Most of the members of the Shuar communities, present in the Amazon region of Ecuador, facing an incurable disease for scientific medicine, turn their only hope in traditional medicine. According to their beliefs, for them there are ‘Christian’ diseases and ‘evil’.
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Listen to the report by Ecuadorian Lorena Ankuash Kaekat, a student at the Salesian Polytechnic University of Ecuador, winner of the ninth edition of the RFI Reporting Award in Spanish.
The province of Morona Santiago del Cantón Gualaquiza is located in the south of Ecuador, where there are Shuar communities that maintain their beliefs and traditions, even more so when it comes to finding healing from their illnesses, which are often associated with witchcraft. According to these communities, scientific medicine does not have the appropriate treatment to make those evils disappear. The only one apt to treat these allopathies is the Uwishin, a Shuar doctor who performs cleansing and healing through rituals with natural plants.
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This is the case of Diego Singuana, a young Shuar who was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. For months he has been receiving psychological therapy and despite this he does not feel that the treatment is working, which does not seem normal to him. A doctor diagnosed his mother María with dengue fever, his grandmother was diagnosed with bone cancer, in this case, according to his testimony, it turned out to be a case of ‘evil’ that could only be cured with uwishin. That is why Diego thinks that his illness could also be witchcraft.
Marcelo Pulgarín, a clinical psychologist from the Gualaquiza canton, has worked for more than six years in the communities. He tells of the difficult situation faced by doctors in the sectors because his beliefs affect in some cases the medical results, even becoming very difficult to intervene.
From her experience, she narrates the case of a patient who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and no matter how hard the doctors tried to explain this disease to the patient’s father, the man refused to follow the treatment that kept his daughter stable. He preferred to take him to the sorcerer who told him that it was an evil, but to cure him he asked for a large amount of money in exchange. The consequence of not following the treatment is that his daughter was not cured and she was left in total madness.
José Chumpi Uwishin lives in the Nayanmak community located 30 kilometers from the city. He affirms that evils exist because through his long experience he has cured people of a priori incurable diseases, relating them to witchcraft. From his point of view, he also believes in scientific medicine because each doctor has his specialty and accordingly he can heal his patients.
For his part, Diego wants to go to the Uwishin to be able to rule out any evil, since he feels uneasy because he only has a medical diagnosis. When a member of the Shuar community gets sick, they first go to the doctor and since they do not have fast and efficient results, they do not hesitate to go to the Uwishin (witch) to be healed through their traditional medicine inherited from their ancestors.
