ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ambiguities of civilizing project. The public health officials who spearheaded Lima's modernization were genuinely concerned with epidemic disease, infant mortality, and the health of all Peruvians, rich and poor. Their preoccupation with hygiene and sanitation led them to study the abysmal living conditions of the poor, and their recommendations prompted a host of novel initiatives, from public housing to the regulation of industrial working conditions. Popular responses to the modernizing project were equally contradictory. The civilizing imperative underlay government action in everything from factory regulation to census taking and played an especially important role in issues of public health and housing. The issue of housing provides a unique window onto the contradictions of a reformist project that was progressive and racist, genuinely concerned with the well-being of the poor yet unwilling to confront poverty itself.
