Mesoamerican Healers

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Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 029277964X
Total Pages : 421 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Mesoamerican Healers by : Brad R. Huber

Download or read book Mesoamerican Healers written by Brad R. Huber and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing practices in Mesoamerica span a wide range, from traditional folk medicine with roots reaching back into the prehispanic era to westernized biomedicine. These sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing practices have attracted attention from researchers and the public alike, as interest in alternative medicine and holistic healing continues to grow. Responding to this interest, the essays in this book offer a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey of Mesoamerican healers and medical practices in Mexico and Guatemala. The first two essays describe the work of prehispanic and colonial healers and show how their roles changed over time. The remaining essays look at contemporary healers, including bonesetters, curers, midwives, nurses, physicians, social workers, and spiritualists. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, the authors examine such topics as the intersection of gender and curing, the recruitment of healers and their training, healers' compensation and workload, types of illnesses treated and recommended treatments, conceptual models used in diagnosis and treatment, and the relationships among healers and between indigenous healers and medical and political authorities.

Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica

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Author :
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816538506
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica by : Paloma Martinez-Cruz

Download or read book Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica written by Paloma Martinez-Cruz and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paloma Martinez-Cruz argues that the medicine traditions of Mesoamerican women constitute a hemispheric intellectual lineage that continues to thrive despite the legacy of colonization. Martinez-Cruz asserts that indigenous and mestiza women healers are custodians of a knowledge base that remains virtually uncharted. The few works looking at the knowledge of women in Mesoamerica generally examine only the written—even academic—world, accessible only to the most elite segments of (customarily male) society. These works have consistently excluded the essential repertoire and performed knowledge of women who think and work in ways other than the textual. And while two of the book’s chapters critique contemporary novels, Martinez-Cruz also calls for the exploration of non-textual knowledge transmission. In this regard, the book's goals and methods are close to those of performance scholarship and anthropology, and these methods reveal Mesoamerican women to be public intellectuals. In Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica, fieldwork and ethnography combine to reveal women healers as models of agency. Her multidisciplinary approach allows Martinez-Cruz to disrupt Euro-based intellectual hegemony and to make a case for the epistemic authority of Native women. Written from a Chicana perspective, this study is learned, personal, and engaging for anyone who is interested in the wisdom that prevailing analytical cultures have deemed “unintelligible.” As it turns out, those who are unacquainted with the sometimes surprising extent and depth of wisdom of indigenous women healers simply haven’t been looking in the right places—outside the texts from which they have been consistently excluded.

Healing Like Our Ancestors

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Author :
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816550220
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Healing Like Our Ancestors by : Edward Anthony Polanco

Download or read book Healing Like Our Ancestors written by Edward Anthony Polanco and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish settlers attempted to uproot Indigenous Nahua healing practices in the process of creating and protecting the settler colony of New Spain. By using primary sources written in Spanish and Nahuatl this book shows how Nahua people's understood their healers and the ways in which they survived, but were altered by, Spanish attacks"--

Healing by Hand

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Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 9780759103931
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (39 download)

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Book Synopsis Healing by Hand by : Servando Z. Hinojosa

Download or read book Healing by Hand written by Servando Z. Hinojosa and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing by Hand presents the first cross-cultural perspective on manual medicine studies--the practice of body therapists that is routinely overlooked by medical practitioners and social scientists. The authors describe how manual medicine is one of the primary providers of "traditional" medicine. It takes numerous forms across the world's communities, and represents beliefs and practices about healing, physical and psychological states, and the relation between culture and health. This volume is a valuable resource for manual practitioners of western medicine, including massage therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths, as well as those with traditional training. It is especially recommended for courses such as medical anthropology, health and human culture, technology and the developing world, sociology of health, international health, and health care systems.

Sorcery in Mesoamerica

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Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607329549
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Sorcery in Mesoamerica by : Jeremy D. Coltman

Download or read book Sorcery in Mesoamerica written by Jeremy D. Coltman and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approaching sorcery as highly rational and rooted in significant social and cultural values, Sorcery in Mesoamerica examines and reconstructs the original indigenous logic behind it, analyzing manifestations from the Classic Maya to the ethnographic present. While the topic of sorcery and witchcraft in anthropology is well developed in other areas of the world, it has received little academic attention in Mexico and Central America until now. In each chapter, preeminent scholars of ritual and belief ask very different questions about what exactly sorcery is in Mesoamerica. Contributors consider linguistic and visual aspects of sorcery and witchcraft, such as the terminology in Aztec semantics and dictionaries of the Kaqchiquel and K’iche’ Maya. Others explore the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, including the incorporation by indigenous sorcerers in the Mexican highlands of European perspectives and practices into their belief system. Contributors also examine specific deities, entities, and phenomena, such as the pantheistic Nahua spirit entities called forth to assist healers and rain makers, the categorization of Classic Maya Wahy (“co-essence”) beings, the cult of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl, and the recurring relationship between female genitalia and the magical conjuring of a centipede throughout Mesoamerica. Placing the Mesoamerican people in a human context—as engaged in a rational and logical system of behavior—Sorcery inMesoamerica is the first comprehensive study of the subject and an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Mesoamerican culture and religion. Contributors: Lilián González Chévez, John F. Chuchiak IV, Jeremy D. Coltman, Roberto Martínez González, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Cecelia F. Klein, Timothy J. Knab, John Monaghan, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Alan R. Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, David Stuart

The Totally Gross History of Ancient Mesoamerica

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Author :
Publisher : The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN 13 : 1499437625
Total Pages : 50 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (994 download)

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Book Synopsis The Totally Gross History of Ancient Mesoamerica by : Abbie Mercer

Download or read book The Totally Gross History of Ancient Mesoamerica written by Abbie Mercer and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bloody sacrifices, disgusting diets, and shocking religious rituals are some of the gruesome aspects of the totally gross history of Mesoamerica. Concise and entertaining, this text covers some of the more nauseating facts about pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (the region spanning Central America). The gruesome details about the Mesoamerican diet, religion, and medicine will shock readers. But beyond the ickiness, this fascinating title also introduces its audience to the significant contributions of this important culture, as well as the tools that historians and archaeologists use to study ancient life.

The Gray Zones of Medicine

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Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822988437
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gray Zones of Medicine by : Diego Armus

Download or read book The Gray Zones of Medicine written by Diego Armus and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health practitioners working in gray zones, or between official and unofficial medicines, played a fundamental role in shaping Latin America from the colonial period onward. The Gray Zones of Medicine offers a human, relatable, complex examination of the history of health and healing in Latin America across five centuries. Contributors uncover how biographical narratives of individual actors—outside those of hegemonic biomedical knowledge, careers of successful doctors, public health initiatives, and research and medical institutions—can provide a unique window into larger social, cultural, political, and economic historical changes and continuities in the region. They reveal the power of such stories to illuminate intricacies and resilient features of the history of health and disease, and they demonstrate the importance of escaping analytical constraints posed by binary frameworks of legality/illegality, learned/popular, and orthodoxy/heterodoxy when writing about the past. Through an accessible and story-like format, this book unlocks the potential of historical narratives of healings to understand and give nuance to processes too frequently articulated through intellectual medical histories or the lenses of empires, nation-states, and their institutions.

For All of Humanity

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Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816531870
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis For All of Humanity by : Martha Few

Download or read book For All of Humanity written by Martha Few and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and prevent disease. Their efforts included the first inoculations and vaccinations against smallpox, new strategies to protect families and communities from typhus and measles, and medical interventions into pregnancy and childbirth. For All of Humanity examines the first public health campaigns in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Central America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Martha Few pays close attention to Indigenous Mesoamerican medical cultures, which not only influenced the shape and scope of those regional campaigns but also affected the broader New World medical cultures. The author reconstructs a rich and complex picture of the ways colonial doctors, surgeons, Indigenous healers, midwives, priests, government officials, and ordinary people engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease. Few’s analysis weaves medical history and ethnohistory with social, cultural, and intellectual history. She uses prescriptive texts, medical correspondence, and legal documents to provide rich ethnographic descriptions of Mesoamerican medical cultures, their practitioners, and regional pharmacopeia that came into contact with colonial medicine, at times violently, during public health campaigns.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478022930
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Consuelo Jimenez Underwood by : Laura E. Pérez

Download or read book Consuelo Jimenez Underwood written by Laura E. Pérez and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s artwork is marked by her compassionate and urgent engagement with a range of pressing contemporary issues, from immigration and environmental precarity to the resilience of Indigenous ancestral values and the necessity of decolonial aesthetics in art making. Drawing on the fiber arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana feminist art, and Indigenous fiber- and loom-based traditions, Jimenez Underwood’s art encompasses needlework, weaving, painted and silkscreened pieces, installations, sculptures, and performance. This volume’s contributors write about her place in feminist textile art history, situate her work among that of other Indigenous-identified feminist artists, and explore her signature works, series, techniques, images, and materials. Redefining the practice of weaving, Jimenez Underwood works with repurposed barbed wire, yellow caution tape, safety pins, and plastic bags and crosses Indigenous, Chicana, European, and Euro-American art practices, pushing the arts of the Americas beyond Eurocentric aesthetics toward culturally hybrid and Indigenous understandings of art making. Jimenez Underwood’s redefinition of weaving and painting alongside the socially and environmentally engaged dimensions of her work position her as one of the most vital artists of our time. Contributors. Constance Cortez, Karen Mary Davalos, Carmen Febles, M. Esther Fernández, Christine Laffer, Ann Marie Leimer, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Robert Milnes, Jenell Navarro, Laura E. Pérez, Marcos Pizarro, Verónica Reyes, Clara Román-Odio, Carol Sauvion, Cristina Serna, Emily Zaiden

Aztec Philosophy

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Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607322234
Total Pages : 609 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Aztec Philosophy by : James Maffie

Download or read book Aztec Philosophy written by James Maffie and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Curandero Hispanic Ethno-Psychotherapy & Curanderismo

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Author :
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1665503033
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (655 download)

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Book Synopsis Curandero Hispanic Ethno-Psychotherapy & Curanderismo by : Antonio Noé Zavaleta Ph.D

Download or read book Curandero Hispanic Ethno-Psychotherapy & Curanderismo written by Antonio Noé Zavaleta Ph.D and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curandero: Ethno-Psychotherapy & Curanderismo Hispanic Mental Health in the 21st Century, is the product of more than 50 years of the study of curanderismo and Hispanic mental health. In this book, Dr. Zavaleta examines curanderismo and the folk beliefs carried by immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. In the United States, the Hispanic population is notoriously underserved in both physical and mental health care. In Curandero, Dr. Zavaleta reviews the history of curanderismo, beginning with pre-Columbian populations, and traces the development of curanderismo over the past 500 years. He also examines the history and practice of psychiatry and the emergence of ethno-psychotherapy as well as psychiatry’s historic failure to incorporate culture in the treatment of the mental health of Hispanic populations. Dr. Zavaleta seeks to introduce curanderismo to psychiatry with the intention of incorporating its important aspects in the treatment of Hispanic mental health.

Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135894833
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

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Book Synopsis Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968 by : Juanita De Barros

Download or read book Health and Medicine in the circum-Caribbean, 1800-1968 written by Juanita De Barros and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health and medicine in colonial environments is one of the newest areas in the history of medicine, but one in which the Caribbean is conspicuously absent. Yet the complex and fascinating history of the Caribbean, borne of the ways European colonialism combined with slavery, indentureship, migrant labour and plantation agriculture, led to the emergence of new social and cultural forms which are especially evident the area of health and medicine. The history of medical care in the Caribbean is also a history of the transfer of cultural practices from Africa and Asia, the process of creolization in the African and Asian diasporas, the perseverance of indigenous and popular medicine, and the emergence of distinct forms of western medical professionalism, science, and practice. This collection, which covers the French, Hispanic, Dutch, and British Caribbean, explores the cultural and social domains of medical experience and considers the dynamics and tensions of power. The chapters emphasize contestations over forms of medicalization and the controls of public health and address the politics of professionalization, not simply as an expression of colonial power but also of the power of a local elite against colonial or neo-colonial control. They pay particular attention to the significance of race and gender, focusing on such topics as conflicts over medical professionalization, control of women’s bodies and childbirth, and competition between ‘European’ and ‘Indigenous’ healers and healing practices. Employing a broad range of subjects and methodological approaches, this collection constitutes the first edited volume on the history of health and medicine in the circum-Caribbean region and is therefore required reading for anyone interested in the history of colonial and post-colonial medicine.

Medicine Across Cultures

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Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 0306480948
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (64 download)

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Book Synopsis Medicine Across Cultures by : Helaine Selin

Download or read book Medicine Across Cultures written by Helaine Selin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work deals with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine, the book includes essays on comparing Chinese and western medicine and religion and medicine. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography.

Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 019996775X
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica by : John E. Staller

Download or read book Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica written by John E. Staller and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica is the first ever study to explore the symbolic elements surrounding lightning in Pre-Columbian religious ideologies.

Engendering Mayan History

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135394431
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (353 download)

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Book Synopsis Engendering Mayan History by : David Carey Jr.

Download or read book Engendering Mayan History written by David Carey Jr. and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting Mayan history from the perspective of Mayan women--whose voices until now have not been documented--David Carey allows these women to present their worldviews in their native language, adding a rich layer to recent Latin American historiography, and increasing our comprehension of indigenous perspectives of the past. Drawing on years of research among the Maya that specifically documents women's oral histories, Carey gives Mayan women a platform to discuss their views on education, migrant labor, work in the home, female leadership, and globalization. These oral histories present an ideal opportunity to understand indigenous women's approach to history, the apparent contradictions in gender roles in Mayan communities, and provide a distinct conceptual framework for analyzing Guatamalan, Mayan, and Latin American history.

Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain

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Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1646423305
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (464 download)

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Book Synopsis Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain by : Alan R. Sandstrom

Download or read book Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain written by Alan R. Sandstrom and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2023-01-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic study based on decades of field research, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain explores five sacred journeys to the peaks of venerated mountains undertaken by Nahua people living in northern Veracruz, Mexico. Punctuated with elaborate ritual offerings dedicated to the forces responsible for rain, seeds, crop fertility, and the well-being of all people, these pilgrimages are the highest and most elaborate form of Nahua devotion and reveal a sophisticated religious philosophy that places human beings in intimate contact with what Westerners call the forces of nature. Alan and Pamela Sandstrom document them for the younger Nahua generation, who live in a world where many are lured away from their communities by wage labor in urban Mexico and the United States. Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain contains richly detailed descriptions and analyses of ritual procedures as well as translations from the Nahuatl of core myths, chants performed before decorated altars, and statements from participants. Particular emphasis is placed on analyzing the role of sacred paper figures that are produced by the thousands for each pilgrimage. The work contains drawings of these cuttings of spirit entities along with hundreds of color photographs illustrating how they are used throughout the pilgrimages. The analysis reveals the monist philosophy that underlies Nahua religious practice in which altars, dancing, chanting, and the paper figures themselves provide direct access to the sacred. In the context of their pilgrimage traditions, the ritual practices of Nahua religion show one way that people interact effectively with the forces responsible for not only their own prosperity but also the very survival of humanity. A magnum opus with respect to Nahua religion and religious practice, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain is a significant contribution to several fields, including but not limited to Indigenous literatures of Mesoamerica, Nahuatl studies, Latinx and Chicanx studies, and religious studies.

Health in the Highlands

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520975685
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Health in the Highlands by : David Carey Jr.

Download or read book Health in the Highlands written by David Carey Jr. and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 encouraged—or at least allowed—such a synthesis: even what they saw as "nonscientific" care was better than none. Yet both, especially Guatemala's, 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 Guatemala's 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.