Health in the Highlands - by David Carey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

"A rare and revealing feat of richly textured comparative history that has the additional virtue of blending a bottom-up and a top-down perspective to explore encounters between state and international public health actors and indigenous peoples and their healers."--Steven Palmer, coauthor of Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History

"David Carey adopts an evenhanded attitude in examining differing approaches to health, taking a nonjudgmental look at science-based, folk, indigenous, African, and hybrid medical and health practices."--Ronn Pineo, Professor of Latin American History and Public Health, Towson University

"Through the lens of health and healing, this book presents a welcome and long overdue comparison of the place of highland Indigenous people in the policies and imaginaries of Guatemala and Ecuador. While both countries have demographically significant Indigenous populations, Carey teases out important divergences in policies and practices towards these groups that illuminate other significant spheres of public life. Sensitive to the silences in the archival record, and foregrounding both Indigenous and biomedical practitioners, this analysis will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with encounters between healing systems, racialization, citizenship and state formation, and the history of health, illness and medicine broadly defined."--Kim Clark, Assistant Dean, Faculty of Social Science, and Professor of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario

"A meticulous archival tour featuring the oldest inhabitants of the Americas. The vibrant Indigenous voices that continue to shape health and healing in Ecuador and Guatemala shine through chapters on illnesses and public health strategies."--Raúl Necochea López, Associoate Professor of Social Medicine, University of North Carolina

Review Quotes

"Carey's book is the best kind of historical research--it stirs curiosity in the reader and is certain to spur new histories of Indigenous medicine."-- "Hispanic American Historical Review"

"Carey celebrates the alternative courses that people pursued to practice and receive care, illustrating that healing and medicine were constructed as much in rural communities as they were in laboratories and hospitals."-- "H-Net"

About the Author

David Carey Jr. holds the Doehler Chair in History at Loyola University Maryland and is author of I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944 and Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive, among other books.