Nicole Pacino

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Latin American History

Ph.D. Candidate
B.A., DePauw University; M.A., University of California Santa Barbara

Office: HSSB 3220
Winter 2013 Hours: Mondays 12-2pm

Advisor: Gabriela Soto Laveaga
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My research examines the overlap between politics and public health in twentieth-century Bolivia. Whereas historical studies of the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution have focused on its political and economic agenda, few scholars have examined the cultural politics embedded in these larger political and economic processes. My research shows that public health was the foundation for the revolutionary government’s plan for political, economic, and cultural consolidation. The Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario had an early interest in extending public health programs, and state control, into the countryside. These public health programs focused on maternal and infant health, sanitation, and disease eradication in order to boost a faltering economy and generate a healthy, and politically loyal, generation of workers and citizens. Therefore, in my dissertation, public health provides a lens for a cultural analysis of the MNR’s political, economic, and social agenda and underscores the link between race, gender, and state formation in the Bolivian revolutionary project.