Endemic Goiter and El Salvador's Battle Against Cretinismo.

This article examines over a century of goiter (bocio) research in El Salvador, highlighting how public health efforts linked the condition to cretinism (cretinismo) and framed it as a disability intertwined with social inequality, neocolonialism, and political violence. It argues that goiter research focused disproportionately on poor rural women and girls to improve the nation's reproductive and productive capacities, positioning El Salvador as a site of global health knowledge production while obscuring broader structural causes such as war and poverty. Despite decades of studies and salt iodization legislation beginning in 1961, goiter persisted due to interrupted implementation amid civil war and social marginalization, with public health interventions often neglecting the lived experiences of affected individuals. The article situates goiter within critical disability studies to reveal how medical and state discourses constructed stigmatized populations, underscoring the limitations of biomedical approaches that failed to address underlying social injustices.