Section News
Society for Urban, National and
Transnational/Global Anthropology
Latino Healers Project
Anahi Viladrich, a medical anthropologist and director of the Immigration and Health Initiative, sponsored by the urban public health program of the School of Health Sciences at Hunter College, and her team of ethnographers including Antonella Fabri, Jasmine Gartner, Vincent Goldberg, Joel Naatus, Helga Perez, Martha Rodriguez and Lori Bukiewicz have recently launched an ethnographic project entitled “Latino Healers Treating Latino Immigrants.” The goal of the project is to examine the role of Latino healers as informal health care providers to the growing number of Latino immigrants in NYC. This past spring and summer Anahi and her team began mapping the “hidden” world of Latino folk healers (ranging from herberos to Santeros), gathering ethnographic data on folk healers’ careers, beliefs and therapeutic practices. Healers work either via private consultations or at botanicas, unique ethnic enterprises that sell and provide healing, religious and spiritual services to the larger Latino community.