Research Finally in Progress! & Pictures Up!!

Silvia, a Naturista I met at a festival of Bolivian curanderos in Lima, posing for me in front of her kiosk/store.

Research is finally going really well for me. I was worried for a while that things seemed to be going really slow, but it´s all finally picking up! Three days ago, I went to the library at the National Institution of Public Health (INSP in spanish). Turns out that the National Institution of Traditional Medicine (INMETRA) had been dissolved and absorbed by this organization. The group is now the Centro Nacional de Salud Intercultural (or CENSI) and they are RIGHT next to the library. So, when I walked up to the librarian and told her that I was interested in intercultural health she excitedly told me to wait and hurried off to the offices next door. She came back, gave me a book that interested me and told me to wait. All of the sudden the director of CENSI comes up right next to me and greets me. She asks me what is my interest and inmediately finds the people that are working on similar things within the department. She left me again, and brought out two more people, Chela and Roberto, who have been working on traditional medicine since the organization was called INMETRA. They were really excited to hear that I was interested in their subject and have become a extremely valuable contact. They already have offered to let me accompany them to different provinces in Lima in order to find curanderos that might be interested in attending a conference they are organizing for the end of this month. This is incredible!!! This is absolutely perfect for my project.

Toward the end of the meeting, they also gave me the history of their organization, which proves to me what I already suspected: that the official stance on traditional medicine is actually declining rather than growing in Peru. (This is despite a rise in acceptance of traditional medicine among Limeños in general. Mention traditional medicine to anyone in Lima and he or she is sure to mention how wonderful some herbs they have tried are, or that they finally decided to try Ayahuasca therapy--a hallucigenic plant used by amazonian tribes to induce healing visions--and that it helped them a lot.) Apparently, the government is more interested in finding the active ingredients (or principios activos, in spanish) of certain herbs rather than trying to understand the cultural heritage and the more spiritual aspects of local medicine. Now that INMETRA became CENSI and they share a space with scientists, Chela reccounted major arguments between the researchers and the intercultural health promoters. Sometimes, these arguments escalate into shouting matches were the scientist will claim that CENSI is trying to make the country more backwards and hinder all their efforts to bring Peru into the modern world! Apparently, everyone in the department feels like they are walking in pins and needles now.

Anyway, after talking to them for hours, I went back home and came back the next day where I met with Chela once more. She eventually introduced me to an anthropology professor that works at CENSI called Carlos. He was extremely nice, and it turns out we are studying almost exactly the same thing (he in anthropology, and me in history though) so he immediately asked me if I wanted to see some real curanderos right then and there. He heard I had been studying Bolivian medicine so he took me to a fair going on this week on Bolivian traditional medicine. It was really cool, and I took lots of pictures. I wrote detailed explanations of each picture so I won´t waste too much space explaining myself here. Visit the following website and click on each picture to see the picture and read my comments (at the bottom of the picture...you´ll need to scroll a bit some times): http://www.flickr.com/photos/forsadospirito/sets/562121/ . It was incredible! I am planning to go back tomorrow early in the morning.

Well, those are the major things that are happening. Right now I am going to go out and enjoy this friday night in Barranco with fellow Harvard students here in Lima. Hehe :-) We are going to "discotear" (go club-hopping) tonight. Yay!

Here are a few more pictures, but make sure you click on the link above in order to see more.

Here is a picture of saintly-Christ figure in a traditional Andean altar. This is a great example of the syncretism among the campesinos between catholicism and the old Andean religion. Truly the old religion is still alive and flourishing.

Here is a picture of a curandero sorrounded by his herbs. Note the newspaper clipings in the back showing "scientific" studies that have proven how some of his plasnts work. He is definitely appealing to the mestizo crowd.

Note the picture of Jesus and the Cross. It´s interesting to see the syncretism here. Note that despite the fact that this flier is obviously very catholic, he offers "pago a la santa tierra." That means that he can offer a sacrifice and libations to the Mother Earth (a ethereal being called Wachamami) in order for you to plead your cause. The other things he offers are coca readings, liberation and cleaning of evil curses, change of luck, and a "call of the spirit" (although I´ve never heard of this before). In the bottom right of the picture you get to see the actual curandero having a conversation with a potential patient.

To see more click on this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forsadospirito/sets/562121/