North American influence on the development of public health in Colombia

Abstract

The present article tries to show how Colombian public health, the same as in the rest of Latin America, was developed under the profound influence of North American models and norms, but conditioned, in turn, by national particularities. This allows reflection about the differential processes through which the policies of the ""centre"", represented by the Rockefeller Foundation's directives, influenced the ""peripheral"" spaces. The working hypothesis which is proposed to explain the Colombian case's particularity, in the Latin American context, is the absence of a significant nationalist movement at the start of the century which could have contributed towards forging a strong sanitary movement rooted in that which was local and having the possibility to table clear and convincing negotiation faced with North American posturlng, as what did happen was that Colombian public health took on a different and more dependent form than that of the region's other countries.