Addressing the nation’s high infant and maternal mortality rate became a paramount priority following the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution. High infant mortality jeopardized the literal reproduction of the nation, therefore motherhood had to be reformed, sanitized, and modernized to fit new revolutionary ideals. Reproduction and women’s bodies were consequently at the heart of the revolutionary project. Attempts to improve child welfare drew women out of their homes and into health clinics where employees oversaw their nutrition, hygiene, and childcare regimens. They also fostered female solidarity linked specifically to maternal responsibilities, thereby inventing a notion of revolutionary motherhood inextricably linked to revolutionary goals. This process of expanding and modernizing maternal and infant health services reveal the gendered politics of nation building under the National Revolutionary Movement whose program for political change, economic development, and cultural transformation depended on a healthy and productive populace.

Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR) took power in April 1952 via a popular social revolution. After 1952, the party implemented state‐sponsored modernisation projects, including extending rural public health programmes. The MNR used health programmes to change rural practices, cultivate political loyalty, and expand the state's political power. Yet rural indigenous communities were hardly passive recipients of these programmes. These communities often requested government services, and they borrowed the MNR's own political rhetoric to position themselves as worthy of state attention. Public health programmes increased access to rural health care, but they also allowed state officials and rural communities to negotiate the MNR's authority.

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After the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) took power in the 1952 National Revolution, the party expanded rural public health programs to address what early twentieth-century elites called the “Indian problem:” the idea that indigenous culture was an impediment to Bolivia’s modernization. After 1952, the MNR used public health as a project of cultural assimilation, and state-sponsored health programs sought to culturally whiten the population by transforming personal habits. This essay analyzes the language with which health workers discussed the indigenous population to show that despite the regime’s intention to move away from defining the rural population on racial terms, medical and political elites continued to define indigenous customs as an obstacle to progress and a remnant of an antiquated past.

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Scholarship on Latin America’s medical history has traditionally relied on collections located in specific countries that are housed in national and regional archives, universities, medical schools, and government institutions. Digitized source repositories and reference websites will make these materials more accessible for researchers and students, and it is likely that digitized content will become increasingly available in the coming years. In the 21st century, various institutions in Latin America and the United States have made a concerted effort to digitize materials related to the study of health and medicine in Latin America. This effort is the product of advancements in technology that make digital preservation of material possible, as well as a growing awareness that not all archival collections, especially in Latin America, are stored in optimal conditions. The push for digitization, therefore, is centered on two primary goals: first, to make resources more available to researchers and remove obstacles to the use of archival collections, including accessibility and physical distance or travel restrictions, and second, to preserve materials in danger of decay or neglect from storage in subpar conditions. The digitization of a broad array of materials, including historical documents, newspapers, popular culture, photographs, music, and audio recordings, fosters greater use of these collections by researchers, teachers, and students inside and outside of Latin America and enhanced interaction with the institutions that maintain the digital and original collections. While not exhaustive, these sites demonstrate the extensive range of digitized sources available for the study of Latin America’s medical history. Materials span from the pre-Columbian through modern periods; the priority is collections with significant 20th-century content, but those focused on the colonial period and the 19th century are noted. The collections tap into several historiographical themes and discussions prominent in Latin American medical history, including questions about individual agency and the role of the state in administering health and medical initiatives; race, gender, and discriminatory health practices; social issues, such as prostitution and alcoholism, as public health concerns; debates about who can produce medical knowledge; the creation of medical professionalism and medical authority; and Pan-Americanism and the role of United States influence on Latin American health programs. The pace of digitization has been uneven across Latin America. A country’s wealth and access to resources determines the extent to which materials can be digitized, as do political considerations and legislation regarding transparency. Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are well represented in the entries, and the collections are either supported by national institutions, such as universities, libraries, or government archives, or sponsored by grants that facilitate the digitization of materials. For example, the collection from Peru relies on a UK-based charitable foundation for its existence. Digital collections based in the United States are located in archival institutions and research centers and focus on the activities of Inter-American, Pan-American, and philanthropic organizations, although not exclusively. Digitized collections greatly improve accessibility to sources related to Latin American medical history, but also depend on the user’s ability to navigate different interfaces and knowledge in how to limit and target searches. Many of the sites allow for keyword searches and the opportunity to browse collections; therefore, a user’s familiarity with the topic, scope, and keywords of a collection will determine the usefulness of search results. Where downloadable material is available, it is provided free of charge, and most of these repositories state a commitment to open access and to growing their digital collections.

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