Migration and Healing in a Latino/a Context

Abstract

In this article curandcrismo, Mexican-American folk medicine, is treated as a systematic body of healing theories rather than a mass cultural phenomenon. Using professional healers as informants for a period of over four years, the authors define and describe curanderismo from the emic theoretical perspective, not only providing explanations for the ties between the "Mexican Folk Illnesses" previously reported in the literature, but also showing the evolution and future of curanderismo as a holistic health care system. The classical anthropological works on Mexican-American folk medicine, published primarily in the 1960s, have several common features. Clark (1959a), Currier (1966), Kiev (1968), Madsen (1961Madsen ( , 1964, Rubel (1960Rubel ( , 1964Rubel ( , 1966, and Romano (1965) each produced descriptive documents on prominent folk medical practices existing in Hispanic communities in the southwestern United States. 2 They, and the vast majority of the authors in the appended list of references, provide a highly repetitious perspective of curanderismo, especially of descriptions of the (by now) well-known Mexican-American "cultural illnesses": susto, empacho, mal de ojo, caida de mo//era, bills, and espanto (see Nail 1967:302 for definitions). This repetition is caused, at least in part, by the orientation taken by these researchers towards curandersmo. MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY / Fall 1980It is clear from reading the available texts that curanderismo has been viewed and analyzed primarily as a mass cultural phenomenon, not as a coherent theoretical system. That is, it has been treated as a body of knowledge that is widely distributed throughout the culture and is available to and utilized by a significant segment of the existing MexicanAmerican population. This view of curanderismo tends to make any discussion of the phenomenon atheoretical, in whole or in part, at least in terms of an emic theory of curanderismo. This condition exists because very few mass cultural phenomena are thought of as having a theoretical orientation. Systems (e.g., medical, educational, scientific systems) are easily recognized as having theoretical components. But mass cultural phenomena are generally thought of as having themes or unifying elements on a higher but nontheoretical level of organization. In fact, mass cultural phenomena are something one has theories about rather than being theoretical systems themselves. This viewpoint is well represented in the articles about curanderismo that reflect its form and function within Mexican-American communities (e.g., Clark 1959b; Edgerton et al. 1970;Foster 1953;Martinez and Martin 1966; Torrey 1969; etc.). No effort seems to have been made by previous authors to demonstrate linkages between the described folk illnesses and their treatments other than through documenting their coexistence within a specified cultural group. As a result, the existing literature lacks a basic starting point from which the different components of curanderismo can be analyzed. These earlier epidemio...