Abstract

ALTABLE, Francisco. Humanitarianism, Redemption and Medical Science in New Spain: The Public Health Plan to Halt the Extinction of Indians in Baja California (1797-1805). Secuencia [online]. 2011, n.80, pp.11-40. ISSN 2395-8464.

On the basis of a description of various moments in the implementation of a medical program to reverse the long population decline of Indians in the California península, what could be called the political humanitarianism of the Spanish Crown emerged, projected onto the debate between the religious and scientific perspectives regarding the extinction of the Indians. The árdele explains the causes of what is called the Utopia of the Californians' healing, offering an interpretation that ranges from relative conceptions to the Indians' well-known genetic capacity to survive the infections, errors and impositions of the acculturation process and other factors that adversely affect indigenous existence. It concludes that the failure of the medical program in question contributed to the frustration of the colonizing, humanitarian, religious and modernizing expectations of the Bourbon regime.

Keywords : Extinction; salvation; science; cure; epidemic; civilization; evangelization; Utopia; modernization; health.

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