The article examines the first socially organized efforts to fight cancer in Mexico. It analyzes how the National Campaign Against Cancer (Campaña Nacional Contra el Cáncer), which ran from 1941 to the early 1990s, played a role in the use of cancer treatment and detection services. It also explores the irrational fear of cancer that some healthy people developed and, at the other extreme, the false hopes the sanitary campaign raised among many of the ill, while looking as well at discrimination of these ill and the popular belief that cancer was contagious. Another focus is on efforts by sanitary authorities to collect epidemiological information and the challenges they ran into. Lastly, it analyzes the scope and limitations of the fight against this disease.
cancer; campaign; fear; hope; discrimination; Mexico