ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE AND TRADITIONAL PRACTICES: PREGNANCY, CHILDBIRTH, AND PUERPERIO IN WOMEN COLLA OF THE ATACAMA REGION

Abstract

Feminist ethnography investigates ancestral knowledge and care practices transmitted intergenerationally by Colla women in the Atacama region, Chile, under the vital stages of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium. The study results reveal that they are knowledge embodied in the bodies, oralities, and experiences of Colla women, transmitted matrilineally through a stable family and community network, located in the Atacameño territory, attached to the customs and cultural traditions of their people. The research process recognizes the deep ancestral wisdom of indigenous colla medicine, recovered through the long memory of indigenous women, based on both sharing knowledge and practices in health and nutrition, and giving birth and raising their children under their history and culture. Colla women put body care and collective motherhood, preserving ancestrality and demedicalization of female processes at the center, thus becoming their foremost decolonizing cultural resistance strategy.