114 Conceptions of Illness and Practices of Healing in Cnlnnial Guatemala

The regulation of official medical practice in New Spain and the

Audiencia of Guatemala followed closely along the lines of the Spanish model.

In 1477 with the unification of Spain, the crown established the institution of the Protomedicato to regulate medical practices through examinations, licensing, and judicial practices.^ The Spanish crown continued the institution in New Spain, and in 1525, the municipal council of Mexico City named Francisco de Soto, a barber-surgeon, the first acting protomedico to regulate medical practice there.

Those of Moorish and Jewish descent could not be licensed, nor could native healers. By 1646, the protomedicato only licensed doctors with university degrees.- As a result, only small numbers of health professionals could be licensed by the protomedico, resulting in a shortage universit}''-trained

crown-I ( licensed physicians in New Spain. "Traditional" healing practices by specialists

I

I permeated society in Mew Spain, especially in rural areas.-1

f In the wake of epidemic disease that accompanied the establishment of colonial rule in the Americas, the Spairish Crown instructed settiers as early as I 1502 to build hospitals in the New World to house both Spaniards and Indians.

}. Church officials also saw hospitals as a way to aid in the conversion of [ indigenous peoples, based on experiences with the Muslims in Spain. The

t

- ^For a good introduction to the official practice of medicine in Spain and New Spain, see Guenter B. Risse, "Medicine in New Spain," in Ronald L. Numbers ed.. Medicine in the New World: New Spain, New France, and New England. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 12-63.

-Risse, "Medicine in New Spain," 29-30.

'ibid., 33; Noemf Quezada, "The Inquisition's Repression of Curanderos," in Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz, eds.. Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 37-57.

regular orders, responsible for the conversion of indigenous peoples in the New World also administered colonial hospitals.'* In Santiago, Bishop don Francisco Marroquin originally founded the Hospital Real de Santiago, designated

specifically for Spaniards. The Hospital San Alejo cared for Indians, and the Hospital de San Pedro admitted only priests. In 1638, Alvaro Quinonez de Osorio established the Hospital de San L^aro to care for the large numbers of lepers he saw in the streets in the capitcil. Once the lepers entered the hospitcil, however, they were not allowed to leave. By the late-seventeenth-century, the friars of the order of San Juan de Dios administered Santiago de Guatemala's four hospitals.^

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Guatemala, epidemic disease was widespread and frequent. Major epidemics of peste (plague), nosebleeds, typhus, smallpox and other diseases often swept through Santiago, leaving many deaths in their wake. For example, an epidemic of typhus and/or pneumonic plague hit Santiago in 1686 and killed at least one-tenth of the population of the capital,

mostly Indicins and the poor.^ Cabildo officials, church leaders, and the inhabitants of Santiago struggled to make sense of such a widespread and

1502, Isabel of Castille instructed Nicolds de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, to build hospitals for the poor. Risse, "Medicine in New Spain," 37.

'J. Joaquin Pardo, Pedro Zamora Castellanos, and Luis Lujan .Munoz, Gufa de Antipua

Guatemala, 2* ed. (Guatemala: Sociedad de Geografia e Historia de Guatemala, 1968), 191-199.

Vasquez [1714] noted that the priests of San Juan de Dios, who administered the hospital San Alejo for Indians, did not know lengua, which meant they did not speak any Maya languages. The members of the order depended on the priests of the convento of Sem Francisco to interpret while they treated the sick and heard confessions. Francisco Vasquez, Crdnica de la provincia del Santissimo Nombre de lesus de Guatemala de la orden de n. serafico padre San Francisco en el reino de la Nueva Espafia. 2' edicidn. (Guatemala, Sociedad de Geograffa e Historia de

Guatemala, [ca. 1714J1937-44,4 vols.; cited in Markman, Architecture and Urbanization, v. 1,79.

°Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 (Berkeley and Los Angeles; University of California Press, 1973), 99.

devastating illness. In the wake of the 1686 epidemic, the ayiintamiento called for regidores to ensure the cleanliness of their barrios, and for a procession of the image of San Sebasti^ through the areas with the highest death tolls/ So many-died that their were no spaces left in the churches to bury them, and the dead were instead buried in communal graves without the usual fimeral rites 8 Church officials conducted a procesion de sangre, a religious procession where participants carried the image of the Santo Crista from the Cathedral and the bishop of Guatemala walked barefoot. The convent of Santo Domingo held a novenario for the bAadre del Dios del Rosario, and priests carried the Virgen de Plata in a religious procession.^ Ayiintamiento officials also asked that the Audiencia, religious orders, and the ayiintamiento itself all contribute to a fund to pay the salary for a doctor from Mexico City. The fiscal of the Audiencia of Mexico notified the ayiintamiento in June that it contracted the services of a medical doctor, Bartolome Sanchez Parejo, for a salary of 600 pesos per year.i'^

In colonial Guatemalan society, popular beliefs about sickness and healing included both "natural" and "supernatural" illnesses, found in Catholic, Maya and African healing traditions. Pre-conquest Mayas believed that evil caused serious illness, and that "to be ill is to be the object of malevolence, the curses of

^La Joya, Candelaria, Sagrario and los Remedies were the barrios of Santiago hardest hit by the epidemic. MacLeod, Spanish Central America. 103-4; Pardo, Efemerides, 104.

®Markman, Architecture and Urbaruzation. 38.

'Antonio de Molina, Antigua Guatemala: Memorias del M. R. P. Maestro Fray Antonio de Molina continuadas v margtnadas por Fray A^ustin Cano v Frav Francisco Ximenez, de la orden de Santo Domingo. Trar\scribed Jorge del Valle Matheu. (Guatemala, Union Tipografica, 1943), 44-45.

^°Jose Joaquin Pardo, Efemerides para escribir la historia de la muy noble y muv leal ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros del Reino de Guatemala. (Guatemala; Tipografia Nacional, 1944), 60.

others."^^ Xibalbans, inhabitants of the Maya underworld, were distinguished from humans by their diseases and horrible smells. Maya glyphs which represent Xibalbans contain foliated scrolls indicating the foul odors they

expelled.i2 Curers, herbalists, midwives, and sun priests who possessed the power to cure illness also had the power to cause illness.^^ The Maya belief that curers simultaneously played roles as curers and sorcerers is a theme that

repeatedly ran through accounts of women's powers fotmd in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century descriptions of female healers.^-' In many African societies, in particular, in Central Africa, healers used spirit mediumship in which saints or ancestors possessed the medium and told where a sickness came from and often gave a remedy to heal it.i= In medieval Spanish society, sources of illness could be either divine, the punishment for some type of "sin" against God, or

'^Munro S. Edmunson, "The Mayan Faith," in Gary Gossen, ed.. South and Meso-American N'ative Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theoloe\" of Liberation. (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 79.

^-Linda Scheie and Mary Ellen Miller, The Blood of Kines: Dvnast\' and Ritual in Mava .Art. (New-York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986), 54.

^^Edmunson, "The Mayan Faith," 79.

^•^This dual role of healer/sorcerer is also found in descriptions of the practices of male healers in colonial society eis well. Azzo Ghidinelli (p. 70-71) argued that in contemporary Mesoamerica, Maya ethnic groups divided illness into two categories, "natural" or "de Dios," and

"supernatural," due to the intervention of evil spirits or humans as witches. See Azzo Ghidinelli,

"El sistema de ideas sobre la enfermedad en Mesoamerica," Tradiciones de Guatemala 26(1986):

69-89. Sheila Cosminsky (p. 160) argued that "The separation of the 'natural' or empirical and the 'supernatural' aspects of the indigenous healing system goes back to Spanish conquest." See her essay "Medical Pluralism in Mesoamerica," in Carl Kendall, John Hawkins, and Laurel Bossen, eds.. Heritage of Conquest Thirty Years Later, foreword by Sol Ta.x. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 159-173. In his ethnographic work among the Lxil Maya in Chajiil, Alfredo Mendez Dominguez (p. 276) found that Chajulenos also distinguished between tvvo types of illness, "con contenido," or with supernatural intervention, and "sin contenido," without supernatural intervention. See his essay "Illness and Medical Theory Among Guatemalan

Indians," in Kendall, et al., eds.. Heritage of Conquest Thirty Years Later, 267-298.

'^John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the .\tlantic World. 1400-1680. (\'ew York:

Cambridge University Press, 1992), 243.

supernatural, due to nefarious religious-magical practices, sometimes in a pact with the devil or other supernatural being.^^

In Santiago de Guatemala and elsewhere in colonial Latin America, both official and popular beliefs about sickness and healing suggested that "sin" could also cause individual illness and "grace," a miraculous healing. For example, Pedro de San Jos6 de Betanctur believed the large epidemic and earthquake tremors in February of 1651 to be divine punishment for his sins, visited upon the capital when he crossed the bridge of San Juan Gascon into the city.^^ vVhen Betancur arrived at the Arcos de las Monjas near the convent of La Concepcion he found himself "full of fright and confusion." He then knelt on the ground and asked God for mercy, and reportedly said, "Ay Senor, Senor, I see that because such a great sinner as I entered [the capital], you have sent this punishment to

this cit}\"^®

Another seventeenth-century account illustrates beliefs that illness v/as the result of divine punishment. Fray Antonio de Molina, a Dominican priest in Santiago de Guatemala, related the story of a double murder that happened in

the capital in 1657. Don Claudio de Quifidnez, accompanied by his black

servant, came home one day to find his wife in the company of a priest, and in a fit of jealousy stabbed them both to death. Apparently while the husband

stabbed the priest, the wife attempted to escape out a window but the servant prevented her from doing so. Fray Molina reported that the woman and the

^^VVilliam Christian, Local Relijjrion in New Spain. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 97.

^^See Manuel Lobo, Relacion de la vida v virtudes del V. hermano Pedro de San Joseph de Betancur (Guatemala, 1677).

^^Agustin Estrada Monroy, Datos para la historia de la iglesia en Guatemala, vol.1 (Guatemala;

Sociedad de Geografia e Historia, 1972), 300.

priest were compadres, so public opinion held that the husband was at fault for killing the two, and so "God punished them both [the husband and the servant]

for what they did." Don Claudio ended his days in the mountains eind died without receiving the sacraments. And, the servant, who Molina deemed particularly guilty for preventing the wife's escape, suffered a gruesome illness.

The servant became a leper, his body filled "full of worms," and then went crazy.

He finally died a year after the murders.^^

Even as inhabitants of colonial Guatemala described disease and illness as the result of divine punishment, so too could miraculous cures be attributed to divine intervention, the result of pious works. Fray Molina related another account of the illness and miraculous healings of Padre Fray Damian Delgado in 1666. Fray Delgado, known as the "Great Minister of the Indians," spoke both

Kaqchikel and K'iche', and wrote a number of works in these languages

including an arte of the K'iche' language.-^ Fray Delgado told Fray Molina that he "suffered from vehement pains all over his body," but when he said mass.

^'Molina, Antigua Guatemala. 94. Molina gave this horrific description of the servant's illness:

"he lost his judgment, he became full of leprosy and worms, and when he sat down, the worms would (crawl out] of his wounds and then return back in." Worms found in wounds were

probably not all that uncommon in coloiual Guatemala since without disinfectants it was difficult to keep wounds and sores clean. Maud Oakes, in a personal account of her experiences as an ethnographer in Todos Santos, Guatemala, described how one day a man came to her house and asked her to cure his father, Lauriano Pablo, who had run a plsmting stick through his leg three weeks earlier. The son claimed that his father's foot and leg had swollen to "three times their natural size." Oakes went to cure him and reported that "The leg and foot were very swollen, but not three times their natural size. 1 syringed out the wound with hot water and a strong disinfectant, and to my horror out came a worm, a white worm. 1 almost threw up. The old man said; 'Senorita, I knew there was an animal in my leg.'" See Maud Oakes, Bevond the Windy Place: Life in the Guatemalan Highlands (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1951), 258.

-''in his arte. Fray Delgado described the K'iche' vocabulary and how to learn the language.

preached, or ministered to Indiaris, "he found himself healed and completely without pain/'2^

Natural and Supernatural Illnesses and the Practices of Female Healers Similar ideas about the division between natural and supernatural sicknesses and miraculous healings can be found in illness accounts among the urban poor in Santiago. For example, in May of 1706, Felipa de X6rez, a thirty-year old widowed mestiza servant, denounced to Inquisition authorities that on the night of 25 August, el di'a de San Luis, a female peddler blinded her with

\iechizos.~ Felipa worked as a servant for dona Juana Arag6n in a house located at the corner of the Cathedral near the cabildo in the capital, just off the plaza mayor. Alone in the house, Felipa mixed chocolate in the kitchen around eight p.m. one evening. Felipa heard a knock, and when she answered the door, she saw a tall woman with her head covered by a black mantillaP The woman, who Felipa did not recognize, tried to sell her a belt and some thread. When Felipa said she didn't want to buy anything, the woman became annoyed and touched Felipa's face with her hands. Felipa shut the door and went back into the house.

Felipa then claimed she immediately felt severe pain in her head and eyes, so severe that she couldn't fiiush making the chocolate, and she went to bed until dona Juana, her mistress, returned home.

-^Molina, Antieua Guatemala, 115-116.

—AGN, Inq., vol. 729. exp. 4, fs. 330-343 (1705). Other witnesses describe Felipa as both a mestiza and a miilata. She describes herself as mestiza. At the time of her testimony, Felipa worked as a servant in the house of dona Juana de Aragon, and she seen\s to have worked most of the time as a laundress. Felipa, however, listed her official occupation to Inquisition authorities as texedora, or weaver.

^A mantilla is a type of veil; the color black suggests a mourning veil.

Dona Juana told Inquisition authorities how she returned that night from tending to her dying aunt and found Felipa screaming from severe pains in her eyes and head. Dona Juana applied some remedios (remedies) with no success, and when she placed a candle in front of Felipa's eyes, Felipa couldn't see it. The next day, dona Juana called Licenciado don Vicente Gonz^ez to come cure her, but when he saw Felipa, he said that he doubted that she would recover her sight, and if she did, it would not be permanent. Despite the doctor's dire

predictions, he prescribed a number of different remedios which Felipa and her mistress eamesdy followed. Felipa did not recover her sight, however, and dona Juana declared that "it is public in this city that she is blind despite having clear eyes."

Detailed descriptions of supernatural sickness, such as Felipa's mysterious blindness, contained four elements that framed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century illness accounts in colonial Guatemala: community conflict, descriptions of illness transmission, accompanying supernatural signs, and

"public knowledge" of the illness. First, the sick, their family members,

neighbors and friends attributed the onset of a supernatural illness to a personal cor\fIict with a family member, neighbor, or stranger. In Felipa's case, she, her mistress dona Juana, and the other witnesses in the case, her sisters Cecilia and Luciana, and the neighbor, dona Isabel Sanchez de Leon, a married Spanish woman and cousin of dona Juana, all testified that Felipa's blindness occurred after she refused to buy anything from the mysterious female street peddler.

Felipa told Inquisition authorities that after she refused to buy anything, the female peddler insisted, and when Felipa again said no, the peddler touched

Felipa's face. As soon as Felipa shut the door, her illness began. In another example from the 1695 case of bodily traiisformation of Maria Antonia, discussed in detail in the last chapter, a mestiza airandera named Catarina Rodriguez

claimed that Geronima de Varaona, a miilata meat vendor, transformed Maria Antonia's body into a man's body, which caused "great pain" and her death nine months later, after Maria Antonia shamed Ger6ruma in front of neighbors and passers-by .2-*

According to colonial Guatemalan illness accounts, certain methods of transmission preceded the onset of a supernatural illness. In Felipa's case, the mysterious female peddler supposedly blinded Felipa with her touch.

Inhabitants of the capital also believed that certain women in the community, deemed hechiceras and brujas, transnaitted supernatural illness through doctored food and drink, by bewitching clothing, through the burial of certain ritual items under the door to the street or in the interior courtyard, rubbing foul-smelling substances including animal fat around door frames, and by throwing or sprinkling doctored water against the house, door, or bedroom windows.

For example, in March of 1698, Nicolasa de Torres, a thirty-six year old single free mulata, told Inquisition authorities that Petrona Mungia, the india laboria servant of her neighbor, came and asked to borrow some items of clothing in the name of her mistress.^ When Petrona returned the clothing to Nicolasa, she threw the items on the floor, causing a heated argument. Nicolasa claimed that right after the incident, graves disgiistos (serious disgusts) appeared in her

2-iAGN, Inq., vol. 644, exp. 2, fs. 196-347 (1682).

^AGN, Inq., vol. 706, exp. 11, fs. 81-89 (1698). Petrona de Mungia, also known as Petrona de Andujar, was also described as imiia prieta. She was married to a carpenter and lived in the barrio of Santo Domingo.

home, and she herself became ill with rabia (rabies) for the next year. Nicolasa's neighbor, Elena de la Cruz, a mestiza married to the slave of don Jacobo Barba, alcalde mayor of San Antonio, told Nicolasa that Petrona caused the illness. Elena claimed that Petrona had also bewitched her after Petrona borrowed some of her clothing. Petrona told Nicolasa that she was not the one responsible for the rabies, but said someone placed a dano (curse) on the door to the street, which they needed to dig up to rid Nicolasa of the illness. Petrona also gave Nicolasa a healing drink that appeared to contain tobacco. Nicolasa drank the beverage, and then, with the help of Petrona, vomited. Nicolasa reported that she felt better and her rabies disappeared for one year.-^

In supernatural illness accounts, certain signs accomparued the onset of bizarre and often incurable illness. These signs could be anything that the sick person, their family and neighbors, or colonial officials deemed suggestive of

In supernatural illness accounts, certain signs accomparued the onset of bizarre and often incurable illness. These signs could be anything that the sick person, their family and neighbors, or colonial officials deemed suggestive of