Transnational migration and traditional medicine. Otomi people from San Pablito, Pahuatlan, Puebla in North Carolina

Abstract

This research shows the organization of migration to the United States and the healing practices within a social transnational field, from the analysis of migratory dynamics in San Pablito Pahuatlan, an Otomi community of the Northern Sierra of Puebla which has fascinated both anthropologists and travelers attracted by the healing and propitiation rituals for what figures made of amate paper have been cut out. Since the late seventies, this locality is inserted into the global political economy framework via transnational migration. In spite of transformations unleashed by this process, it is true that the traditional medicine is still a resource for those who become ill in North Carolina, and that beliefs about health and illness are part of the transnational life. This research offers a panorama of the San Pablito inhabitants’ migration course towards North Carolina, their insertion into a precarious labor market, and the way how the symbolical system establishing relationships with entities that guarantee the perpetuation of life is reproduced.