The article explores the reception of eugenics in Argentina in the 1930s. It aims, first, to place eugenics as a topic of expert and public concern against the background of the “demographic fears” associated with the decline of the birthrate among the white population and the closing of European immigration that followed the world depression. Second, it underscores the role played by Italian and German cultural and scientific transnational networks in the reception and dissemination of medical ideas of race improvement. Based upon previously overlooked sources of the Prussian state archives, the essay seeks to revise conventional “neo-Lamarckian” explanations about Latin America’s (and Argentina’s) alleged immunity to negative eugenics. By examining the activities of the Asociación de Biotipología, the debates of the Second Pan-American Conference on Eugenics, and the academic exchanges fostered by the Deutsche-Iberoamerikanische Ärzteakademie, the article argues that Argentine medical practitioners were much more receptive to eugenic sterilization than previously claimed. As they made great efforts to separate it from other “unscientific” forms of racism, they lent credibility to practices which, as recent research has shown, many of them had adopted on allegedly therapeutic grounds.

This article seeks to outline the main features of the stereotype of family promoted by the emblematic institution of the Argentine eugenics movement, the Argentine Eugenics Society (Sociedad Argentina de Eugenesia), an organization founded in 1945 that remained active in the country until the 1970s. It explores the conduct expected both of the man/husband and of the woman/wife, and shows the principal behaviors required to constitute the ideal family, the outlines of which were based on set of sexual moral with an eminently religious bias.

The aim of this article is to shed light on the rise to international prominence of the Italian statistician and eugenicist Corrado Gini and his appointment as the inaugural president of the Latin International Federation of Eugenic Societies in October 1935. It explores the numerous pioneering, still little known, investigations he undertook with a few Italian scientists and some foreign scholars, in order to analyze the role played by “isolation,” and “racial hybridization” in the formation and degeneration of human races. After outlining Gini’s professional and political trajectory, the article focuses on the scientific expeditions launched by the Italian Committee for the Study of Population Problems between 1933 and 1940 under his stewardship.

Eugenics before 1945 An appropriate understanding of eugenics before 1945 implies that this break is questioned and put into perspective. The article conceives eugenics as a multifarious project of modernity that derived from the biopolitical aspiration to improve public health and enhance human capabilities. Consequently, it was supported across the political spectrum. In the course of the Twentieth Century, an international eugenics movement took shape and found widespread and transnational resonance in the public opinion. However, the conflation of the Aryan myth, racial purity and medical coercive measures in Nazi-Germany discredited the concept of eugenics after 1945. Nonetheless, such measures, often combined with elements of soft coercion, were applied in many countries, particularly in the U.S., the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland up to the 1970s. Meanwhile, the feasibility of Reproductive Medicine gave rise to a «liberal eugenics» which is entrenched in the promises of health and happiness descending from the Nineteenth Century. Eugenik vor 1945 Ein angemessenes Verständnis der Eugenik vor 1945 setzt voraus, dass nicht von einem ausgegangen wird. Vielmehr wird die Eugenik als facettenreiches Projekt der Moderne begriffen, das biopolitischen Bestrebungen entstammt, mithilfe derer die «Volksgesundheit» verbessert und menschliche Fähigkeiten gefördert werden sollten. Demzufolge erhielt es die Unterstützung des gesamten politischen Spektrums. Im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts bildete sich eine internationale Eugenik-Bewegung, die in der transnationalen Öffentlichkeit großen Anklang fand. Nach der Vermischung von Eugenik mit dem Ariermythos, der Rassenreinheit und medizinischen Zwangsmaßnahmen im Nationalsozialismus waren Eugenik-Konzepte nach 1945 diskreditiert. Gleichwohl wurden eugenische Maßnahmen bis in die 1970er Jahre in zahlreichen Ländern praktiziert und oft mit subtilen Zwangsmaßnahmen kombiniert: insbesondere in den USA, den skandinavischen Ländern und der Schweiz. Unterdessen ebneten die Möglichkeiten der Reproduktionsmedizin den Weg für eine «liberale Eugenik», die untrennbar mit den aus dem 19. Jahrhundert stammenden Gesundheits- und Glücksverheißungen verbunden sind. Eugénisme avant 1945 Une bonne compréhension de l’eugénisme avant 1945 exige une interrogation et une mise en perspective de cette non-rupture. L’article conçoit l’eugénisme comme un projet de modernité multiforme provenant d’aspirations biopolitiques visant à améliorer la santé publique et à renforcer les capacités humaines. Par conséquent, il reçut le soutien de l’ensemble de la classe politique. Au cours du XXème siècle apparut un mouvement eugénique international qui fut fort bien accueilli par l’opinion publique transnationale. La confusion entre eugénisme, mythe aryen, pureté raciale et mesures médicales coercitives qu’eut lieu dans l’Allemagne national-socialiste conduisit néanmoins au discrédit du concept de l’eugénisme après 1945. Toutefois, de telles mesures furent appliquées dans de nombreux pays jusqu’aux années 1970 et furent souvent combinées à des dispositifs de coercition subtile: en particulier aux Etats-Unis, dans les pays scandinaves et en Suisse. En attendant, les possibilités de la médecine de la reproduction défrichèrent le terrain pour un «eugénisme libéral» s’inscrivant dans le sillage des promesses de santé et de bonheur héritées du XIXème siècle.

This article analyzes the ruptures from and continuations of eugenicist ideology in the work of Salvador de Toledo Piza Jr., a geneticist and professor at the Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz.” Documentary research involving articles, correspondence, and notes from this former director of the Boletim de Eugenia investigates the reshaping of eugenics in the post-1945 context, a time when Piza Jr. began to publicize evolutionism. While Piza Jr. stopped publicly defending eugenics in latter half of the twentieth century, he maintained his racialized notions into the 1950s, corresponded with eugenicist groups in the 1960s, and supported a hierarchical interpretation of human evolution until the late 1980s.

After decades of efforts to build a more inclusive and democratic world, it appears that the "old ideas" of eugenics have not gone away. Some of these ideas may have been hiding in the archives, but others were not. They continue to provide terminologies and explanations for a number of issues relating to poverty, education, access to health care, and disability. During the recent Covid pandemic, ideas of economic and social productivity flowed readily from a eugenic vocabulary which, although pruned of its openly racist metaphors nevertheless carried echoes of past practices and patterns of discrimination against individuals based on age, race, and gender. Eugenics, it seemed, could be resurrected as easily by politicians as by ordinary people. The main aim of this thematic Dossier, published by Revista Brasileira de História, is to give visibility to an academic debate that is often seen through the prism of its national traditions. Our shared conviction is that it is necessary for scholars of eugenics to go beyond the confines of their own national canons and engage with collaborative work. More importantly, scholarly engagement with anti-eugenic activism must also be constantly and systematically maintained, as current work on the legacies of eugenics continues to generate new ways of responding to ongoing demands for reproductive, social, and racial justice. Legacies of eugenics are pervasive and enduring. Racial prejudice, biologi

Introduction to "Present-days eugenics", monographic issue of "Contemporanea. Rivista dell'800 e del 900"