Nationalizing Children Through Schools and Hygiene: Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico City

Abstract

On a spring morning in 1919, worshipers leaving Mexico City’s cathedral were horrified to discover the body of a little girl who had fallen to her death from the Hotel del Seminario. Yet as far as the Excélsior newspaper was concerned, the tragedy that had ended that morning had actually begun with her conception. Her mother was a prostitute who lived in the hotel and busybody guests reported that the mother neglected her child. On the day of Domitila’s death, her mother was not at the hotel, as she had been admitted to the Morelos Hospital, which specialized in syphilitic prostitutes. The hotel’s guests did their best to care for Domitila, giving her food, affection, and chiding when she played on balconies: one moment of inattention allowed the tragedy. The article concluded that perhaps it was for Domitila’s own good that she had died falling off a balcony. Readers did not need to be told why Domitila was better off dead, because the case encapsulated common anxieties about childhood and parenting in Porfirian and revolutionary Mexico.