Curanderismo Conference Curanderismo, or Mexican American folk medicine, has been part of south Texas border life for generations. It has meant the difference between health and infirmity for many people of Mexican descent over the years, absorbing elements from different traditions, reworking them, and applying them to everyday needs. We can see curanderismo as an expression of home-based family care, but we can also see it as a set of resources used by those without many formal health care options. For these people, and increasingly for those with access to institutional medicine, curanderismo continues providing meaningful, culturally-appropriate care. Just how this care provision has happened, and is still happening, is the subject of our conference, scheduled for April 23-24, 2014, tentatively titled “Folk Healing, Curanderismo, and the Practice of Biomedicine.” The University of Texas – Pan American is the ideal venue for this event not only because it is situated in the Rio Grande Valley, a region with deep Mexican, Spanish, and Native American roots, but because in the late 1970s it hosted a unique research project focused on curanderismo. Proyecto Comprender, led by Robert Trotter and Juan Antonio Chavira at then Pan American University, set out to document the human face of curanderismo, as well as its place within the formal health landscape. Undergraduate students played important field and analytical roles in the project, roles that in some cases translated into professional life. With the recent storage and digitization of much of the project’s original audio and visual materials at the Border Studies Archive, the university has reaffirmed the lasting importance of Proyecto Comprender. This conference takes things a step further, bringing academics, practitioners, students, and artists into a deeper conversation about the present and future of curanderismo.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:42:55 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015