Abstract
This paper addresses the popular health movement in Nova Iguaçu-RJ in the 1970s and 1980s. Amidst political repression, residents organized themselves to find solutions to various problems, including health problems. Health demands are enhanced both by the dengue epidemic and linkages with the Brazilian health reform and a struggle for democracy. Using documental historical sources from newspapers, health dissemination papers and documents from the House of Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz collection, this paper concludes that the example of Nova Iguaçu reveals both the complexity of the process of political opening at the local level and efforts of conducting a health reform where it was needed the most. Resistance on the part of the medical corporation, private interests in health and the existence of a still incipient popular political organization and culture are some of the elements that account for the hardships in advancing the manifest wishes of policies. The specificities of local arenas also point to possible institutional arrangements, sometimes very peculiar and not reproducible in other settings.
Highlights
At the end of May 1986, in the Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, organized groups from Nova Iguaçu and other municipalities were preparing to obstruct the Presidente Dutra Highway, the country’s main road, in a demonstration for the right to health, in a region of disorderly urban growth, poor infrastructure, where the emerging dengue scourge made hundreds of new victims daily and where clientelism and violence prevailed.This mobilization for better living conditions in Nova Iguaçu had come a long way, at least since the mid-1970s, when the desire for change once again mobilized the spirits, despite all the fears of life under the civil-military dictatorship
Local stakeholders and authorities of health institutions participated in the demonstration
Cordeiro represented a multifaceted movement, which had been active since the mid-1970s, fighting for changes in health institutions, policies and practices and, at the limit, for structural changes in our society
Summary
At the end of May 1986, in the Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, organized groups from Nova Iguaçu and other municipalities were preparing to obstruct the Presidente Dutra Highway, the country’s main road, in a demonstration for the right to health, in a region of disorderly urban growth, poor infrastructure, where the emerging dengue scourge made hundreds of new victims daily and where clientelism and violence prevailed. This militancy turned out to be very successful, including in the field of health We examined these popular demands and the responses of the public authorities, especially from the INAMPS perspective, when led by Cordeiro and a group of technicians, all from the Brazilian Health Reform, a movement that had succeeded in including some of its guidelines in the government program that started with the unexpected mandate of President José Sarney in March 1985. It is, a matter of revisiting, from a historical perspective, this meeting between a relevant neighborhood movement and the reformist health policies carried out by one of the most important authorities, namely, INAMPS. Much of today’s debates were already there, in the wake of the Brazilian Health System (SUS), either regarding the organization and financing of public health care, their relationship with the business provision of services, health work regimes, ways of promoting a better distribution of resources in the territory or social participation in management, its possibilities and limitations
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