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This article situates the novel Eugenia (1919) by the Cuban-Mexican doctor Eduardo Urzaiz within the post-revolutionary Mexican discourses on eugenics. Set in the distant future, the novel imagines the culmination of a successful statist attempt to perfect the national body. In fact, the state's tight control of physical reproduction helps overcome the traditional family unit, a fact that has led many critics to highlight the liberating potential of this fictional society, particularly for women. That said, the novel shows how these social changes have had traumatic results in the lives of the various characters. This article seeks to reconcile the utopian discourse with the trauma of so many of its characters, identifying an ethics of aesthetics that justifies authoritarian actions and the sacrifice of individual freedoms in the name of the aesthetic perfection of society and the reproduction of a socialist and Utopian order.
