Purificar la Nación: eugenesia, higiene y renovación moral-racial de la periferia del Caribe colombiano, 1900-1930

Abstract

This article examines the role of the science of eugenics in creating hygiene programs on the Caribbean coast of Colombia in the early twentieth century. Eugenic ideas about racial decline, in particular the role of blacks in that presumed decline, inspired projects that envisioned promoting the health and cleanliness of coastal people in order to eliminate their perceived biological and cultural contamination. Much of the desire to racially improve the Caribbean, both the coast itself and the lower Magdalena River, arose from the region’s position as the country’s gateway to the world (and its markets). The eugenic goal of racial renovation was also moral in nature, and much of the hygiene movement on the coast focused on the uplift and productivity of the region’s working-class population. Although the health and sanitation programs were designed ostensibly to convey greater unity to Colombia after the disorders and malaise brought on by the War of a Thousand Days and separation of Panama, the racial and moral impulse behind these programs merely reinforced pre-existing cultural divisions within the country.

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