Institutions and Politics of Mexico's City Public Health, from the Colony to the Porfiriato

The article offers a historical account of the transformations of sanitary services, hospital care, attention and support in Mexico. It remarks the exitance of health and public assistance legislations; and a practice that factually acquire characteristics that relate to public policies from the viceroyalty of New Spain. The approach of this article is sustained by historical documents and previous investigations that demonstrate the presence of public policies, regulated and executed by the Church and the State alongside during the colonial period, and then by the Mexican State. Nevertheless, some saw the results of their execution depleted, due to causes and specificities of their respective historical moments. Particularly, during the Porfiriato, the cause for the failure of health policies was not on account of economic factors or political instability, nor of confrontation of power of diverse nature, such as in the Colony, but to the undeniable fact that their aim was to use health policies as instruments of control and not of social welfare.