ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the authoritarian nature of the efforts made to eradicate a disease that was held as a threat for the rest of the world, and reviews the adverse responses that combined the traditional resistance to sanitation measures with a more modern regional and nationalist opposition to foreign influence. The International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation was established in this optimistic milieu in 1913. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Hanson had been a professor of pathology in several North American universities, Director of the Bacteriological Laboratory of the Sanitary Office of the State of Florida, and a member of the US Public Health Service in the Panama Canal. The enthusiasm Leguia had for the Foundation's support can be explained not just by his desire to attract North American technicians, but also by his concern for the protection of a financially important area, as well as to consolidate his political influence.
