‘Never Forget Syphilis’: Public Health, Modernity and Gender in the Discourse of Previsión Social during the Trujillato Melissa Madera Research Monograph ‘Never Forget Syphilis’: Public Health, Modernity and Gender in the Discourse of Previsión Social during the Trujillato Melissa Madera Research Monograph CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Dominican Research Monograph Series Copyright © 2008 CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Dominican Research Monograph Series, a series of publications of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, seeks to disseminate knowledge on the Dominican experience in the United States, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere. Generally, the texts published in the series will have been generated by research projects sponsored by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Publications Coordinator Pablo Rodríguez Credits: This publication had been made possible in part by the Honorable Councilmember Miguel Martínez, whose generous support we hereby acknowledge. The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at City College is an organized research unit of the City University of New York approved by the Board of Trustees of the University February 22, 1994. The Institute’s primary mission is the production and dissemination of knowledge on the Dominican experience. City College, Hostos Community College, and the central administration of CUNY, with the support of the Dominican Community in New York, have led the effort that created the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. For information on the series or on the overall research agenda of the Institute, you may visit www.ccny.cuny.edu/dsi or reach the Institute directly at: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute The City College of New York 160 Convent Avenue NA 4/107 New York, NY 10031 Tel.: 212.650.7496 Fax: 212.650.7489 [email protected] www.ccny.cuny.edu/dsi Foreword Melissa Madera’s “Never Forget Syphilis” offers a cogent and enticing introduction to the study of public health as a key site for seeking to understand the multiple ways State-sponsored ideologies are caused to trickle down to the various social strata of the population. The essay shows how the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who ruled the Dominican Republic criminally from 1930 through 1961, sought to advance the regime’s agenda of patriarchal modernity through the design of apparently innocuous public health policies. The view of nation, sovereignty, progress, and Christian morality that the regime embraced practically required the confinement of women to the private domain of the home, invariably casting them in the roles of meek daughters, subordinated wives, and fertile mothers. With the support of the Catholic Church, the medical establishment, and women’s organizations that called themselves feminists in Dominican society at the time, during the 1940s the Trujillo regime undertook to regulate women’s reproductive rights, sexual mores, and social lives. Couched in a discourse that ostensibly promoted the physical well-being of the population, the State’s commitment to regulate women’s bodies was evinced by the ideological orientation of the public health campaigns promoted by the Departamento de Previsión Social y Asistencia Pública, whose periodical publication Previsión Social served as a primary vehicle for the regime to disseminate its health-related dogma to the citizenry. Madera uses to great advantage her access to extant issues of that serial publication to show how the regime made women responsible for the health of the nation and the advancement of society by placing their bodies at the service of the State’s agenda of patriarchal modernity. With her area of research, Madera shows herself to be a young scholar with great potential for making a lasting contribution to our understanding of the relationship between health, gender, and politics far beyond the reach of Dominican Studies. Dr. Silvio Torres-Saillant Professor, English Department & Director, Latino-Latin American Studies Program Syracuse University Melissa Madera is a Five College Fellow in the Gender Studies Department at Mount Holyoke College. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at Binghamton University (SUNY) pursuing a degree in Latin American and Caribbean history. She is currently writing her dissertation, “Dictating Motherhood: Public Health and Modernization in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic (1930-1961).” She has received an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean history from Binghamton as well as a Certificate in Feminist Theory awarded by Binghamton University’s Women’s Studies department. She graduated from Baruch College (CUNY) in 2001 with a B.A. in history and received an M.S.T. from Pace University in 2003. She received grants and fellowships from the Tinker Foundation, the Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies Program at Binghamton University and the Clifford D. Clark Graduate Fellowship Program for Underrepresented Minority Students (Binghamton University) in order to research this project at the Archivo General de la Nación (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), New York City’s Humanities and Social Science Library, the National Library of Medicine (Bethesda, Maryland), the Library of Congress (Washington D.C.), the National Archives Center (Washington D.C.). and the Rockefeller Archive Center (Sleepy Hollow, New York). Table of Contents Introduction 1 Modernity and Motherhood in the Trujillato’s Social Hygienic Discourse 2 Previsión Social in Action 6 Gender, the State and the Diseased Body 10 ‘Public’ Women and Public Protest in Trujillo’s ‘Modern’ State 12 Conclusion 20 References 21 This paper was presented at the 1st International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Dominican Studies Dedicated to Don Pedro Mir “Where We Are and Where We Want to Go: Charting a Course,” Eugenio María de Hostos Community College, City University of New York (CUNY), Bronx, New York, May 12-13, 2006. This Conference was sponsored by the Asociación de Estudios Dominicanos/Dominican Studies Asso- ciation, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at The City College of New York, Comisionado Dominicano de Cultural en los Estados Uni- dos, the Division of Academic Affairs at Hostos Community College, Dominican American National Roundtable, the Hostos Dominican Re- public Study Abroad Program, the Latino-Latin American Studies Pro- gram at Syracuse University, and the Serrano Scholars Program at Hostos Community College.