Primeros 30 años de praxis política y social de la medicina en Chiapas: 1964-1994

Abstract

This research argues how the political and social praxis of certain community medicine experiences in southeastern Mexico, between the years 1964 and 1994, is shaped by a collective reconstruction of historical memory. It is described in three periods: the configuration (1964-1980), the consolidation process (1981-1988) and its subsequent withdrawal (1989-1994). Its base: a social historical study with primary sources mainly reconstructs in a participatory way how, when, who and why they shape this political praxis and its relations with social medicine. Semi-structured interviews are carried out with basic informants in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán and Palenque, with records in different formats that try to connect the voice, the gaze and the experience of each one with the social body of the communities (audio, photographs, audio visuals, blogs). It concludes with some differences and similarities in the process and becoming of this political praxis, due to its conditions of realization, and to the ends and means used to perform praxis, in the periods identified. In the period of configuration from 1961 to 1980, the first national medical movement was politically influenced by the vindication of the working conditions of residents and inmates (1964-5), the first Indigenous Congress of Chiapas with the support of the Diocese of San Cristóbal (1974), and the growing gathering of groups of doctors and organizations committed to work in health and in different education, seeking a dignified life for all and a more just society. In the period of consolidation (from 1981 to 1987) a social, democratic and community-based structure was developed that functioned as a local health system, territorialised with substantial characteristics for communities and effective results, against the critical health situations that they faced There remain some of the essential components of this political praxis, despite the crisis and patriarchal, sexist and colonial neoliberal structural violence installed in Mexico and in Chiapas between 1988 and 1994, which contributes to the withdrawal of this praxis, with consequences for life and the health of native peoples throughout the territory of the Republic. In 1994 with the Zapatista uprising, the EZLN leaves big questions to the general society and propose new critical houghts and other logical ones for the political praxis that arise from there onwards. In that same year, ALAMES points out ways and possibilities at the 6th Latin American Congress and 8th World Social Medicine held in the city of Guadalajara. It remains to be done analysis on the actuality of these political praxis, and its changes after 1994.