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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
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Abstract

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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.

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