The Modernization of Medical Education in Brazil: Rockefeller Foundation Funding and the Ribeirão Preto Medical School in a Development Context (1951-1964)

Abstract

Objective/Context: This article discusses the modernization of medical education in Brazil between 1951 and 1964, following the creation of the Ribeirão Preto Medical School (fmrp, for its initials in Portuguese) at the University of São Paulo (usp). The analysis emphasizes the tensions in the rapprochement between Zeferino Faz, the founding director of fmrp, considered a communist, and the Rockefeller Foundation (rf), an international philanthropic agency, for the development of basic sciences such as biochemistry, physiology, and pharmacology. Methodology: The documents used in the study were collected at the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York and the Historical Museum at the Ribeirão Preto Medical School and analyzed using the evidential paradigm proposed by Carlo Ginzburg. The evidential paradigm pays close attention to small details in the document, considered “signs” of processes that are not very explicit. Originality: The original contribution of this text consists of a better understanding of the strategies used by the rf to finance the fmrp, which differed in many moments from its institutional norms and the anti-communist orientation of the North American government. This finding contrasts with an entire contemporary bibliography that reiterates the persecution of these individuals. Conclusions: The study reveals the contradictions in the trajectory of Zeferino Vaz and the actions of the rf in search of the desired modernization of medical education in Latin America

Keywords

• anticommunism
• basic sciences
• brazil
• international agencies
• medical education
• modernization