Abstract
In this chapter, the cases of patients—mestizo and Mapuche—with a Mapuche illness are examined in relation to experiences of categories of class and culture. This highlight aspects of olvido, the social forgetting of inequalities in relation to class and ethnicity. The question here, inspired by Libbet Crandon-Malamud’s article “Why susto?” (Ethnology. An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology XXII: 153–169, 1983) concerns the possibilities for expression of identity, agency and social positions that the diagnosis of susto offers patients. By analysing the cases of two Mapuche women, I suggest that the value of indigenous diagnosis is that it serves as a means for expressing and negotiating a vulnerable position (Sontag, Illness as Metaphor: Aids and its Metaphors. London: Penguin Books, 1991; Crandon-Malamud, American Ethnologist 13: 463–477, 1986). Medical dialogues and medical practices become a means to negotiate and establish social bonds between persons who share the same social positioning, in this case Mapuche and the landless and unemployed mestizo.
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- 1.
Out of 30 patients interviewed during my fieldwork, 10 reported symptoms which they identified as susto. Three of these were male and seven female; five of the latter were mestizo women, two were children. All had other diagnoses, mostly depression/nerves, and in two cases they also suspected witchcraft to have been involved. The diagnosis of mal is even more widespread: out of 30 patients, 26 believed or had suspected that witchcraft was involved in their affliction. In this group nine were mestizo women.
- 2.
These objects enter the body through eating food or beverages bewitched by a sorcerer. The evil force then installs itself inside the victim’s body, most commonly in the stomach, sucking the blood and life force.
- 3.
Susto and mal are, as already described in Chaps. 1 and 3, quite widespread. In order to get an idea of the use and prevalence of different medical practices and explore existing knowledge of Mapuche illness as well as developing a socio-economic profile of patients who suffer from Mapuche illness, I carried out a survey in six different areas in and around Temuco with 120 respondents. The survey was designed with the assistance of a local sociologist and carried out by three local assistants as a simple household survey. According to the findings from the survey, 22% of respondents reported having suffered from susto, and 17% said they had suffered from mal. I was intrigued to see how many mestizo women attended machi medical consultations. The survey supported a negligible gender bias in the spread of susto, as women were only slightly overrepresented. Of the 26 persons who reported that they were suffering from susto, 12 were men and 14 women. That mestizo women apparently dominated in terms of numbers might not be an indication of a higher prevalence of these illnesses and diagnosis among women, but due to the simple fact that women often attend medical consultations on behalf of their family members. Furthermore—as I argue in this chapter—it serves as a strategy to position themselves within their social environment and to gain access to health care.
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This is a revised chapter, published as Dorthe Brogård Kristensen (2010). The Shaman or the Doctor? Disease Categories, Medical Discourses and Social Positions. Giovanni Pizza & Helle Johannessen (eds.). AM: Rivista della Società italiana di antropologia medica (SIAM).
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Kristensen, D.B. (2019). Indigenous Disease Categories, Medical Dialogues and Social Positions. In: Patients, Doctors and Healers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97031-8_4
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