Indigenous community of Veracruz del Zapotal, Rivas, Nicaragua

Indigenous Medicine and Identity in Nicaragua

Dr. Hugo De Burgos

Abstract

Through rhetoric and political action over the past twelve years, an elite of culturally conservative leaders in Nicaragua has been promoting the idea that, beyond its obvious medical value, indigenous medicine represents an important political, historical and primordial tool for demarcating and safeguarding their culturally distinct indigenous identity. This study is based on ethnographic research I conducted in the indigenous community of Veracruz del Zapotal, in the department of Rivas, Nicaragua, between September 2001 and December 2002. This research broadens the theoretical framework for understanding the extra medical usages of medicine and the role that medical configurations can play in creating and maintaining ethnic boundaries. In particular, I investigated how a group of indigenous people of Nahua descent called the Veracruceño uses medical practices and ideas to create ethnic boundaries in an effort to affirm their precariously kept ethnic identity. In general, this study also extends the theoretical schemes of ethnic boundary formation as it accounts for the constantly innovative and multi layered nature of ethnic boundaries. The study examines how previously unconscious medical practices and ideas in this indigenous community have become consciously elaborated social activities with profound political and symbolic significance. Though the data a I gathered during my research, the study shows how indigenous medical ideas and practices constitute, for the people of Veracruz, a viable strategy to reinforce and maintain ethnic boundaries and hence their indigenous identity in the face of an overwhelming mestizo culture and the advent of an ever-growing process of globalization.

© Photographs Copyrights De Burgos-Guillén