The article explores the reception of eugenics in Argentina in the 1930s. It aims, first, to place eugenics as a topic of expert and public concern against the background of the “demographic fears” associated with the decline of the birthrate among the white population and the closing of European immigration that followed the world depression. Second, it underscores the role played by Italian and German cultural and scientific transnational networks in the reception and dissemination of medical ideas of race improvement. Based upon previously overlooked sources of the Prussian state archives, the essay seeks to revise conventional “neo-Lamarckian” explanations about Latin America’s (and Argentina’s) alleged immunity to negative eugenics. By examining the activities of the Asociación de Biotipología, the debates of the Second Pan-American Conference on Eugenics, and the academic exchanges fostered by the Deutsche-Iberoamerikanische Ärzteakademie, the article argues that Argentine medical practitioners were much more receptive to eugenic sterilization than previously claimed. As they made great efforts to separate it from other “unscientific” forms of racism, they lent credibility to practices which, as recent research has shown, many of them had adopted on allegedly therapeutic grounds.

The article examines the relationship between eugenics, physical exercise and the body in Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s. By focusing on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico it analyzes the reception of different traditions of European constitutional medicine, and in particular biotypology, among experts on physical education and sport in Argentina. It argues that, faced with rapid urban growth, incipient industrialization and greater social mobility, eugenicists in these countries turned their attention to collective fitness. The processes of industrial nation-building undertaken by the populist regimes of the 1930s and 1940s made the production of vital data all the more important. Biotypology played 319 central role as a scientific means to optimize «human capital». One way to achieve this was through the regenerative and evaluative functions of physical culture. On the one hand, exercising was an ideal means for instilling in the population, especially the youth, healthy habits and socially useful abilities. On the other, it offered scientists a laboratory for studying human capacities. Exercise physiologists had been measuring athletic per- formance since the late nineteenth century; for biotypologists, however, this knowledge had larger political implications in so far as it promised to produce the empirical data necessary for constructing taxonomical systems into which virtually every citizen could be included.

Depopulation, social change and state policy in Argentina, 1930-1943

Dénatalité, « crise de la race » et politiques démographiques en Argentine (1920-1940) par Andrés REGGIANI et Hernán GONZÁLEZ BOLLO | Presses de Sciences Po | Vingtième siècle 2007/3-N° 95 ISSN 0294-1759 | pages 29 à 44 Pour citer cet article :-Reggiani A. et González Bollo H., Dénatalité, « crise de la race » et politiques démographiques en Argentine (1920-1940), Vingtième siècle 2007/3, N° 95, p. 29-44. Distribution électronique Cairn pour les Presses de Sciences Po. © Presses de Sciences Po. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

This article discusses the development of Latin eugenics in Europe between 1910s and 1930s, with a special focus on France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Romania. During this period, Latin eugenics offered a progressive programme of social and medical reform, alongside pronatalist campaigns to educate the population about the importance of large and healthy families. Latin eugenics was premised on a number of theories and ideas developed since the early 1900s, particularly in France and Italy, including "puériculture" and biotypology, and on its opposition to birth control, compulsory sterilization and Nazi racism. Considering the current revival in eugenic studies across Europe and elsewhere it is important to engage with other eugenic traditions than the ones recurrently invoked in the scholarship. The history of Latin eugenics in Europe provides a much needed revision of conventional interpretations of eugenics that focused predominantly on Anglo-American and German experiences.