Civilizing the Sertão
This chapter contrasts the political interpretation of sertanejos’ endemic illnesses, promulgated by Brazilian sanitarians, with the approach to public health promoted by Rockefeller Foundation International Health Board (IHB) representatives who also worked in Brazil during the 1910s. These contrasting interpretations of the political and racial origins of endemic disease delineate two poles around which subsequent approaches to sertão development turned. Early in the chapter, public health infrastructure in the northeast region is evaluated in relation to states’ limited capacity to assist drought refugees or prevent epidemics in migrant camps, and the efforts of cearense physician Rodolfo Teófilo are emphasized. The remainder of the chapter focuses on a sanitary survey of the sertão undertaken by Belisário Penna and Arthur Neiva in 1912; subsequent public health projects engaged in by Penna (notably the Serviço de Profilaxia Rural, or Rural Sanitation Service) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Board in Brazil; and the establishment of a national department of public health stemming from these efforts. The analysis emphasizes the racism of IHB director Wickliffe Rose which led him to dismiss the modernizing potential of sertanejos and to attribute their diseases to racial weakness. This is contrasted with Penna’s rejection of racial and climatic determinism.