DISCOURSES AND IMAGES ON INEQUALITY. PUBLIC POLICY AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MADNESS IN THE ARGENTINEAN NORTHWEST (1935-1954)

In the present investigation we will analyze the first psychiatric institution in northwestern Argentina, specifically in the province of Tucuman, the Hospital de Alienados (HA), from the event that prompted its creation -the refusal of interprovincial transfers of patients to national colonies in 1935- until the return to this practice by the national State -in 1954-. Until the creation of the HA, the possible responses for people with psychiatric problems were transfer to institutions in other provinces or confinement in a city asylum and in police establishments. Given the serious consequences of the last alternatives, and the cancellation of the transfers, it had to be the provincial State itself that faced the problem. The HA was established as the first in Argentina to belong to a provincial State and not depend on the national coffers. This inaugural work in the historiographical studies of the region will allow us to analyze some institutional processes of mental health policies at the provincial and national level, the conceptions about madness and confine-ment that were held at that time, the scourge of poverty as a cause of craziness, and the effect of all of the above on public opinion.