The Guatemalan Biomedical System

Traditional medicine is a compilation of skills, practices and knowledge based of beliefs and experiences bound to different cultures. They use these experiences and beliefs to maintain health through preventative measures, diagnosis and improve physical and mental illness. Since Guatemala is both multicultural and multilingual there are many indigenous groups and traditional medicinal practices between them, but all these groups still have very many overarching similarities. These indigenous medical practices are understood in terms of balance and imbalance of the body and soul (Icú Perén 2007). Imbalance is considered sickness, whilst balance in considered health, resulting in a holistic approach to the disease-health medical system, because

Throughout the years there has been a constant rift between both biomedicine and indigenous medicine, as biomedicine has been seen as having more efficacy than that of traditional medicine even though indigenous medicine has stood the test of time. With this paper I will discuss the main causes of the divide between Guatemalan traditional medicine and the Guatemalan biomedical systems; those of which being the internalized racism and post-colonial effects in Guatemala, the lack of understanding by biomedical physicians of the relationship between spiritual wellness and overall wellness, and the socio-economic status of most indigenous

The socio-economic status of healers is majorly due to post-colonial effects or there no charge services and has a major impact in the way these physicians view them. For physicians, they dedicate years of their lives and money to obtain formal training in schools, while the traditional healers obtain their knowledge informally from elders, intuition and spirit guides. These types of training have and ways of obtaining knowledge have ledge to sort of socio-economic hierarchy, where not all healers/physicians are equal, but where physicians fell more intelligent and competent than those who have had informal training (Harrison). Again, this type of demeaning view of healers can be seen with comadronas, throughout interviews with comadronas conducted by Van Dijk a reoccurring pattern appeared that can be summarized by this quote “They don’t give us a chance; they don’t like us to be here. They ask me ‘what are you looking for?’ or ‘what are you doing here?’, but as I want to learn, I just keep quiet.” (Van Dijik et al 2013:5376). These feelings were felt by almost all the traditional healers that participated at the hospital, Van Dijk found that doctors would only give advice and felt that they had nothing to learn from comadronas due to their informal training and low economic status (2013). These types of beliefs only lead to unidirectional conversation and