Making the Revolutionary Mother: Health, Hygiene, and Nutrition Programs in Rural Bolivia, 1952–64

In 1950 Bolivia had an infant mortality rate of approximately 180 deaths per 1,000 births and an overall life expectancy of just under 40 years.  This high infant mortality rate was a national embarrassment, especially when the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau (PASB) placed the blame on developing countries’ own national governments.  Dr. Carlos Ferrufino, a PASB technical advisor, specifically noted the “alarming character” of Bolivia’s mortality rate and concluded that developing nations did not consider maternal and infant health a matter of national priority.
After the 1952 Revolution, Bolivia’s Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) cultivated an image of protector and guardian of the nation’s mothers and their children, fashioning itself the benevolent patriarch of the Bolivian family.  The MNR attempted to counteract Bolivia’s dismal vital statistics by sending trained sanitary inspectors into rural communities to educate pregnant women and mothers about the importance of nutrition and hygiene.  While malnutrition was a primary concern, lack of education, cultural beliefs, and rural poverty were also identified as important obstacles to improving overall health and quality of life.  Therefore, sanitary inspectors were taught to take into account rural conditions, like lack of “adequate” food storage facilities in rural dwellings, and cultural habits in order to work around them.  
This paper argues that rural nutrition programs allowed the MNR to oversee the parenting techniques of indigenous mothers, or in other words, to observe how Bolivia’s future citizens were being raised.  By teaching these new “madres campesinas” about modern medicine, nutrition, and the special needs of their children, the MNR attempted to replace unhealthy indigenous customs with new “revolutionary” forms of child-raising to prepare children for their role as future citizens.