Transnational History, Cultural Collisions, and Agency: Rockefeller Public Health Fellowships in Latin America, 1917-1940

The Rockefeller Foundation and its subsidiary, the International Health Board, created a fellowship program that intended to provide education and training for public health students and officials across the world. This essay focuses on Latin American fellowships in the early twentieth century, considering the goals of the Foundation’s program, the agency of the fellows, and the program’s global impact. It draws on fellowship cards and annual reports from the Rockefeller Foundation, and analyzes them through transnational studies, which prioritizes relationships established between agents from different countries. The text concludes that the relationship between Rockefeller agents and local men was not without tension and that the international agency contributed significantly to the training of technical staff.