Week 9: Takeaways from Final Presentations

This week is final presentation week in LACS 20, and I’m thinking about all of the awesome projects that I’ve seen thus far. It has been so incredible to hear about all of the in depth research and innovative work that my classmates have been doing this term. I’d like to talk about just a couple of the presentations that I’ve listened to this past week: Angela, Hana, and Dave’s presentation on traditional medicine, and Billy, Julia, and Matt’s presentation on autonomous regions and border disputes.

Angela, Hana, and Dave presented on traditional medicine and its role in Nicaragua, particularly among the indigenous population. This was a really fascinating topic to me because the “Western” medicine practiced in the United States often completely neglects any mention of traditional practices or spiritual care. As someone who wants to be a doctor and will presumably be trained in America by Western doctors, I am interested in broadening my perspective to include other facets of medicine that are more prominent in regions outside the U.S.

549575853

The presentation began with a brief history of the indigenous groups in Nicaragua. Like many places, there are a variety of indigenous cultures and peoples, all of which have been mistreated by the colonizing government for nearly as long as the government has existed. Although the group touched on several indigenous groups, this presentation focused the Miskito people, for which the most information on traditional medicine was available. In particular, there was a great deal of information on spiritual illness, which encompasses illnesses of the soul rather than physiological illnesses. This is a concept that might draw scoffs in Western medicine, but in indigenous populations, there are recognized spiritual illnesses for which traditional healers have respected remedies. One of my favorite parts of this presentation was the respect and care with which this topic was discussed, because it is so important that we recognize that just because these illnesses are different from what we know and foreign to us as Americans does not mean that they aren’t real to the indigenous Nicaraguan people. This was also present later in the presentation, as it was discussed that many traditional remedies, such as those for certain types of diarrhea, do in fact work.

A second topic that came up in this presentation was maternal mortality and the role of the casa materna in reducing maternal and neonatal deaths. A statistic that was given that shocked me was that nearly 4% of deaths among women result from maternal mortality cases, largely due to lack of professional medical care during birth. Most midwives are illiterate and lack both formal training and general education, meaning that while they may be very helpful when a birth goes well, they are not prepared to deal with complications in delivery. This is where the casa materna comes in. By providing medical care to women in a group setting, the casa materna is a cost-effective means of reducing maternal morbidity and mortality. This is something that I have researched at length for my final project, but the interesting point that came up in this presentation was a list of reasons for women not to go to a casa materna. Machismo culture prevents women from reaching out and looking for contraception, thereby disclosing sexual activity, and thus the family planning options go underutilized. There are also cultural expectation that women who are “good child deliverers” can give birth at home without all the fuss and prove their worth, an unfortunate phenomenon that contributes to maternal deaths. These were considerations that I did not come across in my own research, and so were helpful in furthering my understanding of my own project.

                                                                                                                                                             

Billy, Julia, and Matt presented on autonomous regions and the various border disputes between these regions within Nicaragua as well as between Nicaragua and other countries. I thought this was both interesting and relevant given that we members of the CCESP team, will be working in the RAAN, one of several autonomous regions in Nicaragua.

nicaragua-departments

Billy, Julia, and Matt clearly put a great deal of time and effort into their work, and their research was in-depth and informative. The presentation began with a segment on indigenous rights, an area which is key to understanding the autonomous regions of Nicaragua. The presenters did a great job of summarizing briefly and focusing on the big picture, which is that despite UN and other efforts to expand legislative protection of indigenous peoples, cultures, and rights, indigenous peoples are still taken advantage of to a massive degree by the nations that colonized their land.

I thought that the transition from this lack of implementation of measures to protect indigenous rights to a discussion of the history of indigenous-governmental relations in Nicaragua flowed very nicely. The discussion of the history of co-opting and abusing indigenous culture by the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas alike was very informative, as was the knowledge shared about the current autonomous regions. This information is especially useful given our destination in Siuna. One thing that I found particularly interesting about this part of the presentation was the fact that Westerners are still coming into the autonomous regions and using violence to take over the land. After such a long history of worldwide abuse of indigenous peoples by colonizing populations, it shocks and saddens me that we are still seeing such cruelty and disregard today.

The last section of the presentation discussed other border disputes. While not necessarily as applicable to us in Siuna, this information served to further our understanding of the challenges faced by Nicaragua and the political climate in Latin America. There are a great many disputed regions and, as pointed out by Professor Moody, it would be interesting to hear what the Nicaraguans have to say about some of them.

One thought on “Week 9: Takeaways from Final Presentations”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *