DOCTORS AND CORPORATIST POLITICS - THE CASE OF THE MEXICAN MEDICAL-PROFESSION

This study advances our understanding of the relationship between the state and the medical profession in countries where health care servic es are used as instruments of economic and political control. As a gen eral argument, we maintain that the corporatist nature of the Mexican state impedes the medical profession from achieving autonomy and contr ol over its professional activities. In contraposition to medical prof essions in developed societies, the nature of the Mexican profession i s shaped by state policies and by its reiterated efforts to act indepe ndently of the state's tutelage. We analyze this dynamic interaction t hrough three different historical epochs that reflect the complexity a nd uniqueness of the Mexican medical profession. Whatever attempts the profession has made to control the medical curriculum, the licensing process, the market, or the specific laws that affect its own field, t he Mexican state has responded with measures that systematically divid e and antagonize the different factions of medical associations. The r esult is a highly fragmented and disenfranchised medical profession wi th dissimilar political, professional, personal, and academic aims. In the final analysis, the interests of the corporatist Mexican state pr evail over the interests of other groups, including doctors. The evisc eration of the medical corps by the Mexican state results in a profess ion with low salaries, higher rates of unemployment, atomization in te rms of political representation, and heavily co-opted medical organiza tions that seem to neglect the overwhelming health care needs of the M exican people.