Public hygiene discourse in Europe during the 19 ^th and 20^th centuries positioned the human body as an object requiring hygienic treatment. In Oaxaca, Mexico the legislation designed to "inject modernity" functioned as a tool to control the lives of the socially and politically "unhygienic". Despite moves towards "modernity" made by elites, vaccine legislation was not effective tool because the agency of the popular classes and peasants of Mexico reshaped the vaccination projects according to their local situation. This thesis discusses the vaccination program as an emblem of elite efforts to "modernize" and "hygienize" the bodies of ordinary Oaxaqueños. I show, through my reading of their communications with the state government, how local jefes politicos, political officials in charge of rural districts, and those enlisted to perform in the vaccination projects, agents or propagators of the vaccine, were able to influence, negotiate, and reject the aims of "modernity".