El caso del escritor Pedro Castera: entre la esfera pública, el campo literario y la experiencia manicomial en el México de finales del siglo XIX

Abstract

In the summer of 1883, the writer, miner, scientist and follower of spiritism Pedro Castera (1846-1906) was detained at the Hospital de San Hipolito for demented men in Mexico City. The confinement and isolation of the also poet aroused heated debates and disputes surrounding his mental condition. The reasons for his internment and the conjectures about the psychopathology that afflicted him were crucial within the narrative of a case in which political intrigues, family suspicions, medical controversies and literary conventions converged. The aim of the present work is to analyze the medical valuations around the confinement, permanence and exit of Pedro Castera in and from the hospital, as well as to reflect on the resignification of the figure of the literary-madman from the emergence of the discourse of mental medicine in the context of Porfirian modernity.