Jungle laboratories : Mexican peasants, national projects, and the making of the Pill / Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Includes bibliographical references (p. [287]-317) and index.

The Papaloapan, poverty, and a wild yam -- Mexican peasants, a foreign chemist, and the Mexican father of the Pill -- Discovering and gathering the new "green gold" -- Patents, compounds, and steroid-making peasants -- A yam, students, and a populist project -- The state takes control of barbasco : the emergence of Proquivemex (1974/1976) -- Proquivemex and transnational steroid laboratories -- Barbasqueros into Mexicans -- Root of discord.

In the 1940s chemists discovered that barbasco, a wild yam indigenous to Mexico, could be used to mass-produce synthetic steroid hormones. Barbasco spurred the development of new drugs, including cortisone and the first viable oral contraceptives, and positioned Mexico as a major player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Yet few people today are aware of Mexico#x19;s role in achieving these advances in modern medicine. InJungle Laboratories, Gabriela Soto Laveaga reconstructs the story of how rural yam pickers, international pharmaceutical companies, and the Mexican state collaborated and collided over the barbasco. By so doing, she sheds important light on a crucial period in Mexican history and challenges us to reconsider who can produce science.