Políticas de salud y vida saludable en México –Tenochtitlán

Abstract

This essay compiles outstanding facts on the Aztecs’ life from the perspective of its meaning and contribution to health promotion and to the modern concept of healthy cities. Mexico-Tenochtitlán, at the arrival of Spaniards, in 1519, was the capital of an empire that without having arrived to the summit of its development had many of the attributes of a healthy city. Tenochtitlán promoted health and fostered its necessary requirements, with the universal access to education, food, income and solidarity. The city is deserves the title of healthy, thanks to its policies, norms and regulations, to the abundance of water, to the respect for the environment, to its healthy places like its markets and gardens, to the personal hygiene of its inhabitants and to its social cohesion. Health promotion, as a political, social and educational response for increasing well-being and human development, might be considered a cultural legacy of the old Mexico that has enriched the western culture, in spite of several existing contradictions like the florid wars, human sacrifices and emerging inequalities. Tenochtitlán is a historical example of the application of many of the basic concepts of health promotion which have been disseminated since the Conference of Ottawa and ratified by the different global conferences, the last one being carried out in 2000 in Mexico City.