Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T13:35:56.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Spanish Flu and the Sanitary Dictatorship: Mexico's Response to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2019

Ryan M. Alexander
Ryan M. Alexander*
Affiliation:
State University of New York Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, New Yorkralex006@plattsburgh.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The influenza of 1918, the disastrous global pandemic known to many as the Spanish Flu, could not have come at a worse time for Mexico. The nation was eight years into its decade-long revolutionary struggle, a conflict that claimed the lives of well over a million citizens. Of those lost, several hundred thousand perished due to the influenza alone, usually from secondary complications such as pneumonia or bronchitis. Along with exposure, famine, and a myriad of other wartime ailments, the 1918 flu ranked as one of the leading causes of death in the Revolution, far surpassing combat casualties.

Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 443 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their support of this project: the John L. Myers History Endowment, the American Philosophical Society, the Dean of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Plattsburgh, the anonymous reviewers of the article, and the numerous colleagues and friends who read drafts or offered feedback at conference presentations.

References

1. This number is constantly debated, and the debate is far from resolved. Nevertheless, the number of deaths due to war, famine, and epidemics, combined with lost births and emigration, resulted in demographic catastrophe. See McCaa, Robert, “Missing Millions: The Demographic Costs of the Mexican Revolution,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 19:2 (Summer 2003): 367–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. “La influenza española se ha desarrollado en forma muy alarmante,” Excelsior, October 9, 1918, 1.

3. “Vienen a México muchos de los atacados de influenza española,” Excelsior, October 7, 1918, 1; Lourdes Márquez Morfín and América Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918: las repercusiones de la pandemia de gripe en la ciudad de México,” Desacatos 32 (January-April 2010): 126, 135.

4. Gómez to Rodríguez, December 27, 1918, Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Salud [hereafter AHSS], F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 7.

5. “La capital de Nuevo León está siendo azotada con dureza por la influenza,” Excelsior, October 28, 1918, 1; “Puebla y Pachuca cruelmente flageladas por la influenza,” Excelsior, October 31, 1918, 1, 5.

6. Perrusquía to Rodríguez, October 23, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 7; Trujillo to Rodríguez, November. 7, 9, and 11, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 11.

7. “La influenza española se ha desarollado en forma muy alarmante,” Excelsior.

8. “En México han dádose muchos casos de influenza,” Excelsior, October 18, 1918, 1.

9. “Por falta de carbón están sufriendo las industrias de Coahuila,” Excelsior, October 2, 1918, 1; “La influenza española ha invadido la region petrolera a gran prisa,” Excelsior, October 24, 1918, 1.

10. Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 126.

11. “La influenza se ha desarollado en forma muy alarmante,” Excelsior.

12. “Escenas de horror en un convoy,” Excelsior, November 2, 1918, 1–2.

13. Molina del Villar, “México ante la pandemia,” 181.

14. Mateos, Miguel Ángel Cuenya, “Reflexiones en torno a la pandemia de influenza de 1918. El caso de la ciudad de Puebla,” Desacatos 32 (January–April 2010): 150Google Scholar. For examples of the tendency to focus on the United States and Europe, see the following works: Bristow, Nancy K., American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Pettit, Dorothy A. and Bailie, Janice, A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918–1920 (New York: Timberlane Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Barry, John M., The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005)Google Scholar; Kolata, Gina, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999)Google Scholar; and Crosby, Alfred W., America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

15. The global figures come from Barry, The Great Influenza, 363–365. For Mexico, see J. Gabriel Ibarra, “The Spanish Influenza in Mexico, 1918–1919” (MA thesis, Washington State University, 1996), iv; and del Villar, América Molina, “México ante la pandemia de influenza de 1918: los informes de Salubridad y la prensa,” in Enfermedad, epidemias, higiene y control social: Nuevas miradas desde América Latina y México, Mateos, Miguel Ángel Cuenya and Urroz, Rosalina Estrada, eds. (Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2013), 182Google Scholar.

16. Villar, América Molina, “El tifo en la ciudad de México en tiempos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1913–1916,” Historia Méxicana 64:3 (January-March 2015): 1163–1247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. As mentioned in the text, statistics from 1918, both in Mexico and around the world, are unreliable and range widely. But if we begin with most commonly accepted numbers for both cases, the rate of death and thus overall number of deaths in Mexico largely reflect the global picture. To illustrate: if the global population in 1918 was 1.8 billion, and 50 million died of influenza, then about 2.7% of the world's population perished. Similarly, in Mexico, if between 300,000 and 600,000 people of a population of 14.5 million died, then somewhere between 2 percent and 4 percent (about one standard deviation off the global number in each direction) of the population perished. Thus, Mexico's rate-of-death statistics largely reflect the global rate of death. See Taubenberger, J. K. and Morens, D. M., “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerging Infections Diseases 121 (2006): 15–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Cuenya Mateos, “Reflexiones en torno a la pandemia de influenza,” 145–158; Molina del Villar, “México ante la pandemia de influenza de 1918,” 181–203; Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 121–144; Arratia, Leticia González, 1918: La epidemia de influenza española en la Comarca Lagunera: una crónica (Torreón, Coahuila: Dirección Municipal de Cultura, 2003)Google Scholar; Cano, Beatriz, “La influenza española en Tlaxcala (1918),” in Historia de la salud en México, Malvido, Elsa and Morales, María Elena, eds. (Mexico City: INAH, 1996), 97–114Google Scholar; Méndez, Marciano Netzahualcoyotzi, La epidemia de gripe de 1918 en Tlaxcala (Tlaxcala: Universidad de Tlaxcala, 2003)Google Scholar.

19. Cuenya Mateos, “Reflexiones en torno a la pandemia de influenza,” 155; Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 129–130. The puzzling tendency of the 1918 flu to afflict robust young adults can be explained by the fierce autoimmune response it provoked. As John Barry explains, the stronger the person's immune system, the more lethal the experience with the flu tended to be. See Barry, The Great Influenza, 247.

20. The following files from AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid. are a sample of this kind of correspondence: Various telegrams from Torreón, C-11, Exp. 4; Dr. Parra y Tejada to Rodríguez, October 18, 1918, C-11, Exp. 4; Munic. Pres. of Huayacocotla to Superior Council, October 29, 1918, C-11, Exp. 5; Valle to Superior Council, October 15, November 11, and November 16, 1918, C-11, Exp. 6; Munic. Pres. of Calpulalpam de Ocampo, Tlaxcala to Rodríguez, November 2, 1918, C-12, Exp. 8.

21. Federal Deputies of Zacatecas to Rodríguez, November 12, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 11.

22. Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 304–427Google Scholar.

23. Agostoni, Claudia, Monuments of Progress: Modernization and Public Health in Mexico City, 1876–1910 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003), xii-xviiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Laveaga, Gabriela Soto and Agostoni, Claudia, “Science and Public Health in the Century of Revolution,” in A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, Beezley, William H., ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 564–565Google Scholar.

25. Cuenya Mateos, “Reflexiones en torno a la pandemia de influenza,” 146–148.

26. McGuire and Frankel found a similar degree of continuity in their examination of infant mortality rates before and after the Cuban revolution. While the revolutionary government after 1959 legitimately boasted the best absolute infant mortality rate in the region, the authors found that the pre-revolutionary government had greater success in reducing the rate than did its revolutionary counterparts, and that Cuba ranked only fifth in Latin America after 1959 at reducing its rate of infant mortality as measured in a percentage decline. See McGuire, James W. and Frankel, Laura B., “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900–1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes,” Latin American Research Review 40:2 (2005): 83–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 109–110.

27. Cejudo, María Rosa Gudiño, “José María Rodríguez (1870–1946),” in 200 emprendedores mexicanos: la construcción de una nación, Ludlow, Leonor, coord. (Mexico City: LID Editorial Mexicana, 2010), 559–563Google Scholar; Soto Laveaga and Agostoni, “Science and Public Health,” 566.

28. Soto Laveaga and Agostoni, “Science and Public Health,” 566.

29. José María Rodríguez, Speech, 50th Ordinary Session, Diario de los debates del Congreso Constituyente, 1916–1917, Tomo III (Mexico City: Secretaría de Cultura, 2016), 136–140.

30. José María Rodríguez, Speech, 49th Ordinary Session, Diario de los debates del Congreso Constituyente, 1916–1917, Tomo III (Mexico City: Secretaría de Cultura, 2016), 106–110.

31. Córdoba, Ernesto Aréchiga, “Educación, propaganda, o ‘dictadura sanitaria’. Estrategias discursivas de higiene y salubridad públicas en el México posrevolucionario, 1917–1945,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 33 (2007): 59Google Scholar.

32. Gudiño Cejudo, “José María Rodríguez,” 559–563; Ibarra, “The Spanish Influenza in Mexico,” 36–38.

33. Sidney Chalhoub, in his analysis of the response to two yellow fever outbreaks in Rio de Janeiro, found a similar occurrence. Public health officials blended miasmic and germ-based responses, along with moral preconceptions, all culminating in the destruction of the housing establishments of the poor. See Chalhoub, Sidney, “The Politics of Disease Control: Yellow Fever and Race in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25:3 (October 1993): 443–447CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 456. For a similar discussion involving typhus in Mexico City, see América Molina del Villar, “El tifo en la ciudad de México,” 1210–1211.

34. The ship was named after the nineteenth-century Spanish monarch. This made for an interesting coincidence, given that the current Spanish monarch, Alfonso XIII, had suffered the influenza. The fact that Spain did not have wartime censorship meant that people around the world were aware of the king's ailment, leading to the false assumption that the flu originated in Spain, hence the false nickname Spanish Flu.

35. Rodríguez to Rojas, October 8, 1918; Rojas to Rodríguez, October 8, 1918; Rodríguez to Mgr., Cia. Transatlantica Española, October 9, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 5; “La influenza española en el Alfonso XII,” Excelsior, October 6, 1918, 1; “Vienen a México muchos de los atacados de influenza española,” Excelsior; “La influenza española se está extendiendo mucho en el norte,” Excelsior, October 10, 1918, 1; “La epidemia está causando estragos en la region norte de la Republica,” Excelsior, October 11, 1918, 5; “Epidemia a bordo del Alfonso XII,” Excelsior, October 25, 1918, 1.

36. Rojas to Rodríguez, October 17, 1918; Rodríguez to Rojas, October 18, 1918; Rojas to Rodríguez, October 19, 1918; Rojas to Rodríguez, October 21, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 5.

37. “Hay dos barcos que están sujetos a cuarentena,” Excelsior, October 19, 1918, 1.

38. “Puebla y Pachuca cruelmente flageladas por la influenza,” Excelsior.

39. “La capital de Nuevo León está siendo azotada con dureza por la influenza,” Excelsior.

40. President of Sociedad Mutua de Obreros Aquiles Serdán to Carranza, January 13, 1919; Rodríguez to of Sociedad Mutua de Obreros Aquiles Serdán, January 24, 1919, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-12, Exp., 3.

41. Pescador to Rodríguez, October 9, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 4.

42. Estrada to Rodríguez, October 11, 1918; Rodríguez to Trujillo, October 9, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 11; Rodríguez to Castro, October 11, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 4.

43. Castro to Rodríguez, October 9, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 4.

44. “La epidemia está causando estragos en al región norte de la República,” Excelsior.

45. Rodríguez to Cabrera, October 14, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp.-4.

46. “La influenza española se ha desarrollado en forma muy alarmante,” Excelsior.

47. Agent to Rodríguez, December 19, 1918; Rodríguez to Agent, December 25, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 8.

48. “La influenza decrece en parte,” Excelsior, October 15, 1918, 1.

49. Romano to Rodríguez, October 11, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-12, Exp.-1.

50. “La influenza española se ha desarollado en forma muy alarmante,” Excelsior.

51. “Muchos soldados están atacados de influenza,” Excelsior, October 23, 1918, 1; “La influenza española se está extendiendo mucho en el norte,” Excelsior; Sanitary Delegate in Nogales, Sonora, to Rodríguez, October 20, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-12, Exp. 15.

52. “La influenza española se está extendiendo mucho en el norte,” Excelsior. These instructions were published in all the major dailies, including Excelsior, El Demócrata, and El Nacional. See Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 136-139.

53. Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 142.

54. Márquez Morfín and Molina del Villar, “El otoño de 1918,” 142.

55. Rodríguez to Munic. Pres. of Torreón, October 11, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 4; Rodríguez to Munic. Pres. of Lerdo, Durango, October 14, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 4; Sariol to Rodríguez, October 29 and October 31, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 7.

56. Fuentes Cicero to del Pino, November 13, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 14.

57. “La influenza se inclina a extenderse,” Excelsior, October 20, 1918, 1.

58. Sanitary Brigade Delegate to Pres. of Alumni Soc. Of School of Medicine, San Luis Potosí, October 29, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 14; “Puebla y Pachuca cruelmente flageladas por la influenza,” Excelsior, October 31, 1918, 1.

59. “La influenza se inclina a extenderse,” Excelsior; “En México han dádose muchos casos de influenza,” Excelsior; “La influenza decrece en parte,” Excelsior; “La capital de Nuevo León está siendo azotada con dureza por la influenza,” Excelsior; “Es ahora en Puebla donde la influenza se recrudece,” Excelsior, October 29, 1918, 1; “En Monterrey mueren personas muy conocidas,” Excelsior, October 17, 1918.

60. “Se extiende a diario la epidemia,” Excelsior, October 30, 1918, 1.

61. “En la C. de Monterrey se han dado varios casos de fiebre amarilla,” Excelsior, October 13, 1918, 1.

62. Trujillo to Rodríguez, October 25 and 28, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 11.

63. “Es ahora en Puebla donde la influenza se recrudece,” Excelsior; “La influenza decrece en parte,” Excelsior.

64. Virtually all of the AHSS files cited in this article contain some mention of the pharmaceuticals or disinfectants listed above.

65. Sariol to Rodríguez, October 30, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 7.

66. Personal secretary of governor to Rodríguez, November 4, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-11, Exp. 6.

67. Rodríguez to Valle, November 19, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C11, Exp. 6.

68. “Muchos soldados,” Excelsior.

69. Sanitary Delegate in Nogales, Son., to Rodríguez, October 20, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-12, Exp. 15.

70. The basilica in this case was the baroque structure built in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The modern shrine, which honors the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, was built in the 1970s and is one of the world's most visited sites of religious pilgrimage.

71. “La capital de Nuevo León está siendo azotada con dureza por influenza,” Excelsior.

72. Ibarra, “The Spanish Influenza in Mexico,” 30.

73. “Se ha dado un carácter alarmista al desarollo de la influenza en la Ciudad de México,” Excelsior, October 22, 1918, 1.

74. Municipal president to Rodríguez, December 30, 1918, AHSS, F-SP, S-Epid., C-12, Exp. 3.

75. Netzahualcoyotzi Méndez, La epidemia de gripe, 107–108.

76. “Prudencia, no cobardía,” Excelsior, October 31, 1918, 3.

77. Curiously, this biblical story is also the origin of the phrase “writing on the wall.”

78. “¡Miseria, Vicio, Influenza!” Excelsior, October 12, 1918, 3.

79. “Es ahora en Puebla donde la influenza se recrudece,” Excelsior.

80. Ibarra, “The Spanish Influenza in Mexico,” 45.

81. “El gobierno de Durango desea pronto auxilio,” Excelsior, October 5, 1918, 5.

82. “¡No más gripa! Cúrese Usted de una manera rápida, radical y segura,” Excelsior, October 17, 1918, 8; “Contra la influenza,” Excelsior, October 12, 1918, 6.

83. Ibarra, “The Spanish Influenza in Mexico,” 47.

84. “La influenza decrece en parte,” Excelsior, October 15, 1918, 1; “Il limone come cura profilattica contro l'influenza spagnola,” Excelsior, October 12, 1918, 6.

85. Advertisement, Excelsior, October 25, 1918, 6.

86. Advertisement, Excelsior, October 30, 1918, 2.

87. Advertisement, Excelsior, November 1, 6.

88. The first and still best effort to measure, rather than merely describe, the long-term outcomes of the Revolution was by James Wilkie, who tracked federal expenditure over time on defined categories of poverty alleviation, economic development, employment, infrastructure, and so forth. See Wilkie, , The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change since 1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

89. Soto Laveaga and Agostoni, “Science and Public Health in the Century of Revolution,” 566–567. On anti-alcohol campaigns, see Gretchen Pierce, “Sobering the Revolution: Mexico's Anti-Alcohol Campaign and the Process of State-Building, 1910–1940” (PhD diss.: University of Arizona, 2008).

90. On prostitution, see Bliss, Katherine Elaine, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. On hookworm, see Birn, Anne-Emanuelle, “Revolution, the Scatalogical Way: The Rockefeller Foundation's Hookworm Campaign in 1920s Mexico,” in Disease in the History of Modern Latin America, Armus, Diego, ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 158–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. José María Rodríguez, Speech, 49th Ordinary Session, Diario de los debates del Congreso Constituyente, 136–147.

92. Scholars have long debated whether the 1910-20 upheaval constituted a genuine popular social revolution, a bourgeois political movement, an agrarian struggle, or simply a chaotic set of revolts and coups d’état. See Knight, Alan, “The Mexican Revolution: Bourgeois? Nationalist? Or Just a ‘Great Rebellion’?” Bulletin of Latin American Research 4:2 (1985): 1–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.