The Encounter with God. The Aymaras' Conversion to Pentecostalism in contexts of Medical Pluralism

Abstract

This article discusses our analysis of the experience of conversion to Pentecostalism in a context of medical pluralism in Chile. We rely on testimonies obtained from an ethnography with Aymara farmers in the town of Camiña (Tarapacá, Chile), from which we analyze religious conversion as a contextualized process in the dispute over the hegemony of local medical knowledge. We highlight the experience of the encounter with God which, from our theoretical perspective, is a central element in the process of production of ideological certainties. We conclude by questioning the definitions of conversion based on the idea of a mere rupture, to define it as a process of displacement of the hegemonic principle in the medical knowledge inherent in medical pluralism. Conversion would entail a process of interpellation which, while articulating non-Pentecostal identity elements, requires the production of an identity of rupture, generating an identity position in conflict with Andean common sense. We emphasize that this positioning does not cancel out the efficacy of Andean medical knowledge within the health-illness-care process, but does negativize it under the label of idolatry.