ABSTRACT
In Mexico, arbovirus epidemics have a long history, with public politics and social responses entangled with different discourses and practices. Merida also has ideal socio-urban conditions for the proliferation of Aedes mosquitoes and their related viruses. The city and its surrounding towns have been especially known as a place infested with mosquito-borne diseases since the 1980s. Yucatan has been the site of many anthropological studies for many decades, due to its links to Mesoamerican ruins and Mayan culture. Yucatan has become a focus for Aedes research, an assemblage of knowledge generation and one that is targeted towards translating research, including anthropological research, into public health intervention plans and policy. There are important avenues for sociocultural engagement in arboviruses, both during endemic and epidemics periods, that are still emerging for anthropologists. Chasing urban mosquitoes with fumigators and finding their breeding sites in vases, tires and bottle caps has proved to be very challenging in Yucatan and elsewhere.
