Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the bubonic plague that affected Peru's major coastal cities in 1903-30. It describes the yellow fever epidemic of 1919-22 that struck major north coast harbours and sugar-producing localities, and which was controlled by the Rockefeller Foundation. The book focuses on the efforts made to fight epidemic typhus and smallpox in the Andes, and to combine sanitation with a regional cultural movement known as indigenism. It discusses the successive campaigns for the control and eradication of malaria, an endemic disease in the coastlands and the tropical forest throughout the twentieth century. The book discusses aborted eradication of malaria which took place in the 1950s. It examines the 1991 cholera epidemic which caused over 322 000 casualties, and dealt a blow to the export of fish, the food trade and tourism, while rapidly becoming a symbol of the general crisis in Peru.