Traditional-ancestral medical system in the territory of the Pastures Indigenous Reservation of Túquerres-Narino, Colombia

Abstract

We have analyzed the traditional medical system in Los Pastos territory, Indigenous Reservation of Tuquerres, Nariño, Colombia. For indigenous people, health is a product of the harmonious relationship between nature, human beings and the spiritual world, so when one of these three links breaks, the body becomes sick, affecting both the individual and the family.

We use a hermeneutical approach to understand the community practices related to traditional medicine. The unit of study was the entire traditional doctors (19), among whom we can mention herbalist’s (bush doctors), spiritualist, medicine man (yageceros) and midwives. The results have reflected that the practice of traditional medicine, in the case of the State, some sectors of the Church and institutions that provides health care do not accept this ancestral practice, but rather they chase the traditional doctor accusing him as a witch doctor, a deceitful and a liar.

There are two categories of traditional doctors: those that address the spiritual part and those that attends the body. Among the most common diseases of the body we can find gastritis, ulcer, appendicitis, vesicle disease, cancer, fractures and dislocations. Between the spiritual ones: the fright, the bad wind, the piss of the cueche, the curse and those known as the “diseases of the soul”, like the envy, the loneliness, the sadness and the selfishness.

The treatment is accompanied with a ritual. For the spiritual ones the person and the environment are purified with incense, while they invokes God and nature, sun, water, as well as the greater spirits. On the other side, the communal perception considers that the traditional medicine is an alternative for the health of the body and the spirit through plants.