Historias de las epidemias en América Latina. Reflexiones para pensar el presente

Since the first reported cases of COVID-19 infection in Latin America in March 2020, the consequences of the epidemic have been the focus of journalistic and scientific columns and research, and have also inspired the design of health and social policies to, respectively, contain the pandemic and lessen its devastating effects on the health and economy of the population. When we began thinking about this dossier, one of the discussions that emerged was how COVID-19 has become a reminder that epidemics, despite biomedical advances, remain one of the great challenges to science, politics, and economics and, ultimately, to the preservation of humanity. It became clear to us that we were contemplating a harrowing example, in plain view, of the central message of the field of social studies of health: that health and disease processes are the result of a biological, social and cultural scaffolding that articulates particular meanings, environments, representations, and economic and power structures.