Anatilde Idoyaga Molina

Ethnomedicine and world‐view: A comparative analysis of the incorporation and rejection of contraceptive methods among Argentine women

Abstract Using field data gathered among two female groups the author analyses motives for incorporating or rejecting different kinds of contraceptive method. The groups considered are indigenous Pilaga women of northeast Argentina and criollo peasant women who have migrated from the same area of northeast Argentina and from Paraguay to Buenos Aires city. The migrant criollo women reject the Western contraceptive practices that they are compelled to use in Buenos Aires hospitals. The indigenous women also reject Western methods on the few occasions that they visit the local rural hospital, but they have adopted the contraceptive methods of those criollo women who remain in the area. In order to explain this difference in willingness to incorporate new techniques, the author analyses the two groups’ ethnophysiological theories, and their ideas of the person, of illness and of therapy (seen in connection with their symbolic systems). Traditional contraceptive methods and their practical and symbolic efficac...

En torno al uso de ensalmos terapéuticos en el noroeste argentino y sus fundamentos mítico-religiosos

Los autores analizan las practicas terapeutico-rituales en las medicinas tradicionales del Noroeste Argentino, enfocando los ensalmos sus fundamentos y significados. En primer lugar, a fin de contextualizar el uso de ensalmos, se refieren diferentes concepciones y rituales que dejan ver la influencia de la tradicion catolica en las practicas de legos y de curanderos, a la vez que mencionan la importancia que tiene en tales la reformulacion de las tradiciones de la medicina humoral o academica en el area de estudio. En segundo termino, se concentran en el ritual terapeutico de la cura de palabra o ensalmo, haciendo notar que esas formulas poseen un fundamento mitico- religioso, que resulta de la mitificacion de la vida de Cristo a traves de los evangelios, de la mitificacion de las vidas de algunos santos y de los multiples mitos remanecidos sobre la Virgen. El ensalmo es, entonces, el rito que actualiza el mito, vale decir, el tiempo originario y, con ello, el caracter sagrado de los seres que intervienen y de las acciones que se narran. Esta postura los lleva a polemizar con otros autores que han incluido a los ensalmos entre los tratamientos de la salud de caracter magico admitiendo la existencia de una terapeutica catolico-religiosa.

Daño, terapeutica ritual y manipulación de lo sagrado en las medicinas tradicionales del Noroeste Argentino

The authors analyse traditonal medicines’ therapeutic ritual in Northwes¬tern Aregentina: curanderismo and self- treatment. Firstly, they focus on therapeutic rituals perfomed by both specialized healers (curanderos) and lays, considering, at the same time, the more relavant changes in the humoral medicine practices. Then, they explore the ritual healing using spells, discussing its definition as magic, as some authors have proposed. They make clear that formulas have a mythic-religiuos foundation, supported by the mythification of Gospels, some saints’ life and Virgin Mary new mythical episodes or manifestations. In this sense, the spell is the rite reediting the myth; this means that primeval times and the sacred actions performed by the deities invoked become present.