Epigraph: Quoted in Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (New York, 1996), 68.

1. Connelly, Matthew James, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, Mass., 2008).Google Scholar

2. In 1995, Richard Soloway already called the study of birth control and eugenics “something of a scholarly industry.” See Soloway, Richard A.“The ‘Perfect Contraceptive’: Eugenics and Birth Control Research in Britain and America in the Interwar Years,” Journal of Contemporary History 30 (1995).Google Scholar

3. Reggiani argues that most of the time French eugenecists would disregard pronatalism as an unscientific position, but they would accept that a pronatalist policy was required after World War I. Reggiani, Andrés H., “Procreating France: The Politics of Demography, 1919–1945,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 731.Google Scholar

4. Although the topic is different, Finchelstein has shown other aspects of the same trend: Finchelstein, Federico, Fascismo Trasatlántico: Ideología, violencia y sacralidad en Argentina y en Italia, 1919–1945 (Mexico, 2010)Google Scholar.

5. For example, see Frigugglietti, J., “A Transatlantic Friendship: The Close Relationship Between the Historians Georges Lefebvre and Robert R. Palmer,” Historical Reflections 37, no. 3 (April 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holton, Sandra S., “To Educate Women into Rebellion”: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Creation of a Transatlantic Network of Radical Suffragists,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (October 1994).Google Scholar

6. In Spain, this tendency was consolidated with Franco’s victory in the Civil War.

7. The historiographies of Mexico postrevolutionary regime and of Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain are vast. For general but accurate descriptions on how those regimes worked, see Grugel, Jean and Rees, Tim, Franco’s Spain (Oxford, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hamilton, Nora, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton, 1982).Google Scholar

8. On 1 February 1978, the sale and promotion of contraceptives was legalized in Spain. The discussion around this was more focused on the rights of citizens and women than over which would be an adequate population policy for the nascent Spanish democracy. See, for example, Nicolas, Juan Diez, “Los partidos políticos, la información y la planificación familiar,” El País, 5 May 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Schneider, Michael, “Measuring Inequality: The Origins of the Lorenz Curve and the Gini Coefficient,” History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (Sydney, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Available at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/business/assets/downloads/disc_papers/A04-01.pdf (accessed 25 September 2013).

10. Gini’s 1920s defense of fascism can be found in Gini, C., “The Scientific Basis of Fascism,” Political Science Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1927): 99–115.Google Scholar In 1930, he published another defense of Mussolini’s demographic project: Gini, C., “The Italian Demographic Problem and the Fascist Policy on Population,” Journal of Political Economy 38, no. 6 (1930): 682–97.Google ScholarEven as late as 1943, Gini defended what he saw as the virtues of totalitarianism in terms of labor culture; see Gini, C., “Hacia una economía laborista,” Revista Internacional de Sociología 1, no. 1 (1943).Google Scholar

11. For a long history about the origins and the evolution of each of this sets of ideas, see Connelly, , Fatal MisconceptionCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12. For a detailed history of the origins of what was eventually called neo-Malthusianism, see chaps. 4 and 5. See also Ledbetter, Rosanna, A History of the Malthusian League, 1877–1927 (Columbus, 1976).Google Scholar

13. For a detailed history of the evolution of the pronatalist movement, see Teitelbaum, Michael S. and Winter, J. M., The Fear of Population Decline (Orlando, 1985).Google Scholar See also Reggiani, “Procreating France.”

14. Of course, the definitions of “fit” and “unfit” were fluid and arbitrary. For the relationship between birth control and eugenics, see Soloway, “The ‘Perfect Contraceptive.’”

15. William Schneider gives a good explanation about how eugenics could ally either with pronatalism or with neo-Malthusians according to context. It is particularly useful to read his explanation about eugenicists being closer to pronatalism in France and closer to birth-control promoters in the United States and in England. See Schneider, William, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race: The History of Eugenics in France,” Journal of Modern History 54, no. 2 (June 1982): 271–75.Google Scholar

16. For a detailed history of eugenics, see Paul, Diane B., Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present, The Control of Nature (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995)Google Scholar, chap. 1. For an account of the policies promoted by eugenicists, see Carlson, Elof Axel, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., 2001).Google Scholar For an old history of eugenics in the United States, see Haller, Mark, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, 1963).Google Scholar For France, see Schneider, “Toward the Improvement of the Human Race.” For the history of eugenics in Italy, see Cassata, F., Building the New Man: Eugenics, Racial Science and Genetics in Twentieth-Century Italy (New York, 2010).Google Scholar For Spain, see Peláez, Raquel Alvarez, “Introducción al Estudio de la Eugenesia Española (1900–1936),” Quipu: Revista Latinoamericana de las Ciencias y la Tecnología 2 (1985): 95–122.Google Scholar For Latin America, see Stepan, Nancy, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991).Google Scholar For Argentina, see Reggiani, Andrés H., “Depopulation, Fascism, and Eugenics in 1930s Argentina,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 90, no. 2 (2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Mexico, see Stern, Alexandra Minna, who has worked on the evolution of race and science in Mexico, “From Mestizophilia to Biotipology: Racialization and Science in Mexico, 1920–1960,” in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Macpherson, Anne M. and Rosemblatt, Karin Alejandra (Chapell Hill, 2003).Google Scholar

17. A good description of these impossible alliances and unexpected fights can be found in Chesler, Ellen, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York, 2007Google Scholar). The confusion of the debate before World War II is also well depicted in Connelly, Fatal Misconception.

18. Reggiani, “Depopulation, Fascism, and Eugenics in 1930s Argentina,” 302.

19. Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 221.

20. Gini, C., Nasu, S., Baker, O. E., Kuczynski, R. R., and Wait, Norman Harris Memorial Foundation, Population: Lectures on the Harris Foundation 1929 (Chicago, 1930).Google Scholar

21. It is worth mentioning that Gini used these three terms synonymously. This was common practice in the demographic literature of the period.

22. The original, more complete version of this theory can be found in Gini, Nascita, Evoluzione e Morte delle Nazioni: La Teora Ciclica della Popolazione e i Vari Sistemi di Politica Demografica (Rome, 1930). For an English version, see Gini, Nasu, Baker, Kuczynski, and Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation, Population: Lectures on the Harris Foundation 1929. Finally, for the most complete description and a summary of the most important criticisms Gini received from his contemporaries see Ipsen, Dictating Demography.

23. Some personal notes show that as well as being his student, Gini maintained a close, personal relationship with Pareto. See Vilfredo Pareto to Corrado Gini, 4 March 1914, 30 June 1914, 26 June 1916, 8 January 1923, 8 March 1923, Container B6, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

24. Gini, Nasu, Baker, Kuczynski, and Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation, Population: Lectures on the Harris foundation 1929, 54.

25. Ibid., 114.

26. Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 227.

27. Gini contradicts at least the first version of his “cyclical theory” because that version of the theory stated that the determinants of fertility were biological, and now he was arguing that fertility could be manipulated through social policy. Accepting the biological determinant of fertility would necessarily imply the ineffectiveness of social policies to manipulate them.

28. C. Gini, “The Italian Demographic Problem and the Fascist Policy on Population.”

29. Ibid., 697.

30. About pronatalism and the Church in France, see Reggiani, A. H., “Procreating France: The Politics of Demography: 1919–1945,” 745Google Scholar. Reggiani explains too how Gini’s opposition to any kind of sterilization made him very close to the Church. See also Reggiani, “Depopulation, Fascism, and Eugenics in 1930s Argentina.”

31. About the state–church conflict in Mexico, see Jean Meyer’s classical work, La Cristiada (Mexico, 1974). More recently, see Butler, Matthew, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927–29 (London, 2004).Google Scholar About the relationship between Franco’s regime and the Catholic Church, see Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain.

32. Gini was not the only Italian influencing population policy in Latin America. Nicola Pende was also very influential among eugenicists in many Latin American countries. However, Gini’s moderated approach was more influential in Mexico, while Pende was particularly influential in Argentina. See Reggiani, “Depopulation, Fascism, and Eugenics in 1930s Argentina,” 297–302.

33. Spedizione in Mexico 1933, Container D8 and D9, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

34. Gini, Nasu, Baker, Kuczynski, and Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation, Population: Lectures on the Harris foundation 1929, 91.

35. Gini, C. and Federici, N., Appunti sulle spedizioni scientifiche del Comitato italiano per lo studio dei problemi della popolazione, febbraio 1933–aprile 1940 (Rome, 1943).Google Scholar

36. Sills, David L. and Merton, Robert King, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences ([New York], 1968), 6:187.Google Scholar

37. Vasconcelos, José, La raza cosmica; misión de la raza iberoamericana, Argentina y Brasil (Mexico, 1948).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. See Gini’s summary of his trip to Mexico in Spedizione in Mexico 1933, Container D8 and D9, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

39. Two of Gini’s complaints are particularly interesting. The first was about a Mr. Mendizabal, who had been chosen by Gamio to collaborate with Gini. The complaint was simple: he always came drunk. The other complaint worth noting was about Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, at that time chief of the Department of Economic Studies of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and probably one of the most influential economists in postrevolutionary Mexico. According to Gini, Espinosa de los Monteros was to prepare the economic questionnaire that would be used on the expedition. However, Espinosa de los Monteros left the work to two of his subordinates, who did it “first badly and then worse.” Gini concluded this note saying that he had felt obligated “to dictate the questionnaire to Espinosa de los Monteros.”

40. Eduardo Vasconcelos was also the nephew of the author of The Cosmic Race and a few years later he would be appointed ambassador to Italy.

41. A few years after Gini’s expedition, some other Mexican scholars did the same kind of systematic collection of data trying to disprove those racist explanations. Although they substituted race with “biotype,” in the end they could not overcome this brand of racism that pretended to be scientific. This history is well explained in Stern, “From Mestizophilia to Biotipology,” 187–88.

42. Loyo, Gilberto, La política demográfica de México (Mexico, 1935)Google Scholar. All translations are my own.

43. Ibid., xiv.

44. Ibid., xv.

45. Ibid., 117.

46. Spengler, Oswald and Atkinson, Charles Francis, The Decline of the West (New York, 1926).Google Scholar

47. Loyo, , La política demográfica de México, 410Google Scholar.

48. Weber, Adolf, La economía mundial: Al alcance de todos (Barcelona, 1933)Google Scholar.

49. Loyo, , La política demográfica de México, 433Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., 71.

51. Mother’s Day did not become a civic holiday, even though it was proposed in the Mexican Congress on December 6, 1939. The opposition of labor leader and congressman Fernando Amilpa in the meeting was enough to reject it. Amilpa’s argument was simple: “It seems to me that it would give occasion to very funny criticisms for us to adopt a resolution of this nature.” See Diario de los Debates de la H. Cámara de Diputados, 6 Diciembre 1939, consultado en S. d. Gobernación and C. de Diputados, “Diario de Debates de la H. Cámara de Diputados 1916–1994. Disco 1” (Mexico, 1994).

52. A, Luis. A., Astorga, “La Razón Demográfica de Estado,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología, vol. 51, no. 1 (1989).Google Scholar

53. Ma. Eugenia Zavala de Cosío, “Políticas de Población en México,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 52 (1990): 18–19.

54. Beltran, Gonzalo Aguirre, “Política de Población,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 7, no. 3 (1945)Google Scholar.

55. For Loyo arguing that the fall in mortality was a triumph of the Revolution, see Loyo, G., “La Mortalidad en México,” El Nacional, 8 November 1946.Google Scholar

56. Astorga A., “La Razón Demográfica de Estado.”

57. Loyo, , La política demográfica de México, 14Google Scholar.

58. Loyo, , “La Población de México, Estado Actual y Tendencias 1950–1980,” Investigación Económica (1960Google Scholar).

59. Astorga A., “La Razón Demográfica de Estado,” 201–5.

60. Agencias, “Sugiere Loyo la Planeación para Reducir el Incremento Demográfico,” Novedades, 10 August 1966Google Scholar.

61. Loyo, , Demasiados Hombres, Valores Humanos y Explosión Demográfica (Mexico, 1969), 194–96Google Scholar.

62. Ibid., 214–15.

63. It is not surprising that the aged Loyo saw population issues at the root of some of Mexico’s social conflicts in the 1960s. In some ways, demography had always been an important explanatory variable for him. In fact, in the 1969 article, Loyo mentions the contradiction between the masses of young people and adolescents who have expectations of consumption and growth and the economy’s incapacity to offer it to them equally.

64. Astorga, A., “La Razón Demográfica de Estado,” 205Google Scholar.

65. Raymond Vernon, The Dilemma of Mexico’s Development: The Roles of the Private and Public Sectors (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).

66. Zavala de Cosío, “Políticas de Población en México,” 19.

67. Interview with Gilberto Loyo’s daughter, Aurora Loyo, August 2008.

68. Intervention of Lic. Mario Moya Palencia, Minister of the Interior, in the installation of the National Population Council, 27 March 1974, Information Center, CONAPO.

69. Instituto Nacional de Previsión, Acta Num. 223, Caja 9, Legajo 19085, Sección Presidencia, Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid.

70. Aznar, Severino, Impresiones de un democrata cristiano (Madrid, 1950), 225.Google Scholar

71. Ibid., 303–5.

72. Pearl, Raymond, “International Population Union,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 23, no. 162 (1928).Google Scholar

73. Gini, “The Scientific Basis of Fascism,” 99–115.

74. Instituto Nacional de Previsión, “Enjuiciamiento Histórico, Teórico y Práctico del Plus Familiar,” Caja 74, Legajo 18801, Sección Ministerio de Trabajo, Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid. It is suggested, in the actual document, that Antonio Perpiña, Aznar’s disciple, wrote it.

75. At first, this institute was the sociology section of the “Sancho de Moncada” Institute, always connected to the Higher Committee of Scientific Investigations (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas).

76. Here referring to the authority of the publication.

77. Aznar, Severino, “Lo que quisieramos que fuera esta revista,”Revista Internacional de Sociología 1, no. 1 (1943): 3–7.Google Scholar

78. Ros Gimeno, José, “El Decrecimiento de la Natalidad y sus Causas,” in Estudios Demográficos, vol. 1, ed. I. B. d. Sociología (Madrid, 1945)Google Scholar.

79. Ibid., 30.

80. Ibid., 39.

81. Ipsen, Dictating Demography, 221.

82. Corrado Gini to Severino Aznar, 25 February 1948, Container B5, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

83. José Ros Gimeno to Corrado Gini, 12 December 1947, 5 January 1948, Container B5, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

84. José Ma. Albareda to Corrado Gini, 13 December 1947, Container B5, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

85. Gini, Corrado, “Promemoria sopra un progetto di clearing culturale fra Italia e Spagna,” 14 July 1949Google Scholar, Università degli Studi di Roma, Container D2, Viaggio in Spagna, Corrado Gini Papers, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome.

86. Grugel and Rees, Franco’s Spain, 150.

87. de Ussel, Julio Iglesias and Landwerlin, Gerardo Meil, La política familiar en España (Barcelona, 2001), 44.Google Scholar

88. Ibid., 44.

89. Reggiani, “Procreating France,” 754.

90. Cue, C. E. and A. Diez, “Ayudas de 2.500 euros por cada nuevo hijo,” El País, 4 July 2007Google Scholar, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Ayudas/2500/euros/nuevo/hijo/elpepiesp/20070704elpepinac_1/Tes (accessed 29 August 2013).

91. Agencias, “El PP califica de “cheque voto” la ayuda del Gobierno,” El País, 14 July 2007Google Scholar, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/PP/califica/cheque/voto/ayuda/Gobierno/elpepiesp/20070714elpepinac_14/Tes (accessed 29 August 2013).