Health in the Highlands

"A rare and revealing feat of richly textured comparative history that has the additional virtue of blending a bottom-up and a top-down perspective to explore encounters between state and international public health actors and indigenous peoples and their healers."--Steven Palmer, coauthor of Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History

"David Carey adopts an evenhanded attitude in examining differing approaches to health, taking a nonjudgmental look at science-based, folk, indigenous, African, and hybrid medical and health practices."--Ronn Pineo, Professor of Latin American History and Public Health, Towson University

"Through the lens of health and healing, this book presents a welcome and long overdue comparison of the place of highland Indigenous people in the policies and imaginaries of Guatemala and Ecuador. While both countries have demographically significant Indigenous populations, Carey teases out important divergences in policies and practices towards these groups that illuminate other significant spheres of public life. Sensitive to the silences in the archival record, and foregrounding both Indigenous and biomedical practitioners, this analysis will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with encounters between healing systems, racialization, citizenship and state formation, and the history of health, illness and medicine broadly defined."--Kim Clark, Assistant Dean, Faculty of Social Science, and Professor of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario

"A meticulous archival tour featuring the oldest inhabitants of the Americas. The vibrant Indigenous voices that continue to shape health and healing in Ecuador and Guatemala shine through chapters on illnesses and public health strategies."--Raúl Necochea López, Associoate Professor of Social Medicine, University of North Carolina

David Carey Jr. holds the Doehler Chair in History at Loyola University Maryland and is author of I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944 and Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive, among other books.