In Mexico, there were hospitals for the “demented” from the early years of the Spanish colony. It was not until the second half of the 19th century, however, that the first physicians interested in alterations of the brain published articles on the etiology, symptomatology, and treatment of mental illnesses. Within a larger context of health reforms launched during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911), known as the Porfiriato, healthcare officials decided to close the hospitals for the insane and construct a modern institution where psychiatry could grow as a discipline and where patients could be treated using scientific methods. Furthermore, along with the economic and cultural development that took place during the Porfiriato, there was an increase in the number of patients admitted to hospitals for the insane, while at the same time the number of doctors interested in the clinical treatment of mental illnesses increased, as well. The officials’ decision became a reality on September 1, 1910—just two months before the Revolution broke out—when La Castañeda General Asylum was opened. It was a complex of twenty-four buildings in the town of Mixcoac. In addition to being an institution for patient care, it was also where the first generations of Mexican psychiatrists and neurologists were trained. As early as the 1930s, the asylum began to have problems with overcrowding, unhealthy conditions, and deterioration of the facilities. The doctors there repeatedly called for the patient care system to be restructured. In 1944, a psychiatric reform called the “Castañeda Operation” began, seeking to decentralize psychiatric care and to use agricultural work as a therapeutic tool. The result was the creation of seven new hospitals and the permanent closure of the asylum in 1968. Recent historiography on psychiatry from its beginnings in the Porfiriato to the time of that reform have shown that it was a period marked by the rise and fall of a utopian dream, that of the therapeutic effectiveness of psychiatric internment. It was a transition from the single, large asylum in the capital city to a network of hospitals that relied on outpatient care, early detection, and medication as a way to dismantle the asylum model. As a result, La Castañeda General Asylum has held a privileged place in historical study as the stage for the beginning, the development, and the consolidation of Mexican psychiatry.
Article
Psychiatry and Insanity in Mexico, 1876–1968
Andrés Ríos Molina
Article
Peyote
Alexander Dawson
Indigenous peoples in Mexico and the United States have consumed peyote for millennia. It has also been the subject of interest and concern among Euro-Americans since the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. . Amid growing use by non-Native people, peyote was first banned by the Spanish Inquisition in 1620. While the historical record in the immediate period after the Inquisition left Mexico in 1824 is sparse, extant evidence suggests that peyote continued to circulate in herbal markets as a treatment for any number of maladies. Beginning in the late 19th century, peyote was the subject of significant scientific interest (mainly around the treatment of mental disorders), along with a growing fascination with and concern over its use in Indigenous communities in Mexico and the United States. Peyotism in Mexico at this point was a long-standing tradition among a limited number of communities, and it was linked to the evangelical cultural revivalist Native American Church in the United States. Use by non-Native persons (in both formally therapeutic settings and more informal settings) expanded considerably during the 1950s and 1960s. Peyote would ultimately be banned in the United States in 1965 and Mexico in 1971, although in both cases exceptions were made for Indigenous peyotists. Currently, peyote is the subject of a series of ecological concerns, as peyote habitats on both sides of the border have been threatened by climate change, economic development, and overharvesting.
