Terapeutas mayas: Desde el ritual de los Bacabes hasta el presente

Abstract

Although it is difficult to elucídate the historical and social processes that determined the role of the h-meno'ob [indigenous curers], this term designates a gamut of specialists who use their knowledge of medicinal plants to cure numerous illness. Contemporary h-meno'ob perpetúate the close link between campesinos and the supernatural spirits that inhabit the hills and roads, capricious beings that also manifest themselves in the winds. Man's interaction with these elements has persisted throughout time and, from the Ritual of the Bacabs, a Maya documents of the colonial period, until the oral traditions of contemporary peninsular Mayas, the winds retain their names, aspects, attributes, fields of action and causality, which are the subject of this article.