I have been invited and accepted to write not exactly the history but my recollections about what may be called the starting of Mexican Biochemistry, which was formally initiated in the late 1950s of last Century. In any case, history is written not always from established and clear facts, but from the memories of some of the participating actors. Perhaps, someone more professional should take the task of writing on more solid grounds, not only about Biochemistry but also about Mexican Science in general during the last 50 years.
I was lucky enough to be part and witness of the starting, as student of Dr. Jose ´Laguna, one of the main protagonists of that quest, with whom one day I decided to explore the possibility of working on my thesis to get my M.D. degree. Back in 1958, one of my colleagues and dearest friend in the Medical School, Armando Go ´mez-Puyou, recommended me to his professor, who after a short but impressive interview decided to accept me under some kind of strict probation, previously warning me that the most important fact to be considered was the intensity and enthusiasm of each and every one of the young students. It was a rule that besides some acceptable capacity, those failing to show these characteristics were asked to abandon the Department. This was the Department of Biochemistry of the Medical School at the National University of Mexico (UNAM).
If we want to believe in the Genesis, when God created our World, it was all chaos, but his work implied organizing existing materials. He was omnipotent and omniscient, but above all, in a more realistic vision, all happened, not in days but in billions of years. The pioneers of Biochemistry in Mexico started from what was not even chaos; there may not be chaos where there is only the absence of everything.
Although not yet enough, it is amazing for our Country what came after that.
There were two main components of those beginnings, an illusion, but accompanied by a great decision to make it real. Illusion was that plans were based on nothing but almost empty places, with practically no equipment, only may be colorimeters, rudimentary water baths, glassware, and, in general, the most indispensable materials and reagents to run simple experiments. The first biochemists were just a few, mostly scattered in different places of Mexico City, mainly in the Polytechnic Institute, the National Institutes of Nutrition and Cardiology, the Medical School, the Institutes of Chemistry and Biology at the University, and the Children's Hospital. Most of those initial researchers had either obtained their Ph.D. in Biochemistry or were M.D.s who had spent some time abroad. One group in particular had been attracted by Dr. Phillip Cohen at the Biochemistry Department in the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in the United States; these were: Guillermo Sobero ´n, Edmundo Calva, Jesu ´s Kumate, Graciela Delhumeau, Carlos Gitler, and Mario Garcı ´a. While in there, they made plans for their return to Mexico, but nothing really concrete. They came back and incorporated to the mentioned institutions, but most of them scattered and rather isolated in the very few places where, with great limitations, they could carry out their work.
There were, of course, antecessors who, without a defined direction, opened the way to form those biochemists.