This is a first-rate study of colonial medicine in Cuba during the American interventions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It presents a thorough narrative of the central role that yellow fever control played in US policy toward Cuba and the clear ways in which sanitation campaigns in Cuba primarily served public health interests on the American mainland rather than those of Cubans on the island. Mariola Espinosa frames her study in the context of the field of colonial medicine, inserting the case of Cuba into the growing literature about Africa and Asia and more recently Latin America. Her main thesis is that “yellow fever in Havana and the public health policies pursued by the U.S. government in Cuba to control the disease necessarily highlight not those differences that divided Cubans but instead those between Cuba, on one hand, and the United States, on the other” (p. 5)....
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Book Review|
August 01 2011
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878 – 1930
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878 – 1930
. By Espinosa, Mariola. Chicago
: University of Chicago Press
, 2009
. Photographs. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Bibiography. Index
. 189
pp. Paper
, $22.50. Cloth
, $55.00.Hispanic American Historical Review (2011) 91 (3): 592–593.
Citation
Blanca G. Silvestrini; Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878 – 1930. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 August 2011; 91 (3): 592–593. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-1300408
Download citation file:
Advertisement
50
Views