El papel del ritual y la religión en la terapéutica de los curanderos y h-meno'ob yucatecos actuales

Abstract

In traditional medicine, as it continues to be practiced in the indigenous communities of Yucatán, a number of specialists put into practice knowledge and therapies that have retained their deep (Maya) roots. Bone-setters, midwives, masseurs, herbalists and curers (men as well as women) attend to the physical and psychological needs (and those of magico-religious nature) of the indigenous population. For their part the h-meno´ob are the ritual specialists who have the prerogative of carrying out agricultural rituals, although they too can, and do, perform many of the above-mentioned roles. In their dialogue with the supernatural, the h-meno´ob try to obtain, or restore, the goodwill of the gods towards man, and ask for their protection for the milpa, beneficent rains and good crops and the health of the owner of the milpa and his family. The medical role of the traditional healer, both socializing and cohesive in nature, nowadays confronts the onslaught of modern allopathic and pharmacological medicine which, although effective in many cases, is also often depersonalized and discriminatory against ancient Maya wisdom, which conjoins the knowledge of medicinal plants, vestiges of the ancient religion and the power of the word as it is expressed in ritual orality.