Chapter 6. Resilience of Mapuche Health System and the Influence of COVID-19

LADIO A H; JIMÉNEZ-ESCOBAR, N. DAVID

Ethnobotany: From the Traditional to Ethnopharmacology

Taylor & Francis Group

Lugar: Delaware; Año: 2023; p. 153 - 164

Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and reorganizewhile undergoing change and essentially maintaining its structure, function, feedback,and identity. In rural and Indigenous communities, health systems canbe analyzed from the perspective of socio-ecological resilience, as they are complexsystems that operate at the community level and have undergone several changesover the past centuries.The context of the COVID-19 pandemic that broke out in Argentina and Chile in approximately February 2020 and affected the Mapuche communities that inhabit both countries allows for an analysis of adaptive practices in the MHS. Coping with change, withstanding disturbance, and adapting, learning, and reorganizing life when facing a new disease like COVID-19, all directly depend on how societies perceive illness within the framework of their culture, and the social and spiritual resources they count on to deal with it .In this chapter, we focus on the influence of COVID-19 on traditional practices and the creative response of the Mapuche people to deal with the pandemic. Our study is crucial for gaining a more in-depth understanding of the dynamics in time and mechanisms of adaptation to deal with the socio-environmental changes faced by Indigenous communities today.