Healers, witches or women: intercultural health and urban folk medicine in Quito

Mario Siddhartha Portugal Ramirez will discuss the main findings of his ethnographic research in Ecuador during 2015 and 2016. He argues that women healers provide a particular urban folk medicine that acts in a gray zone of the intercultural health in Ecuador. This zone is a space where women are reproducing and transmitting their traditional knowledge, recovering the meaning of interculturality though an open confrontation of state policies, and most important: giving hope to many people that cannot afford health care in the city. Mr. Ramirez is currently a PhD Student at Global Governance & Human Security program at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy & Global Studies Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs