Health in the Highlands (eBook)

Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador

David Carey Jr. (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023
384 Seiten
University of California Press (Verlag)
9780520975682 (ISBN)

Infos

Populated by curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, witches, doctors, nurses, and the indigenous people they served, this nuanced history demonstrates how cultural and political history, misogyny, racism, and racialization influence public health. In the first half of the twentieth century, the governments of Ecuador and Guatemala sought to spread scientific medicine to their populaces, working to prevent and treat malaria, typhus, and typhoid; to boost infant and maternal well-being; and to improve overall health. Drawing on extensive, original archival research, David Carey Jr. shows that highland indigenous populations in the two countries tended to embrace a syncretic approach to health, combining traditional and new practices. At times, both governments encouragedor at least allowedsuch a synthesis: even what they saw as nonscientific care was better than none. Yet both, especially Guatemalas, also wrote off indigenous lifeways and practices with both explicit and implicit racism, going so far as to criminalize native medical providers and to experiment on indigenous people without their consent. Both nations had authoritarian rule, but Guatemalas was outright dictatorial, tending to treat both women and indigenous people as subjects to be controlled and policed. Ecuador, on the other hand, advanced a more pluralistic vision of national unity, and had somewhat better outcomes as a result.

Inhalt

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations 
Foreword 
Jeremy A. Greene

Acknowledgments 
A Note on Sources, Methodology, and Evidence 
Abbreviations 

Introduction: Disease, Healing, and Medicine in Indigenous Highlands 

1 • Hookworm, Histories, and Health: Indigenous Healing, State Building, and Rockefeller Representatives 
2 • Curses and Cures: Empíricos, Indigeneity, and Scientific Medicine 
3 • Engendering Infant Mortality and Public Health: Midwifery, Obstetrics, and Ethnicity 
4 • “Malnourished, Scrawny, Emaciated Indios”: Perceptions of Indigeneity, Illness, and Healing 
5 • Infectious Indígenas: The Ethnicity of Highland Diseases 
6 • “Prisoners of Malaria”: A Lowland Disease in the Mountains 
Conclusion: Indigeneity, Racist Thought, and Modern Medicine 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
 

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.7.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Alternative • Bruja • Curandero • Early 20th Century • Eugenics • Funerary • Gender • healers • Healing traditions • Health disparities • history of medicine • Indigenas • indigenous medical practices • Race • racial medicalization • Reproductive Health • Rockefeller Foundation • Smallpox
• ISBN-13: 9780520975682 / 9780520975682