Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America ed. by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López

Abstract

Reviewed by: Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America ed. by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López Jorge A. Nállim Birn, Anne-Emanuelle and Raúl Necochea López, eds. – Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 376 p. Peripheral Nerve is an important contribution to the historiography of the Latin American Cold War, a field that has experienced a major transformation in the last two decades. A foreword by Gilbert Joseph and an introduction and epilogue from the book’s editors provide the theoretical and methodological framework to nine case studies, divided in three sections that correspond to different sub-periods— early, mature, and late years. The point of departure is that health and medicine represent another major arena in which the Cold War was fought in the region. Latin American health and medical actors operated in a postwar context characterized by contending forces of reform and revolution, shaped by the imperatives of economic development and modernization and the impact of the bipolar conflict. Those actors moved across fluid boundaries and in multi-layered networks at domestic, regional, and transnational levels. Health and medicine were not only specific areas of professional expertise, but also sites for struggles around political, social, and cultural power. From these premises, the book relates to recent scholarship on the Cold War that reframes its temporal, spatial, and methodological boundaries. In terms of chronology, the chapters indicate that the Cold War did not just start in 1947 but had deeper historical roots in the preceding decades, as argued by Joseph in his foreword and suggested by Anne-Emanuelle Birn in her introduction. This can be seen, for example, in Birn’s exploration of the life of the Dutch American nurse Lini de Vries and her international, antifascist past from the 1930s and early 1940s; Jennifer Lynn [End Page 685] Lambe’s analysis of the Freudian and Pavlovian psychiatric approaches in Cuba; and Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney’s study on German roots of social medicine in Chile. Regarding geographical boundaries, the book makes a convincing case for looking at the Cold War in Latin America beyond the bipolar dynamics of the conflict between the superpowers or the hegemonic and totalizing power of the United States in the region. While constrained by Cold War dynamics and domestic realities, health actors nevertheless actively drew from diverse ideological and historical traditions, engaged both superpowers and even played them against each other, and resorted to South-South solidarities. In this vein, Marcos Ramos describes the emergence of a nationalist, leftist, and anti-imperialist movement in Argentine psychiatry in the late 1960s and early 1970s that rejected both American and Soviet trends. Cheasty Anderson explores the particular interests and agendas involved in the Cuban medical diplomacy in Sandinista Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, while Gabriel Soto Laveaga analyzes the Mexican pharmaceutical sector in relation to both expanding control of the United States and alternative relations with the Soviet Union. In turn, reframing the temporal and spatial boundaries results in a fundamental methodological shift. The chapters clearly convey that despite its relative peripheral location, Latin America did not only experience the Cold War as a derivative of the broader conflict between the superpowers. Latin American health actors had their own agendas and sources of professional, political, and ideological inspiration. This echoes Greg Grandin’s insights on Latin America as the place where the United States forged many of its Cold War policies and tools. However, this book goes beyond that notion by resituating the region and arguing for a more decentered approach, one in which the limits and contradictions of US power and influence in the region can be neatly perceived. Such is the case of the Rockefeller Foundation’s opposition to Bolivian medical training in relation to domestic anti-Communism in the United States, analyzed by Nicole Pacino, and Raúl Necochea López’s exploration of the tensions, contradictions, and interests of the different actors involved in the Puerto Rican Family Life Study. While the book frames health and medicine within the broader and more recent historiography on the Cold War, it also establishes...