
39. Brown, Segundo Congreso Científico Panamericano See Section VII: ‘Salubridad Pública y Ciencia Médica’, articule of Robert de Forest, “Edificios para ser ocupados por el hombre.” My translation.
40. Primer Congreso Panamericano de Arquitectos. My translation.
41. Bulleting of Panamerican Union, 1927.
42. Collier and Sater, A history of Chile, 151.
43. See Almandoz, “Urbanization and Urbanism,” 29–30. A different project was put forward in 1909 by the engineer and architect Carlos Carvajal who, inspired in his ideas of a linear city by Soria y Mata in Madrid, proposed a plan of transformation. However, this was an exception, as most of the urban projects relating to the city were closer to the language of academic urbanism coming from the French tradition.
44. Mackenna, “Speech given at the Conferencias sobre transformación de ciudades.” My translation.
45. Díaz, Recopilación de informes.
46. Díaz, La tuberculosis en Chile, 503. Note that, as a response to these conditions, from 1883 a number of regulations requiring the construction of primary school buildings, according to the rules of hygiene and to pedagogical needs, were promulgated. These new buildings were known as escuelas palacios due to their solid infrastructure and high buildings costs, and because they were built as such.
47. In the II Pan-American Scientific Congress, celebrated in Washington 1916, the section VIII that discussed public salubrity and medicine, not only examine the statistics and demographics, but they also analyzed the development of tuberculosis.
48. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Legación del Uruguay, 7.
49. Cádiz, Consejo Superior de hijiene, 12–13.
50. The IV International Sanitary Convention recommended the promulgation of special ordinances towards the construction of rat-proof roofs in times of outbreak of the bubonic plague.50 A year later, the Boletín de la Oficina Sanitaria Panamericana published a standard ordinance for buildings that concentrated on the “antiratización”.
51. Segundo Congreso Panamericano de Arquitectos, Discurso inaugural del Congreso, 149. My translation.
52. Ibid., 182.
53. Larraín Bravo, La higiene, V.
54. Ibid., 945.
55. Larraín Bravo, Curso de Higiene.
56. Mena Concha, Curso de Construcción.
57. Calvo Mackenna, Curso de Saneamiento.
58. In 1935, the Instituto de Urbanismo de Valparaíso organized the First National Congress of Public Hygiene and Urbanism, where several urban studies were presented. A year later, this Instituto sponsored the creation of structural plans for Valparaiso and Viña del Mar which ended in the 1937 Urban Development Plan of Valparaiso.
59. ‘Los Congresos Panamericanos de Arquitectura … ’, 168.
60. Sierra, la higiene moderna.
61. Hidalgo, vivienda social en Chile.
62. Melosi, The sanitary city, 1.
63. Ochagavía, causas de la ineficiencia.
64. I Congreso Panamericano (IV Científico), 193.
65. Ibid., 194. My translation.
66. Ibid.
67. Congreso de gobierno local, 9.
68. Armus, La ciudad impura, 283.
69. Ferrer, Higiene y Asistencia Pública, 84.
70. República de Chile, El Ministerio de Higiene. My translation.
71. La Gaceta de Chile, 22 de julio, 1928.
72. Armus, La Ciudad Impura, 271.
73. Larrain, La Higiene aplicada( … ).
74. See Larraín, Apuntes sobre las casas para obreros, 102.
75. Instituto de Salud Pública de Chile, Historia del Instituto, 43.
76. Ibid.