Shadowing the Professional Class: Reporting Fictions in Doctors' Strikes

Abstract

This article focuses on the shadowing of Mexican physicians during the 10-month long medical movement of 1964–65. The author highlights how hospital spaces, doctors' routines, medical hierarchies, and the nature of physicians' labour posed particular difficulties for secret service agents. By examining a report from May 1965, mid-way through the movement, it becomes clear how agents sought to better understand a group with little history of state opposition. Physicians had significant symbolic, moral, and real power within Mexican society. For that reason, the intelligence community gave priority to documenting the subtle and growing disillusionment expressed in hundreds of physician meetings. The report examined here shows how doctors begin to question the impartiality of the press and the veracity of the government's promises. This report also illustrates how, as the movement grew, government agents exploited mounting tensions. Finally, these documents inadvertently signal the exceedingly bureaucratic nature of organised rebellion.

Keywords:

• medical doctors
• Gustavo Díaz Ordaz
• hospitals
• physician strikes
• residents

Notes

 1. Unless otherwise specified this and all other references to 8 May 1965 come from Archivo General de la Nación, Dirección Federal de Seguridad, Mexico City (hereafter AGN, DFS), Alianza Mexicana de Médicos Residentes e Internos public version (hereafter AMMRI PV), exp. 50-1-65, leg. 14, hs. 368–373. Translation of this document is in Tanalís Padilla and Louise E. Walker (eds), ‘English Translations of Documents from Mexico's Secret Police Archive’, working paper 2013, available online at the Dartmouth College library website and Northeastern University digital repository: http://www.dartmouth.edu/∼library/digital/publishing/padilla2013/ and http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002992

 2. This is part of a larger book-length project in which the author examines the origins and aftermath of the medical movement.

 3. Frida Gorbach, ‘Histeria, locura moral y degeneración: los caminos de la biopolítica en Mexico en los finales del siglo XIX’. Unpublished paper.

 4. Ana María Carrillo, ‘Profesiones sanitarias y lucha de poderes en el Mexico del Siglo XIX,’ Asclepio, vol. L-2-1998; Ibid., ‘Los médicos y la “degeneración de la raza indígena”’, Ciencias UNAM numero 60–61, 2000– 2001; Claudia Agostoni, ‘Médicos científicos y médicos ilícitos en la ciudad de México durante el Porfiriato’, Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contempora´nea de México. vol. 19, document 244, 2006.

 5. Author interviews with Dr. Miguel Cruz Ruiz, Mexico City, June 2009 and Dr. Alfredo Rustrian, July 2009 and July 2011.

 6. Author interviews with Dr. Miguel Cruz Ruiz, Mexico City, June 2009.

 7. Author interviews with Dr. Alfredo Rustrian, Mexico City, July 2009 and July 2011.

 8. Ricardo Pozas Horacasitas, Democracia en Blanco: El movimiento médico en México, 1964–1965. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1993.

 9. AGN, DFS, AMMRI PV, exp. 50-1-65, leg. 14, hs. 368–373.

10. It must be noted that within weeks of the start of the strike the press refused to publish any official communiqués from physicians. In this respect the DFS files are also important because they record physicians' frustrations at being incapable of disproving publications attributed to them.

11. AGN, DFS, AMMRI PV, exp. 50-1-65, leg. 14, hs. 368–373.

12. The cover of Dr. Alfredo Rustrian's book, La Revolución de las Batas Blancas, Mexico City, Self-published, 2004, is a photograph of that encounter.

13. AGN, DFS, AMMRI PV, exp 50-1-64, leg. 3, h. 242.

14. This was especially the case with two former leaders of Hospital Balbuena who in interviews in June 2009 and July 2011 expressed deep admiration and respect for Gutiérrez Barrios.

15. AGN, DFS, AMMRI PV, exp. 50-1-65, leg. 14, hojas 368–373.

16. Images of banners at protest marches invariably referred to the health of the nation and its citizens.

17. AGN, DFS, AMMRI PV, exp. 50-1-65, leg. 14, hojas 368–373.

18. Ibid.