Health, immigration and mutual aid organization in Argentina: The Centro Gallego of Buenos Aires between the crisis and the emergence of a new health system (1930-1950)

This article sets up a dialogue between the historiography of the European migrations to Argentina and the field of the history of health through the case study of the Centro Gallego in Buenos Aires, Argentina's most important foreign mutual aid society since the 1930s. Using quantitative and qualitative sources from public and private archives, the article analyses the nature of the health services provided by the institution, the management role of its leaders, as well as the make-up of its members and their health demands. The results lead us to reconsider the role of mutual organizations during the expansion of the public health system, as well as the role of ethnicity among the urban middle and working classes, long after the period of mass immigration.