Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T19:32:21.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maryknoll Sisters, Faith, Healing, and the Maya Construction of Catholic Communities in Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens
Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens*
Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article complements existing scholarship on religious transformation in Guatemala's western highlands by focusing on the important and often overlooked role played by Maryknoll women religious. The Maryknoll Sisters' hospital in Jacaltenango in the department of Huehuetenango became the center of a medical program that included eighteen clinics, a nursing school, a midwifery program, and a health promoters program. Mayas selectively embraced Maryknoll Sisters'medicine and actively sought opportunities to disseminate it. Evenas Maya health promoters and midwives introduced "Western" preventative and curative medicine and promoted a Romanized practice of Catholicism, they transformed the Maryknoll Sisters' medical programs to parallel an existingMaya leadership composed of chimanes and mid wives responsible for rituals of faith and healing. Mayas appropriated, interpreted, and synthesizedMaya and Catholic religious concepts and practices with Maya and Western health-care practices and beliefs. By incorporating Maryknoll women religious and their medical programs into studies of religious transformation in Guatemala's western highlands, we gain new insight into this process of change and into the central role that womenplayed in it.

Resumen

Resumen

Al enfocarse sobre el rol, importante pero a menudo pasado por alto, de las religiosas Maryknoll, este artículo complementa las investigaciones existentes sobre la transformación religiosa en los altos occidentales de Guatemala. El hospital de las Hermanas Maryknoll en Jacaltenango (departamento de Huehuetenango), se convirtió en el centro de un programa médico que incluía dieciocho clínicas, un jardín de infantes, un programa de comadronas y un programa para promotores de salud. Los mayas aceptaron selectivamente la medicina de las Hermanas Maryknoll y activamente buscaron oportunidades para diseminarla. Inclusive cuando los promotores de salud y las comadronas mayas introducían la medicina preventiva y curativa, y promovían una práctica romanizada del catolicismo, ellos transformaron los programas médicos de Hermanas Maryknoll, de modo que vinieron a parecerse a un liderazgo maya existente compuesto de chimanes y comadronas responsables de rituales de fe y curación. Los mayas se apropiaron de prácticas religiosas y conceptos mayas y católicos, y los interpretaron y los sintetizaron con prácticas y creencias mayas y occidentales sobre el cuidado de la salud. Al incorporar a las religiosas Maryknoll y a sus programas médicos en los estudios de la transformación religiosa en los altos occidentales de Guatemala, llegamos a un mejor entendimiento de este proceso de cambio y del rol central que las mujeres tuvieron en él.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , 2009 , pp. 27 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

LARR's anonymous reviewers and editorial staff provided very helpful and detailed critiques for which I am grateful. My thanks also go to the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies for support during the period when the article was written and to the Maryknoll Mission Archives for assistance and access to materials. I am especially indebted to the following colleagues who read and critiqued multiple drafts of the article: Ted Beatty; Bruce Calder; Jan Hoffman French; Antoinette Jackson; Christina Jimenez; Patricia Juarez-Dappe; Karen M. Kennelly, CSJ; Christine Kovic; Catherine LeGrand; Alida Metcalf; Susan Sleeper-Smith; William B. Taylor; Eric Van Young; and Gertrude M. Yeager. Special thanks to Merry Ovnick.

References

Arias, Arturo 1990 “Changing Indian Identity: Guatemala's Violent Transition to Modernity.” In Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988, edited by Smith, Carol A., 230–257. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brintnall, Douglass E. 1979 Revolt against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala. Foreword by Wagley, Charles. New York: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
Burnett, Virginia Garrard 1998 Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabrera, Luisa 1995 Otra historia por contar: Promotores de salud en Guatemala. Guatemala City: Asociación de Servicios Comunitarios de Salud.Google Scholar
Calder, Bruce Johnson 1970 Crecimiento y cambio de la Iglesia católica guatemalteca: 1944–1966. Guatemala City: Editorial José Pineda Ibarra.Google Scholar
Chesnut, Andrew 1997 Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Colburn, Forrest D. 1981 Guatemala's Rural Health Paraprofessionals. Ithaca, NY: Rural Development Committee, Center for International Studies, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Equipo de Antropología Forense de Guatemala 1997 Las masacres en Rabinal: Estudio histórico antropológico de las masacres de Plan de Sánchez, Chichupac y Río Negro. 2nd rev. ed. Guatemala City: Equipo de Antropología Forense de Guatemala.Google Scholar
Falla, Ricardo 1980 Quiché rebelde: Estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales, en San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiché (1948–1970). Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala, 1980.Google Scholar
Fernández Fernández, José Manuel 1988 El Comité de Unidad Campesina: Origen y desarrollo. Guatemala City: Centro de Estudios Rurales Centroamericano.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick Behrens, Susan 2004 “From Symbols of the Sacred, to Symbols of Subversion, to Simply Obscure: Maryknoll Women Religious in Guatemala, 1953–1967.” Americas 61 (2): 189–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick Behrens, Susan 2006 “Knowledge Is Not Enough: Creating a Culture of Social Justice, Dignity, and Human Rights in Guatemala: Maryknoll Sisters and the Monte María ‘Girls.‘” U.S. Catholic Historian 24 (3): 111–128.Google Scholar
Fuller, Leigh A. 1970 “Catholic Missionary Work and Development in Guatemala, 1943–68: The Maryknoll Experience.” M.A. thesis, Department of Politics, New York University.Google Scholar
Gaitán Álvarez, José Miguel 1972 “El movimiento cooperativista de Guatemala: Desarrollo de la Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Ahorro y Credito.” Estudios Sociales 7 (August): 33–62.Google Scholar
Grandin, Greg 1997 “To End with All These Evils: Ethnic Transformation and Community Mobilization in Guatemala's Western Highlands, 1954–1980.” Latin American Perspectives 24 (2): 7–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovic, Christine 2005 Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Thomas, and Melville, Marjorie 1971 Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? New York: Alfred Knopf.Google Scholar
Oakes, Maude 1951 The Two Crosses of Todos Santos: Survivals of Mayan Religious Ritual. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Orellana, Sandra L. 1987 Indian Medicine in Highland Guatemala: The Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Periods. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Paul, Lois, and Paul, Benjamin D. 1975 “The Maya Midwife as Sacred Specialist: A Guatemalan Case.” American Ethnologist 2 (4): 707–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scotchmer, David G. 1986 “Convergence of the Gods: Comparing Traditional Maya and Christian Maya Cosmologies.” In Symbol and Meaning beyond the Closed Corporate Community: Essays in Mesoamerican Ideas, edited by Gossen, Gary H., 197–226. Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York.Google Scholar
Steltzer, Ulli 1983 Health in the Guatemalan Highlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Tedlock, Barbara 1982 Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Wagley, Charles 1941 Economics of a Guatemalan Village. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Wagley, Charles 1949 The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Warren, Kay B. 1978 The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Watanabe, John 1990 “Enduring Yet Ineffable Community in the Western Periphery of Guatemala.” In Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988, edited by Smith, Carol A. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Watanabe, John 1992 Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard 1995 Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q'eqchi' Experiences. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar