Ep. 3: Healing the Political Scars of Epidemics at the US/Mexico Border
How might the stories we tell each other about illness put us on the path of healing? What sorts of stories of illness and health arise out of the borderland areas in the southwest region and how do Mexican and indigenous health practitioners, also known as curanderos, narrate these stories to their clients? Why are Anglo-American settlers one of the major clientele of the curanderos and how might the stories that are otherwise particular to the history of the Mexican-American diaspora heal such outsiders from the shame of the role they played in the expansion of the U.S colony into the southwest region? How does the Mexican-American curanderismo contribute to the larger history of religious history in the Americas as one shaped by encounter between different cultural, racial, and religious communities?
The Religion & City Podcast addresses these important questions in the third episode as Brett Hendrickson discusses his 2014 monograph, Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican-American Curanderismo, and its implications for the study of health, religion, and the city. Daisy Vargas leads today's discussion along with Amanda Furiasse and Sher Afgan Tareen, co-directors of the Contagion, Religion, and Cities project, Harold Morales, the Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and the City, Sierra Lynn Lawson, a member of the podcast team, Kayla Wheeler, Christina Rosetti, and Giselle Toruno.