Políticas de salud y vida saludable en México-Tenochtitlán

Abstract

This article compiles documented facts concerning the Aztecs life to demonstrate their significance and their contribution to health promotion and to the modern concept of healthy cities. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, was the capital of an empire that had not yet reached its peak and possessed many attributes of a healthy city. The city of Tenochtitlan promoted health and the conditions necessary to achieve it, such as universal access to education, nutrition, resources, and solidarity. It is therefore worthy of the label healthy city, thanks to its policies, norms, regulations, abundance of water, respect for the environment, health-promoting spaces like its markets and parks, hygienic habits, the cleanliness of its inhabitants, and social cohesion. Health promotion seen as a political, social and educational response to promote well-being and human development can be considered, in spite of a few existing contradictions such as wars, human sacrifices and inequalities that flourished, as an ancient Mexican cultural heritage which lias enriched Western culture. Tenochtitlan is an historical example of the application of numerous fundamental health promotion concepts, disseminated since the Ottawa Conference and ratified by various global conferences on health promotion, of which the most recent took place in Mexico City in the year 2000.