Book contents
- Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800
- Latin American Literature in Transition
- Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Dwelling in Transitions
- Part I Land, Space, Territory
- Chapter 1 Migrations and Foundations in the Literature of New Spain
- Chapter 2 Defining Portuguese America: The First Depictions of Brazil Within the Context of Overseas Expansion
- Chapter 3 The Conquest of Space in the Relación del Descubrimiento del Rio Marañón by Gerónimo de Ypori (c. 1630)
- Chapter 4 Disturbing Place: Afro-Iberian Herbalists Interrupt Imperial Cartagena de Indias
- Part II Body
- Part III Belief Systems
- Part IV Literacies
- Part V Languages
- Part VI Identities
- Index
- References
Chapter 4 - Disturbing Place: Afro-Iberian Herbalists Interrupt Imperial Cartagena de Indias
from Part I - Land, Space, Territory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
- Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800
- Latin American Literature in Transition
- Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Dwelling in Transitions
- Part I Land, Space, Territory
- Chapter 1 Migrations and Foundations in the Literature of New Spain
- Chapter 2 Defining Portuguese America: The First Depictions of Brazil Within the Context of Overseas Expansion
- Chapter 3 The Conquest of Space in the Relación del Descubrimiento del Rio Marañón by Gerónimo de Ypori (c. 1630)
- Chapter 4 Disturbing Place: Afro-Iberian Herbalists Interrupt Imperial Cartagena de Indias
- Part II Body
- Part III Belief Systems
- Part IV Literacies
- Part V Languages
- Part VI Identities
- Index
- References
Summary
Seventeenth-century Cartagena de Indias exemplified the multiracial life of imperial Iberian port cities. Few European doctors served the newly cosmopolitan areas of the empire that fostered alarming new experiences of climate, disease, and injury. Surgeons and herbalists of African descent competed for Iberian clients and played significant roles in defining the spaces of a port city vulnerable to all sorts of invasion. Europeans entrusted their ill bodies to casta healers while fearing death at the hands of those healers’ colleagues, who might be motivated to revenge by the slave system or by the internal tensions of European politics or marriages. This essay teases out the gendered competition among casta surgeons and herbalists who told stories with their words and movements through hospitals, jails, city walls, neighborhoods, churches, and homes of the port city. It draws especially on the trials of herbalist Paula de Eguiluz and surgeon Diego Lopez whose stories allay and arouse the fears of the Iberians they lived with and treated.
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- Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800 , pp. 63 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022