[A state without memory. The ideological abolition of the insane asylum in Mexico (1945-1968)]

The present article analyzes a campaign by the Mexican government, among the public and the medical profession, to disseminate a health care reform that culminated with the opening of thirteen Farms for the mentally ill and the ideological abolition of the insane asylum in the sixties of the twentieth century. To do this, renowned psychiatrists who held public positions built a black legend over the most emblematic insane asylum of the country, pointing out as the main cause of failure the constraint to which patients were subjected. In doing so, they resembled the mental hospital to a prison and the insane to a social threat, because they reduced that institution's function and denied the many experiences that would ?t in it: a place of confinement and refuge, a therapeutic and knowledge production space. Even though Mexican psychiatry was professionalized in the space of the asylum, the State wanted to erase the memory of that past to suggest the establishment of a new era in mental health, where the patients would no longer be subject to any restrictions which could curtail their freedom. Overcoming the asylum model meant creating "open door" therapeutic alternatives, but the decision was to distort the past to exalt the future.