Understanding Latino Folk Healers in NYC: Role Reversals & Challenges

1. SUBVERTING THE ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTER:ROLE REVERSALS AND THE CHALLENGE TO THE INTERVIEWER’S ROLE Anahí Viladrich, PhD María Clara Gómez, BA Urban Public Health Program & Immigration and Health Initiative (IAHI) Hunter College of the City University of New York

2. The Realm of Folk Healing in Cosmopolitan NYC Latino Healers Treating Latino Immigrants Study’s aims: • To examine the role of Latino folk healers (e.g., santeros and curanderos) as performers of therapeutic roles in their communities. • Their roles as caregivers and promoters among disenfranchised Latino groups in NYC. • Indigenous understanding of culture-bound syndromes regarding psychological disorders (e.g., nervios and susto)

3. The Methodology: Combining Methods • Ethnographic mapping and participant observation • In-depth interviews: • Informal interviews • Semi-structured guidelines • Initial purposive sample: 60 participants

4. The Healers: Who are they? Santeros, herberos, spiritists, clairvoyants Practitioners from Latino origin involved with folk and/or traditional medicine as either its main occupational activity, or as a secondary activity for which they receive either payment in money and/or other form of retribution (e.g., bartering).

5. Obstacles Secretive Initiation into the faith is a condition for information to be released History of folk healing practices: syncretism Oral tradition Law Enforcement Harmful effects of certain practices: mercury Public Image Negative media impact Controversies Animal sacrifices Therefore… The risks of false positives: healers versus false non-healers

6. Botanicas the “visible door” to the invisible world of Latino healers’ practices Photo by L. Bukiewicz Consultas: on site & via referrals Photo by M. Gómez

8. Purpose of this Presentation To explore the process of dynamic resistance through which Latino healers challenge their position as informants, while participating in a study on Latino Folk Healing Practices” in NYC. Who is the interviewer and who is the one being interviewed?

9. Questions Asked • How does the healer perceive the interviewer and vice versa? • How does perception of the other affect the disclosure of information? • How are attempts to equalize status differences expressed? • How is the identification with “the other” being expressed? (e.g empathy, complicity)

10. Healers’ Perceptions The interviewer is perceived as: • Having a higher social status • Being more educated • Having more social power • Being potentially harmful: information may be eventually shared with the NYC department of health • To participate in an interview can be: • A potential harm (to reveal secret info) • A confirmation of the healer’s importance • An opportunity to participate in something and share

11. Healers’ roles:Dynamic resistance • From an empowered role as the counselor, the one who gives advice, to the one who is listened to. • From the one who asks questions to the one who has to answer them. • From an active performer to a passive teller • From discovering the other’s inner life-story to revealing the ones of their own

12. Healers regain their role by: • Giving unwanted advice • Spirit possession and impromptu diagnosis • Assessing special abilities in the interviewer • Asking questions about the interviewer’s problems, issues and current emotional concerns • Long waiting times, postponing the interview

13. Providing Unsolicited Advice “She looked at A, and told her: You have problems with low pressure? When A confirmed this, E nodded slightly saying “I’m seeing this... And then she went on to tell A other things that A later told me were very close to home… She told me that I have problems with my stomach… ‘I don’t’, I said, ‘but my sister does’… Your twin, ? ‘No’, I said ‘she is younger’…. ‘Ah!’ She said: ‘you’re reflecting her problems.’”

14. The Interviewer’s Role: Challenges The Interviewer tries to: • Give back • Introduce the subject casually • Extend the relationship beyond the interview Problems: • Short time to develop rapport • Unmet expectations • Money as an incentive--not always enough

15. Notes from the Field: An afternoon with Josefa “Wait a minute: we came here for you to sign forms, and we are now the ones who are ending up doing all the work… including having to sign up yours! Things became calmer after that, as we all laughed about the paradoxical situation we had both turned into. We got Josefa’s forms but we did not fill them up and she got away with not doing the interview, a pretty clear compromise on both parts.”

16. Intangible Complicity • Being Latina: trust and sharing an imaginary cultural background • Spanish language: the invisible bridge • Sharing Cultural codes: being associated with Santeria practitioners “Apart from all the good elements that accompanied me on this mapping session, people were open to answer my questions and three of them agreed to an interview, something that rarely happens. I wonder if the presence of E with his Santeria necklaces influenced people’s decision making.” • Liaisons: • Being immigrants and Latinas“we women know” • Living amidst and between two cultures in NYC

17. Intangible Complicity • Interview Notes (female, Latina) “Lola reminded me of myself, when I first came to the U.S. at age 18. didn’t know much English and had just graduated from High School in Colombia. I wasn’t as “lucky” as Lola to have such a large Latino community around me because I lived in an Italian town and ten years ago, being a Latino in the U.S was different from now, there was less acceptance. While I tried to acculturate as much as possible because of my circumstances, Lola has a micro Dominican Republic around her that both protects her and keeps her from diving into the American culture.”

18. Identification and Difference • “I felt sad when left Y’s apartment; I felt that this woman who was living in a very dire situation judging from her home environment opened a bit of her life to me, and I recorded it for the study. And hat all I could offer her was $20 bucks. And I known this may seem ridiculous as you read this, but I felt for her, as a woman, as an immigrant, as a human being -- even if she may not be aware of the things running through my mind. As a woman the only thing that really separates us is education and culture and that affects fundamentally how we access this society. Because economically there are many people in this city who for varying reasons may be in a similar situation, including me! But I’m the one interviewing her…”

19. Negotiating Difference • “Reinforcing difference” Interviewer: J (White American, little Spanish). “Do to the fact that I was a little apprehensive about going to speak with Mr. O. because he expressed his thought about his feeling that I am something like a CIA agent. I decided I would go earlier in the day because last time in his store I noticed it was busy after 5 PM when most people get off work. So, I thought it would be better to go before lunch when it was cooler and when he might have more time to speak.” • “Rejecting difference” Gender solidarity also works for males. The example of V (male interviewer, white American, some Spanish) with male healers. e.g., Healer revealing sexual abuse during childhood

20. Conclusions • Training on ethnographic methods and RAP methodologies • How to combine both? • How to achieve successful results without jeopardizing the validity/reliability of results? • Being clear about the goals of the project will help avoiding confusion in the field: • Is this a community-based participatory research project? • Should we be “advocates” of community interests?

21. IMPLICATIONSWorking with Hidden Populations:What is needed? • Better outreach efforts: assurance of confidentialily • Disseminate and publish valid information about what the Latino community at large needs; and how folk medicine is responding to people’s needs. • Promote positive images about the benefits of non-traditional forms of care. • More concrete “returns” to the community in the form of collaborative efforts with formal health services and exchangeability of healing experiences.

22. EPILOGUE “Trust is the hardest thing to get and the easiest gift to lose”

23. FIN ... The End Photo by L. Bukiewicz Photo by M. Gomez Photo by María Gómez