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PART I
History, Philosophy, and Development of Caribbean Healing Traditions
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1
THE HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARIBBEAN HEALING TRADITIONS
Patsy Sutherland
Introduction
The use of traditional healing practices and rituals can be traced back to the genesis of human history. The Shaman is arguably the first spiritual healer deemed an archetype of the contemporary physician and psychotherapist (Bromberg, 1975). Defined as the practices and knowledge that existed before the beginnings of modern medicine that are used to promote, maintain, and restore health and well-being, traditional healing practices are ubiquitous in diverse societies globally and have, for centuries, met the health care demands of populations (Bannerman, Burton, & Ch'en, 1983). Nevertheless, the particular ways in which these healing traditions have been developed and expressed over time are reflective of varied histories, cultures, environments, resources, and the needs of the populations they serve (Wane & Sutherland, 2010). Caribbean healing traditions are no exception. Any understanding of health, healing, and medical care in the Caribbean inevitably draws our attention to the configuration of history and gives emphasis to the transfer of cultural and healing practices from Africa, India, and Europe.
The different territories that encompass the Caribbean region share a complex and captivating history derived exclusively from the greed and struggle for hegemony by European nations in concert with slavery, indentureship, and plantation agriculture from their inception (De Barros, Palmer, & Wright, 2009; Mintz, 1975). As a general rule, oscillating patterns of sugar production are critical to any discussion of traditional healing in the Caribbean as they account for the importation of slaves as well as their eventual destination in the Caribbean. The shifting configurations of sugar production meant that the greatest volume of slaves was dispersed to locations where production was at its climax, most industrially advanced, and protracted. This resulted in the intense process of cultural exchange from which traditional systems of healing were ultimately derived (Fernandez Olmos, 2003; Voeks, 1993). Following the abolition of the slave trade, South Asian indentured workers also brought their religious and cultural healing traditions to the Caribbean thereby, adding to the cultural complexity of these healing systems. Moreover, as tools of colonial power, Christianity, and Western medical science were superimposed on this complex healing system and maintained with remarkable fidelity into the neo-colonial era (De Barros, Palmer, & Wright, 2009). Collectively, these processes have shaped notions of health, healing, and medical care in the Caribbean.
Indeed, the health and medical care of the newly arrived Africans and, later, Indian indentured laborers were gravely threatened by the ghastly life conditions imposed by the European colonizers. Absolute negligence by the colonial masters and the high cost of medical services exposed these individuals to the full violence of diseases and outbreaks, compelling them to tend to their own health care needs (Brizan, 1984; Laguerre, 1987; Voeks, 1993; Weaver, 2002). As a result, they relied on rudimentary knowledge of Amerindian healing systems, their African and Indian traditions, and the utilization of plants that were available to meet their health care needs. According to Laguerre (1987), their survival depended predominantly on their effective use of traditional or folk medicine.
Caribbean healing traditions developed in response to these specific historical forces and represent powerful resources for survival, embody responses to oppression and exploitation, and speak to the determination of the Caribbean people to resist their dehumanizing, life-threatening, and morally offensive conditions (Sutherland, 2011). This chapter begins with an examination of the historical influences that have shaped and reshaped traditional healing in the Caribbean. This is followed by a discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of Caribbean traditional healing systems. Lastly, it explores the broad political interests that have supplanted traditional healing to a reductive place in mainstream society and argue that current healing practices are a response to these processes and have shaped the way in which physical, social, and psychological illnesses are conceptualized, represented, and presented in the contemporary Caribbean.
Historical Background
The study of the Caribbean people has not consistently analyzed the complexity of their historical experiences (Mintz, 1992). The extant historical records represent, in a fragmented and compartmentalized manner, segments of the past that has been expounded from a European perspective. Therefore, any attempt to evaluate the worldviews, spiritual beliefs, and healing practices distinctive to the Caribbean culture, cannot ignore the physical relocation imposed on the people who brought them to the New World (Mintz, 1992). In discussing the Caribbean region, it is important to recognize that while distinct Caribbean societies share many similarities, each is in its own way particular and unique. The historical and cultural development of each country is defined by elements such as the European culture by which it was colonized (English, French, Spanish, or Dutch), the intensity of slavery and the different struggles against it, the degree of economic deprivation, and racial and ethnic heterogeneity and the ensuing identity problems (Mintz, 1989). While these differences may be more evident in the way specific traditions are practiced on the various islands, they must not be overlooked if one is to gain a precise understanding of these societies and their cultural and healing practices.
The Caribbean region, often referred to as part of the New World, is comprised of approximately 50 distinct societies, all of which have endured similar historical experiences (Mintz, 1989). It is the only geographical region in the world where entire societies were brought into existence and sustained by the obliteration of an indigenous population and the massive relocation of an ethnic group from its homeland, Africa, for the purpose of slavery (Patterson, 1967). When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, the region was already inhabited by populations of indigenous people (Brizan, 1984). Geographically disoriented, he erroneously labeled these individuals as “Indians” and characterized them as primitive savages in need of humanizing, thereby justifying European intrusion and subsequent colonization, enslavement, and indoctrination to Christianity (Yelvington, 2000). The indigenous people were unprepared militarily to defend against the invaders. Furthermore, they had no immunity to European diseases and eventually they were eradicated though traces of their ancestry remain in various parts of the Caribbean (Brizan, 1984; Yelvington, 2000). Subsequently, the Europeans imported massive numbers of slaves from Africa and established sugar plantations. It is estimated that approximately 40% of the more than nine million enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage to the New World were dispersed throughout the Caribbean1 (Yelvington, 2000).
Pradel (2000) posits that the African origins of the slaves extended from the coast of Senegal to the south of Angola resulting in a clash of different ethnic groups. She further contends that the magnitude of the slave trade, its intensity, duration, and the lack of any coherent selection process of captives meant that most of the existing rituals from these regions were initiated in the New World. It is not difficult to imagine that many intellectuals and healers ended up the Caribbean as a result of this undifferentiated selection process. According to Voeks (1993) many priests, magicians, and herbalists were included among the newly arrived Africans and they maintained some degree of their previous status, thereby making possible the continued existence of a shaman class in spite of their enslavement. Voeks (1993) added that the practitioners of these African magico-systems were instrumental in reinforcing this collective knowledge in the New World. Enslaved Africans secured a connection with their particular kingdom and home of their gods and it was this continuity that provided the crucial resources for maintaining a sense of identity, culture, and religion (Taylor, 2001).
Both during and after slavery, however, other groups also supplied labor in the Caribbean. For example, more than half a million Indians, of both Muslim and Hindu faiths, were brought to the region; the majority were sent to Trinidad and British Guyana, with smaller numbers going to Dutch Guyana (Surinam) (Mintz, 1975). Theoretically speaking, indentured laborers were not slaves; however, there are many parallels between the two systems. For example, Samaroo (1987) notes that the recruitment of Indians was conducted by a regularly organized system of kidnapping and/or deceiving unsuspecting individuals into offering themselves for indenture. The absence of a selection process also ensured that the Indians who arrived in the Caribbean originated from various economic castes, religions, village groups, and geographical regions resulting in the creation of a mini India in the Caribbean2 (Edmonds & Gonzales, 2010) and, thereby deepening the complexity of cultural and healing traditions already present in the region. Similar to enslaved Africans, indentured Indians identified with their ancestral culture and belief systems and looked to India for inspiration in the face of their oppressive conditions; new traditions were created by borrowing from their homeland and incorporating new myths, rituals, and festivals that culminated into vernacular religions that are very distinct from their place of origin (Edmonds & Gonzales, 2010). Many identified with various gods to help cope with the dehumanizing conditions of colonial domination and exploitation. For example, an important aspect of Caribbean Hinduism was the adoption of the Ramayana tradition into everyday life. In the Ramayana tradition, the main protagonist Ram was exiled from his home; Hindu labourers identified with the character Ram and saw themselves as exiled from their motherland, anticipating their eventual return (Mahase, 2008).
The Caribbean, therefore, represents an ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse region influenced by Amerindian, European, African, Asian, and East Indian cultures. These waves of migration of people from virtually everywhere have made this region the site of an unparalleled collision of different ethnic groups. Hobsbawm (1973) described the Caribbean region as a
curious terrestrial space-station from which fragments of various races, torn from the world of their ancestors and aware both of their origins and of the impossibility of returning to them, can watch the remainder of the globe with unaccustomed detachment.
(p. 8; as cited in Mintz, 1975)
At the same time, it is important to note that these horrific events did not result in “social death” even though the Middle Passage, slavery, and indentureship dehumanized all enslaved Africans, indentured Indians, and their offspring in the most injurious way possible (Nishida, 2003). It seems that people of African and Indian descent demonstrated a remarkable degree of resilience and resourcefulness. Indeed, the paradox is that it was the dislocation, transportation, and insertion into the plantation economy by Western colonialism that integrated these populations, despite their differences, in as much as it severed direct retrieval of and connection to their past (Hall, 1994), and gave rise to the profusion of healing traditions and symbols of resistance present in the Caribbean region today. According to Fernandez (2003) it was the fluidity of these religions that enabled individuals to draw on spiritual power from wherever it was generated to acclimatize to their new milieu. Notwithstanding, neither cultural components nor historical factors alone can capture the entire significance of these healing traditions. An exploration of spiritual beliefs, as well as beliefs about the causes of illness and their functional roles, are important for a broad understanding of Caribbean healing traditions.
The Philosophical Basis of Traditional Healing
It seems that over time different cultural groups have developed their own explanations and conceptualizations of illness, mental health, and well-being, and, consequently, identified culturally sanctioned coping strategies (Lee & Armstrong, 1995). At the heart of the collection of hybrid or creolized healing traditions in the Caribbean is the worldview that everything in the universe is of one source and will, and that the world is animated by numerous ancestral spiritual entities, gods, and deities that frequently intervene in the everyday lives of individuals (Vontress, 1991; Wane & Sutherland, 2010). For example, it is believed the body, mind, and spirit are all interconnected and whatever affects one, impacts the other. From this perspective, illnesses and disorders may derive from many sources including natural, social, spiritual, or psychological disturbances that create disequilibrium which can be expressed in the form of physical, social, or mental ill health (Laguerre, 1987; Wane & Sutherland, 2010). Causa...
