Curanderismo

Curanderismo is the practice of traditional medicine as it is known among the ancestral indigenous peoples of the Americas. The healer or paqo in the Quechua language, is a person who, in a manner recognized by the community, secretly or very selectively, is dedicated to providing mental, emotional, physical or spiritual healing for different diseases. Curanderismo is present in all cultures of the world and in our times it has an intricate syncretism based on other contributions from other ancient and contemporary peoples. In the indigenous cultures of the Americas and after the arrival of Europeans to the Western Hemisphere, native healing was enriched with elements of its European counterpart (especially based on Christian, Jewish, Arabic and ancient European-pagan traditions) and of the ancestral beliefs and knowledge of Africans brought to the soil of the Americas and whose most popular expressions are found in the Santeria rites in Cuba and other regions. With the globalization of cultures, it is possible to find in the curanderismo of the Americas contributions from Asian traditions such as Chinese medicine and others.

Curanderismo practices have been strongly contested by cultural, religious and political hegemonies. Although he had great lordship and respect in ancient cultures and they currently have it in natural towns that live in close contact with nature, was persecuted by majority religions, especially European Christianity since the 15th century and, later, with the advancement of Western rationalist science, considered illogical, superstitious and irrelevant. This situation has caused that on many occasions it coexists in modern cities as clandestine practices, frowned upon and therefore hidden or despised as wild things. With this, ancient ancestral knowledge has always been in danger of becoming extinct, while its owners have had themselves as charlatans.

Although and as it happens in everything, within curanderismo there are charlatans who seek only their own profit. ¿Are there not in western medicine too? Galens who study years and then dedicate themselves to deceiving the people and living on their diseases without ethical principles. However, it is also possible to see a contemporary rebirth of traditional medicine in all regions of the world. In this, the curanderismo of the Americas has a position of universal prestige for its wealth of traditions and its deep knowledge of nature, jungles and spirituality.

The healer or paqo it becomes on many occasions the best alternative for the people, which is seen as a laboratory mouse by so many pharmaceutical multinationals, which create artificial diseases for profit or insufficient health systems, mediocre and lacking human tact as in many Latin American countries or in regions of the United States and Canada where certain ethnic and social groups suffer methodical discrimination.

The paqo on many occasions he becomes the authentic psychiatrist, the doctor and the healer, who knows medicinal plants, but also of the use of the elements of nature and its effects on the harmony of the human body and its relationship with the Pacha Mama.

Curiously, in traditions famous for constituting themselves as inquisitors of other ancestral traditions, there are also common elements that reveal the unique origins of the human race. For example, Catholicism, which generally discriminates other knowledge that does not come from its own traditions, uses in its rites and liturgies many elements common to quackery such as holy water, the images of saints or elements that can be considered as amulets, flowers, songs, incense and many other things that have allowed the indigenous quackery of the Americas to use these Christian elements on many occasions. This allowed in a way the survival of certain practices,which our ancestors disguised as Christians to avoid the actions of persecution of infamous systems such as the Inquisition. This can be seen in many other stories where certain groups have been victims of persecution, for example, the Iberian Sephardim and Moors forced to convert to Christianity in 15th century Spain, disguised their religious practices as Catholicism to avoid persecution.

In a context of greater contemporary freedom, with liberal and more humanistic states, we see a rebirth of interest in the ancestors of each region of the world. More importantly, it is seen how scientists gathered in anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, historians, doctors, journalists, writers, enter the jungles, deserts, islands, rivers and lakes to know ancestral knowledge, understand it and give it the value they deserve.

In this way it is possible to see formal and informal training programs in curanderismo, traditional medicine and even shamanism in universities and institutions in the Americas and the world.

Curanderismo has an essential basis in three aspects:

1. A deep knowledge of nature, especially of the healing powers of plants, animals, elements and energies.
   

2. A metaphysical aspect where the supernatural also has a great role, in which curanderismo also approaches shamanism itself in many aspects.

3. A spiritual authority and a power of suggestion in the patient.