Health Systems in Latin America: Architecture, Institutions, and Healthcare Networks in the Territories
The historiography of Latin American healthcare architecture has favored the study of hospitals, emblematic buildings, specific institutions, or national policies. However, these establishments can hardly be understood in isolation. They were part of healthcare networks made up of public and private organizations, companies, religious congregations, mutual aid associations, international bodies, and various professionals who, through architectures and infrastructures distributed at different scales, contributed to the organization of Latin American territories.
The history of health is also the history of institutions, of the various scales of medical care, and of the architectures that made possible the extension of health services. Epidemics, hygienist campaigns, preventive medicine, and modernization processes drove the creation of hospitals, clinics, polyclinics, rural health posts, dispensaries, maternity wards, health stations, laboratories, and other establishments that, rather than responding solely to care needs, shaped care networks with profound urban, regional, and continental repercussions.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the international circulation of knowledge, professionals, and institutional models favored the consolidation of shared health policies in Latin America. Cooperation between countries, the role of Pan-American and international organizations, and the participation of state, business, and private institutions promoted the construction of infrastructures that linked cities, rural areas, border regions, extractive territories, and areas of colonization. From this perspective, health architecture can be understood as part of broader processes of territorial integration, state modernization, economic development, and the production of space.
This session proposes to reflect on the relationships between architecture, institutions, healthcare networks, and territories in Latin America, favoring approaches that make it possible to understand health facilities as part of complex systems rather than as isolated buildings. Researchers are invited to submit papers addressing hospitals, clinics, polyclinics, health posts, dispensaries, sanitary units, laboratories, sanatoriums, and other health infrastructures, as well as studies on health planning, the circulation of knowledge, international cooperation, health heritage, companies, religious congregations, public policies, historical cartography, and modernization processes.
As Arístides Moll, secretary of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau, noted in 1940, diseases united the countries of the Western Hemisphere and prevention made inter-American relations possible. From the sanitary conferences of the late 19th century and the adoption of a common sanitary code in 1905, health became a privileged space for continental cooperation. International organizations, technical assistance programs, and the circulation of architects, physicians, and specialists promoted the construction of hospitals, health centers, and other infrastructures that shared principles of organization, architectural typologies, and territorial implementation strategies across different Latin American countries.
In this context, research examining these relationships from local, regional, national, or comparative perspectives is of interest, paying special attention to the circulation of knowledge, professionals, architectural models, and institutions, as well as to the processes through which health architectures contributed to building care networks and shaping Latin American territories.
