De Espiritistas y Curanderos Debates sobre medicina tradicional y salud mental latina en Texas y Nueva York durante los 1960

Abstract

In October of 1963, John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act to expand preventive and early mental healthcare to historically underserved communities that overwhelmingly belonged to minority groups. Suspicious of the role that psychologists and psychiatrists had played in the pathologization of racial and ethnic minorities since the 19th century, Latine patients refused to use the community mental health centers and instead continued resorting to traditional healers for emotional support. This article traces the professional debates about the relationship between traditional healing and mental health carried out in 1960s Texas and New York. Following both contexts, I argue that the rising political mobilization among Latines in both states and the popular cries to restrict Mexican immigration into the United States shaped the professional attitudes toward traditional healing. These debates led to two contrasting policies. One that celebrated spiritists and incorporated them into the arsenal of mental health providers in New York City’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Another one that berated curanderos and called for their regulation due to their proximity to indigeneity, and foreignness, as well as their popularity among lower-class Mexican migrants arriving to Texas.