Keywords
suicide, demonic discourse, discourses of health, religion and biomedicine
Abstract
In the state of Yucatan, Mexico, the suicide rate more than doubles the Mexican national average. This article uses ethnographic data to argue that 1) local understandings of suicide in Yucatán reflect a logic of health among Yucatec Maya people hinging on the belief that spiritual, bodily, and spatial balance must be maintained in order to prevent “illness,” understood as bodily and spiritual suffering; and 2) that Yucatec Maya users of Mexico’s public health system readily adapt the biomedical model to existing paradigms that comingle spiritual, mental, and bodily health due in great part to the inherent contradictions in both systems that simultaneously attribute responsibility for suicide and take it away. This apparent contradiction is thus a sympathetic template on which biomedical discourse and its imperfect application can map itself.
Publication Date
2013
Original Citation
Reyes-Foster, Beatriz. 2013. The Devil Made Her Do it: Understanding Suicide, Demonic Discourse, and the Social Construction of 'Health' in Yucatan, Mexico. Journal of Religion and Violence 1(3): 363-381.
Document Type
Paper
Language
English
Publication Title
Journal of Religion and Violence
Copyright Status
Publisher retained
Publication Version
Post-print
College
College of Sciences
STARS Citation
Reyes-Foster, Beatriz M., "The Devil Made Her Do it: Understanding Suicide, Demonic Discourse, and the Social Construction of 'Health' in Yucatan, Mexico" (2013). Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 114.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/ucfscholar/114