ABSTRACT
The control of medical practices, patterns of knowing, and the authority to practice medicine sustained the power of biomedicine. This chapter traces the construction of biomedical authority in Yucatan. It is particularly attentive to the intersections of race and medicine. The chapter locates Yucatan within the Caribbean region and explores the medical hierarchy of the colonial era, when medicos, clerics, and Spanish administrators created curanderos by defining what medical practices were legal for which races, along with the “proper” role of religious ritual in healing. It surveys the range of healers who operated in early twentieth-century Yucatan. Yucatan does not fully adhere to the historic patterns of either the Caribbean or mainland Mexico. The process of the authorization of biomedical physicians and the articulation of healing Otherness is described. The chapter summarizes how biomedical physicians in Yucatan used curanderos, yerbaleros, and other healers as a stepping-stone to their privileged status of authorized healers.
