Patients, Doctors and Healers: Medical Worlds among the Mapuche in Southern Chile

231 Pages·2019·2.6 MB·English

by  Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

Dorthe Brogård Kristensen
,
PATI E NT S

DOCTO R S AN D
H E ALE R S
Medical Worlds among the
Mapuche in Southern Chile
Patients, Doctors and Healers
Dorthe Brogård Kristensen
Patients, Doctors
and Healers
Medical Worlds among the Mapuche
in Southern Chile
Dorthe Brogård Kristensen
University of Southern Denmark
Odense M, Denmark
ISBN 978-3-319-97030-1 ISBN 978-3-319-97031-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97031-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959853
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A
cknowledgements
The road to completing this work has been enriching, demanding and
often very bumpy. My ambition was to explore the everyday stories and
experiences of those people in Chile whose struggle to make sense of their
lives had such a profound impact on me. These collective experiences rep-
resented a huge accumulation of unarticulated impressions and feelings,
apparently stored and ignored until the moment someone chose to address
them. In that sense, this task has been very easy, almost like falling down a
tube, as someone described the course of my fieldwork. However, field-
work among medical doctors, Mapuche healers and patients was also quite
challenging in that I had to find a way to navigate these unexplored expe-
riences and, not least, to communicate them through academic writing.
The field itself also presented many barriers, both due to state bureaucracy,
which made access to the public health setting very restricted, and because
in what is referred to as the Mapuche world, advocated by political orga-
nizations, I was faced by certain barriers. On the one hand, as a European
anthropologist I could be a resource in the struggle to claim their rights,
but on the other, I was also subjected to the criticism of “intruding” into
their authentic culture. In order to support the struggle of those who
claim to be “oppressed objects”, I often felt that I lost my own sense of
agency and the possibility to articulate myself freely. I returned from the
fieldwork with the feeling of having, in some way, fragmented into bits
and pieces that took several years to glue back into an integrated unit.
Therefore, the Mapuche culture per se (if such an entity exists) did not
become the focus of this study; rather, the work documents the everyday
lives of those people who simply live them, without claiming a political
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
voice for their experiences. I am relieved at having come this far and grate-
ful for all the help and encouragement I received on my way.
This work would not have been possible without the help of many
people, foremost being the medical practitioners therein, Dr Luis Silva,
Maria Angelica Parra, Sebastián Allilef and José Caripan, without whose
openness and generous sharing of knowledge I could not have embarked
on this study. I also thank the Mapuche pharmacy and the hospital of
Temuco for permitting me to observe medical consultations. Special
thanks go to all the patients in this study, who so generously opened their
homes and hearts to the anthropologist. Also, thanks to José Aylwin, the
lawyer who gave me an insight into the world of indigenous rights, first at
the Universidad de la Frontera, and afterwards at the non-government
organization Observatorio de los Derechos de los Pueblos Indigenas.
This study was made possible with funding from the Humanistic
Research Council. Here I also want to mention those who originally
inspired me to take up this work. At the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Copenhagen, Cecilie Rubow and my supervisor for my
master’s thesis, Hanne Veber, both encouraged me to embark on this
project. Another source of inspiration came from the insights provided by
Bruce Kapferer, Murray Last and Roland Littlewood during my stay
between 1997 and 1998 at University College, London.
My PhD supervisors, Karsten Pærregård and Helle Johannessen, always
provided me with inspiration and the encouragement to get the disserta-
tion into shape. I also thank the PhD group in the Department, not least
Jens Kofoed, Kristina Wimberly, Mette Ringsted and Charlotte Jacobsen,
for their continuous support and feedback on my writing. I owe a great
debt to Mark Vacher and Kåre Jansbøl for inspiration, support and for
reading and commenting on drafts, and I would especially like to thank my
friends for their continuous encouragement and support in the writing up
of this work: among these are Mette Kyung Reacroft, Ann-Dorte Hass
Jensen, Desirée Aurora Nielsen, Nanna Ahlmark, Helle Jensen, Lene
Okholm, Vibeke Emborg and Martin Lindhardt in Denmark and, to men-
tion only a few, Hellen Pacheco, Anita Millarey, Eliseo Huencho, Mabel
García, Willi Collipal, Kamilla Karen Collipal and Maria Velasquez in Chile.
I owe Ana Mariella Bacigalupo a debt of gratitude for the scholarly
inspiration gained through reading her work, and for contacting me and
encouraging me to turn my dissertation into a book, and Alexis Nelson for
providing me with the contact at Palgrave. I also thank Jennifer Guzman,
encountered at an AAA conference, for giving me guidance. In revising
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
my original work and turning it into a book, the advice of Benedikte
Møller Kristensen, Charlotte Bredahl Jacobsen, Vibeke Nielsen and the
comments from Pablo Marimán have been of huge value. Special warm
thanks also go to Marie-Louise Karttunen for her careful reading of the
whole manuscript.
Thanks are owed to my mother Lizzi, to Christian, and especially to my
son Lican for his patience in adapting to two realities in the first years of
his life: one in a flat in the centre of Copenhagen with his mother, another
in a house below the scenic Villarica volcano on an indigenous reservation
living among shamans, Mapuche and his father’s relatives. Thank you for
being wise and lively company through all this journey.
c
ontents
1 Illness Stories, Medical Choices and  Socio-Political Process 1
2 T he History, Culture and Politics of Chile 39
3 C omplex Illnesses and Complementary Cures 63
4 I ndigenous Disease Categories, Medical Dialogues and
Social Positions 103
5 B eing Mapuche in Modern Chile: Illness Experiences,
Medical Choices and Social Positions 127
6 Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine 151
7 The Shaman, the Virgin and the Taxation Authorities 171
8 Conclusion: The Control of Medicine, the Control of
Bodies 193
ix
x CONTENTS
References 205
Author Index 221
Subject Index 225
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 A rewe 72
Fig. 7.1 The Virgin del Carmen in José Caripan’s consultation room 178
Fig. 7.2 The shaman looks at a bottle of urine, identifies the sickness
and writes a prescription 179
Fig. 7.3 Caripan in a trance during a ritual 181
xi