The Nature of Colonial Bodies: Public Health in Lima, Peru, 1535-1635

In 1535, Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, Peru in the middle of a coastal dessert. Its residents transformed the landscape to build a colonial capital and in the process, the landscape shaped local understandings of race, gender, social status and power. Lima’s urban environment created a public health discourse that focused on the relationship between the natural world and human welfare. These discussions emerged in response to the rapid rate of Lima’s growth and the challenges it faced, including deforestation, food supply challenges, and the concentration of waste, disease, and illness. I argue that Lima’s cabildo [municipal government], comprised of just a fraction of the population, seized on these adversities to empower themselves over the majority of the population, promote their interests, and negotiate interactions between humans and their environs. Using the discourse of colonial bodies, health, and the natural world, town councilmen endeavored to control a racially and socially diverse population that surpassed 25,000 people by 1614.