Traditional Medicine and Its Integration in Bolivia

Explain your research in 1-5 sentences

My project explores the integration of traditional medicine in modern Bolivia, through focusing on the city of Cochabamba. I conducted ethnographic research, which included interviews with hospital workers and traditional healers.

How did you come to this work?

I came to this topic because I was interested to learn about traditional medicine in Bolivia, since I am Bolivian. Through doing my preliminary research, I found out about a law that was created in 2013 that formally recognized ancestral traditional medicine as a part of the national public health system in Bolivia. It was meant to help incorporate the rural indigenous population of Bolivia. This then had me questioning what has changed since then, and due to lack of scholarly papers written past 2014 on the topic, I decided to focus on this question. I primarily wanted to see if the law had a significant impact on the way traditional medicine is viewed or used.

What resonated with you as you conducted your research? What were you most excited or surprised to find out?

As I was conducting my research, I realized that traditional medicine is not all the same. Even in Cochabamba where I was doing my fieldwork, I found varying interpretations and practices. There were people that came from different indigenous groups, with a very wide variety of techniques, which was not expected. Those in hospitals also had varying views on what traditional medicine was as well and many did not understand or know much about it, depending on their own cultural background. My view of traditional medicine also changed as I thought of it more as naturistic medicine instead of more spiritually based. The spiritual aspect was especially interesting, because healers described very complicated views of the soul. Many used Christian crosses as well, which highlighted how traditional medicine has changed over time due to Spanish influence. 

Some preliminary findings were that the law has not had much effect, except in being able to give some traditional healers government credentials. This has increased some legitimacy to the practice; however many still do not have credentials due to literacy barriers: many traditional healers are not able to fluently read or write in Spanish. The law has also allowed for more advertising in marketplaces, but again many healers come from rural areas and do not have the means to be able to create signs, thus often they are on cardboard or pieces of paper. The majority of the population is still unaware of traditional medicine and does not respect it compared to scientific medicine.

Does this fit into a larger project? Will you continue to research this topic?

I do not plan on continuing this project, but I hope that it may interest others to research the topic because there have been no publications in the last 10 years pertaining to it.