Küme mongen on the Coast: Contexts and Course Changes in Intercultural Health in the South of Chile

• Author: Natalia Picaroni Sobrado,José Osvaldo Vásquez Reyes,Sebastián Medina Gay
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211008158
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211008158

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 238, Vol. 48 No. 3, May 2021, 82–99

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211008158

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

82

Küme mongen on the Coast

Contexts and Course Changes in Intercultural Health

in the South of Chile

by

Natalia Picaroni Sobrado, Sebastián Medina Gay,

and José Osvaldo Vásquez Reyes

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

The current entanglement of intercultural health and küme mongen (good health or

good life) in the Williche territory of Chile is an unstable and contradictory construction

that emerged as an ideological and utopian response to three simultaneous processes: the

neoliberal acceleration of dispossession and eco-social degradation, the neoliberal imple-

mentation of a special health care policy for indigenous peoples, and various forms of lack

of access to health care.

El entrelazamiento actual de la salud intercultural y el küme mongen (buena salud o

buena vida) en el territorio williche de Chile es una construcción inestable y contradictoria

que surgió como una respuesta ideológica y utópica a tres procesos simultáneos: la aceler-

ación neoliberal del despojo y la degradación ecosocial, la implementación neoliberal de

una política especial de atención de la salud para los pueblos indígenas, y diversas mani-

festaciones de falta de acceso a la atención médica.

Keywords: Küme mongen, Intercultural health care, Williche, Chile, Sociocultural

epidemiology

A group of ten women were learning to weave baskets from rope while they told each

other stories. “Come here, I will teach you,” one of them said as she noticed the dif-

ficulty I was having with the task. The house in Mirasol was full of laughter that

evening; they were mainly laughing at me: my presence, my useless hands, my

dreams of community. What was a psychologist doing in that place? Was this what

the famed interculturality in health care was about? Was collective healing occurring

here without our noticing it? Could it be that through weaving baskets we can

recover something of the lost social fabric? The one in charge of the intercultural

program could not help but ask himself these questions. The rope in his hands also

seemed to be laughing.

—José Vásquez Reyes, March 12, 2015

Natalia Picaroni Sobrado is an assistant professor in the Institute of Psychology at the Universidad

Austral de Chile in Puerto Montt, Chile. Sebastián Medina Gay is an assistant professor in the School

of Public Health at the Universidad de Chile. José Osvaldo Vásquez Reyes is a psychologist at the

Padre Hurtado Family Health Center. Margot Olavarria is a translator living in New York City.

1008158LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211008158LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESPicaroni Sobrado, Medina Gay, and Vásquez Reyes / KÜME MONGEN IN THE SOUTH OF CHILE

research-article2021

Picaroni Sobrado, Medina Gay, and Vásquez Reyes / KÜME MONGEN IN THE SOUTH OF CHILE 83

In this article we analyze the interrelationship between intercultural health

care and küme mongen1 (health, good health, or good life) in Williche2 territory

(see Figure 1). We position ourselves in terms of our joy, misadventures, and

doubts in the implementation and study of initiatives in the field of intercul-

tural health care that we call “coastal küme mongen.” We have come to think

that health redefined as küme mongen is complex and contradictory. We are

interested in revealing subtle processes that are created daily and that have

deep connections with the history of the area. First we explain our methodol-

ogy and describe two initiatives of coastal küme mongen. Then we present

their context from a historical and situational perspective and go on to offer an

experiential and provisional discussion of the interrelationship between küme

mongen and intercultural health care.

METHODOLOGY

This article is the result of discussion initiated at the International Health,

Territory, and Interculturality Congress in Puerto Montt, Chile, in 2017, where

we began a collective reflection based on our different experiences of research

and action. Since 2014, Vásquez Reyes has worked at the Padre Hurtado Family

Figure 1. The Interior Sea of Chiloé, with the orientation commonly used in maps produced

here (sunrise at the top).