Mal paraje and mala hora: Remarks on the naturalistic violence towards Andean medical knowledge

The local notions of mal paraje [bad place] and mala hora [bad time] are key to explaining many illnesses in Andean medical knowledge. Notwithstanding the relevance of these notions ethnographically, neither anthropological research nor biomedical knowledge has properly dealt with these local distinctions, and have largely relegated them to the shadows. Our aim is to examine the origin of this shortcoming of anthropological and biomedical knowledge production. Our hypothesis is that such shortcoming is related to the implicit use of certain naturalistic theoretical presuppositions, both from the point of view of social sciences and from the point of view of biomedical research, producing symbolic and epistemic violence against Andean medical knowledge which we call naturalistic violence. In methodological terms we examine ethnographic data from the Aymara community of Camiña (Tarapacá, Chile) and the literature produced on this topic. We focus on the notions of mal paraje and mala hora using the content analysis technique. We conclude that the main naturalistic obstacles include the treatment received by territorial entities, the relationships established among these entities and human beings (reciprocity), and the conceptions of space/time present in the diagnosis of a disease.