HIV/AIDS in Buenos Aires Province during the 1990’s: Discourses, Policies, and Public Health

Abstract

During the 1990s, the province of Buenos Aires navigated the tension between the rigidity of public policies and the urgency of social problems requiring immediate responses. Under the governorship of Eduardo Duhalde (1991–1999), provincial authorities faced challenges that went beyond routine administration, within a national context shaped by the structural reforms and fiscal adjustment promoted by President Carlos Menem. In this setting, public health—and HIV/AIDS in particular—emerged as a contested arena marked by tensions between prevention, stigma, and state legitimacy. From 1995 onward, under the leadership of Health Minister Juan José Mussi, the provincial Ministry of Health developed a specific approach to the epidemic.
This article, derived from the doctoral research Reform and Public Health in Dispute: The Case of the Province of Buenos Aires (1991–1999), examines these responses through the analysis of legislative sources, official discourses, and press materials. Adopting a historical-interpretative perspective that combines the cultural and political history of health with approaches that understand HIV/AIDS as a moral, political, and biopolitical phenomenon, the study seeks to interpret the epidemic not merely as a biomedical issue, but as an event that challenged forms of state legitimacy and the boundaries of public discourse on health and citizenship.
The findings indicate that, despite institutional fragmentation and budgetary constraints, the province sought to construct a narrative of a pedagogical and socially responsible state through media visibility, health education initiatives, and international cooperation. This experience reveals spaces of political agency and institutional innovation that complicate the view of Buenos Aires as a passive replicator of national policies, positioning HIV/AIDS as a laboratory of governance where the relationship between technical expertise, politics, and public health was redefined.