Nutrition and the Politics of Consumption in Twentieth-Century Mexico
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Milk against Poverty: Nutrition and the Politics of Consumption in Twentieth-Century Mexico Maria del Pilar Zazueta Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 © 2011 Maria del Pilar Zazueta All rights reserved ABSTRACT Milk against Poverty: Nutrition and the Politics of Consumption in Twentieth-Century Mexico Maria del Pilar Zazueta This dissertation examines how and why food consumption and nutrition became legitimate public policy issues in Mexico between the 1930s to the 1980s.In the post- revolutionary era, Mexican public officials began to systematically consider diet a social problem that affected not only individual well-being but could influence the economic development of the nation. This belief resulted in the implementation of policies with the goal of improving the quality of the Mexican diet. Several government actors participated in formulating and executing food and nutrition policies. Economic authorities, doctors and nutritional experts became convinced that food consumption could be managed, rationalized and perfected to obtain optimal results both in terms of expenses and health benefits. For economic officials, the primary goal of food policies was to maintain the stability of the factors of production, primarily labor costs, to encourage industrialization. Thus, from the early 1930s, the Mexican government regulated prices and intervened in food markets to control the supply side. Since the 1970s, government officials also sought to influence the demand side through the behavior of consumers. Diet came to be regarded not only as an object of health intervention and macroeconomic policy, but also as a crucial component of the new consumer culture. The Mexican government also promoted the study of food consumption scientifically, looking for ways to optimize food consumption with low wages. This scientific research done at public hospitals helped solidify diets as a legitimate sphere of intervention. Most doctors and nutritional experts agreed that Mexicans in general were malnourished due to the quality of their diets, which lacked animal proteins. Based on the findings of their studies, which indicated that diets had effects on mental development, these experts insisted that malnourishment was the explanation for the poverty and backwardness of Mexican society. Milk production and distribution is presented as a case study of the multiplicity of processes and actors involved in food consumption and nutrition policies in Mexico. For both doctors and economic planners, it was not enough to recommend increased consumption of animal proteins if these products were not available in the market or were not affordable enough for low income consumers to buy them. Government officials implemented policies to increase the production and consumption of the product. This dissertation traces how the milk sector was transformed and how the interactions between local producers, government agencies and transnational companies shaped an incipient industry in the early twentieth century into an important economic sector in several regions of Mexico. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 1 Part I. Introduction: Politics and Economics in Mexico (1910-1955) 27 Chapter 1: The Mexican Living Standards: Wages and Intervention in the Food Market in Mexico (1931-1948) 34 Chapter 2: Beyond Corn and Beans: the Development of Nutritional Sciences in 1940s and 1950s Mexico 77 Chapter 3: Conflict, Sanitation and Prices in the Mexican Milk Market (1902-1951) 129 Part II: Introduction: Change and Development in Mexico (1955-1982) 179 Chapter 4: Poverty and Nutritional Sciences in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico 191 Chapter 5: “Vivir con poco”: The Rise of Consumer Policies in 1970s Mexico 259 Chapter 6: Sugar, Soft-drinks and the Mexican Government’s Nutrition Education Campaigns 312 Chapter 7: The Rise of the Milk Conglomerates: Private and Public Cooperation and Conflict in the Milk Market 357 Conclusion 396 Bibliography 408 Annex. Tables 1 to 21 437 i Acknowledgments Writing a dissertation can be very challenging and solitary. Actually finishing the project cannot be done without the help and encouragement of many people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for the generosity and support. At Columbia University, numerous professors and colleagues made the experience of graduate school interesting and gratifying. They all played an important role in my intellectual development. My advisor, Pablo Piccato encouraged me in pursuing this project and provided crucial guidance thought out the process of research and writing. I am grateful for his mentorship and good humor. Nancy Leys Stepan contributed greatly to my formation as a historian. Her scholarship, as well as her enthusiasm and dedication as a teacher inspired in part my passion for the history of medicine and public health. Alan Dye provided very helpful commentary and constructive criticism that greatly improved my work. I would like to thank Nara Milanich for her comments at various stages of the project and for her thoughtful questioning. Sarah Phillips helped me greatly in the early stages of formulating this project and shared her insights into the history of food and agriculture in the U.S. I am grateful to Caterina Pizzigoni and Claudia Agostoni for participating in my dissertation committee. My peers at Columbia have been a source of inspiration and good cheer. I would like to thank Victoria Basualdo, Constanza Castro, Antonio Espinosa, Carlos Gálvez, Horace Grant, Colin Jaundrill, Claudine Leysinger, Carlos Nieto, Alyssa Park, Meha Priyadarshini and Thomas Rath for their support. I thank the fellow members of the dissertation writing group, particularly Ansley Erickson and Alex Cummings, for providing a useful debate forum and challenging questions. Special thanks to Nandini Chaturvedula, Aparna Kumar and Noël Norcross for making my first years in New York a happy and unforgettable experience. ii I would like to thank the participants of the different forums in which I presented my work, especially to the New York City Latin American History Workshop. Organizers Amy Chazkel, Paul Gootenberg and Sinclair Thomson deserve special recognition for coordinating this very useful and lively debate space. I also thank Paul Gootenberg for his advice and encouragement. I am grateful to Jeffrey Pilcher and Paul Gillingham for the thoughtful comments on my work. I have benefited from the feedback of many wonderful scholars during the long road to the Ph.D, including Herbert Klein, Lorenzo Meyer, Jose Moya, Aldo Musacchio, Mauricio Tenorio and David Sheinin. I am grateful to all of them. The generous support of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Tinker Foundation, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation and the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) allowed me to complete this dissertation. I was able to work and participate in a wonderful community of scholars during my stay at the CHF in Philadelphia. I would like to thank Ronald Brashear, Anke Timmermann and Professor Roy McLeod, as well as the rest of the fellows and the staff for their collegiality and encouragement. Thanks also to Professor Pamela H. Smith for introducing me to the CHF, and for making certain that graduate students like me have the resources necessary to complete their dissertations. I am very grateful for the work and support of the various archivists and librarians from the Archivo General de la Nación, the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaria de Salud, the Biblioteca Lerdo de Tejada, the Hemeroteca Nacional, the Instituto Nacional de Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, the Hospital Infantil de Mexico, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank Archive and the UNICEF Historical Archive. Ernesto Larondó, Dr. Gonzalo Cevallos, Alfredo Gutiérrez, Luis Vicente Echeverría, Demetrio Sodi, Daniel Gershenson and Carlos Ulanovsky took time out of their busy schedules to talk to me about their businesses, their experiences as government iii officials or their consumer activism. I have great admiration for Adolfo Chávez and his work. I was fortunate enough to be able to converse with him about food and nutrition in Mexico. José Antonio Roldán Amaro helped me think about how to frame my study about nutrition and shared his scholarship with me. Ernesto Espinosa Correa, film director, deserves a special mention for sharing his knowledge about Mexican vintage advertisements and his enthusiasm for Mexican soft-drinks, especially Refrescos Pascual. During my last year at Columbia I had the opportunity to work at the Earth Institute on a project headed by Jeffrey Sachs and Joanna Rubinstein. It was a pleasure to be a part of the team led by Liza I. Lizárraga, and work alongside Evelyn Molina and Lourdes Pintado. I am thankful for their friendship and the project we completed together. My wonderful friends and family offered support and encouragement while writing my dissertation. They know who they are and I hope they also know how much they meant to me. Xóchitl Medina is a kind and generous friend, who along with her husband and daughters welcomed me into their home. My hermano Adrian Franco is a talented educator and relentless activist. He makes many people’s lives better, including mine. Narayani Lasala insists she followed me to New York City, but it might have been the other way around. Her friendship means the world to me. My parents Patricia Avilés and César Zazueta have also been a source of endless inspiration and reassurance. I am grateful for their love and support. Many thanks to my family- in-law Sara, Analía, Javier, Tamara and Melina for their affection and generosity. Finally, without my husband Daniel Fridman I would not have been able to finish this project. He helped me overcome obstacles that at the time seemed insurmountable. I dedicate this work to him with much admiration and love. iv 1 Introduction In 2010, Mexican consumer organizations El Poder del Consumidor, Al Consumidor, El Barzón, and Oxfam launched a campaign to raise awareness and reverse the current trends of obesity in children and adults.