Eliseo "Cheo" Torres, Vice President for Student Affairs is again offering a course in curanderismo or Mexican folk healing during the summer session. The course, scheduled for July 12-23 is expected to attract more than 70 students.
"People are searching for new approaches because health care is so expensive and so many, particularly the poor, have no insurance or are under-insured," he said.
As the instructor-of-record for the course, titled “Traditional Medicine without Borders: Curanderismo in the Southwest and Mexico,” Torres not only lectures but designs unique exhibits for the class. He also brings folk healers and alternative practitioners for hands-on demonstrations.
“We will have as many as 40 folk healers coming here from Mexico to participate in our class during its second week,” Torres said. “We also have practitioners from the Albuquerque area, including Elena Avila, who is a poet, performance artist and respected curandera. She is a very popular part of our class.”
Course topics include the healing properties of herbs and salves, ointments, and tinctures made from herbs. Demonstrations and lectures will show how traditional curanderismo is combined with oriental medicine, massage therapy, acupuncture, Reiki, and other holistic, integrative and/or New Age approaches to medicine.
In addition, curanderismo has gained some acceptance among conventional modern medical practitioners as a vital cultural avenue through which caregivers can reach medically underserved populations.
The course is offered cooperatively through the Women Studies Program (WS 379, section 390), Chicano Studies (CH ST 393.370) and University Honors (301.370).
Torres team-teaches with Sandrea Gonzales, Director of the Women’s Resource Center at UNM, who also coordinates the course.
Dr. Arturo Ornelas Lizardi, director of El Centro de Desarrolo Humano hacia la Comunidad in Cuernavaca, Mexico, will also lecture and lead demonstrations for the class. For each of the past three years, Ornelas has led a group of Mexican curanderos to Albuquerque to take part in the course, perform service in the community and demonstrate healing and therapy techniques.
In addition to the Albuquerque-based class, Torres, Gonzales and Ornelas also coordinate a Cuernavaca-based course, conducted at El Centro de Desarrolo hacia la Comunidad. The class includes field trips to ancient ruins near Cuernavaca and Mexico City.
The class, now underway, ends June 20 and will be followed by another course Torres team-teaches with Dr. Terry Crowe, director of UNM’s Occupational Therapy graduate program in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Torres hopes the three courses continue to be offered through UNM.
“The courses help us to get the word out and to popularize a previously neglected body of knowledge that is venerated among Hispanics in the Southwest and Mexico,” Torres said. “They convey information about knowledge that is culturally relevant that I think will also prove to be medically important in the long run as well.”
For more information, call Sandrea Gonzales, 277-3716. The Web site is www.unm.edu/~ovpsa/curanderismo.html.
Contact: Laurie Mellas Ramirez (505) 277-5915
Posted by kwentworth at June 21, 2004 10:47 AM