Living Well and Health Practices among Aymara People in Northern Chile

• Author: Alejandra Carreño-Calderón
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211004908
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211004908

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 238, Vol. 48 No. 3, May 2021, 69–81

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211004908

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

69

Living Well and Health Practices among Aymara People

in Northern Chile

by

Alejandra Carreño-Calderón

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

The current Chilean health model seeks to promote health equity among indigenous

peoples by means of state intercultural health programs. As implemented regionally, these

have been widely criticized as depoliticizing mechanisms meant to dominate the indige-

nous population. Study of the experiences of several indigenous health agents and asso-

ciations fostered by these programs reveals that the strategic use of the concept of living

well by indigenous peoples raises questions about the issues that are to be included in or

excluded from the intercultural medical field.

El actual modelo de salud chileno busca promover el acceso equitativo a la salud entre

los pueblos indígenas a través de programas estatales de salud intercultural. Tal y como se

aplican a nivel regional, estos han sido ampliamente criticados como mecanismos de

despolitización diseñados para dominar a la población indígena. El estudio de las experi-

encias de varios agentes y asociaciones de salud indígenas impulsados por estos programas

revela que el uso estratégico del concepto del buen vivir por parte de los pueblos indígenas

plantea interrogantes sobre qué asuntos deben o no incluirse en el campo médico intercul-

tural.

Keywords: Living well, Aymara people, Indigenous health systems, Intercultural health,

Chile

The enormous importance of indigenous knowledge in the construction of

the concept of living well1 has been highlighted by Gudynas (2011) and others.

This notion has gone beyond a culturalist or romantic vision of the relationship

between indigenous communities and their territories and taken root in both

South American academic and political discourse and the language of some

sectors of indigenous communities. On the one hand, the emergence of the

term has been addressed from a postcolonial perspective focused on the “colo-

niality of power” and “of being” in the naturalization of indigenous subalter-

nity (Quijano, 1991). On the other, the term has found wide acceptance in what

anthropologists term the “ontological turn” of the discipline (analyzed in

González-Abrisketa and Carro-Ripalda, 2016), in which the debate around liv-

ing well implies questioning not only the “political semantics of living well”

Alejandra Carreño-Calderón is a medical anthropologist and a researcher in the Social Studies in

Health program of the Clínica Alemana of the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. She

has done research in the fields of transcultural psychiatry, indigenous health, international migra-

tion, and the mental health of refugees. Mariana Ortega-Breña is a translator based in Mexico City.

1004908LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211004908Latin American PerspectivesCarreño-Calderón / Living Well and Health Practices Among Aymaras

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