Many women throughout the world face the challenge of confronting an unexpected or an unwanted pregnancy, yet these experiences are often shrouded in silence. An Open Secret draws on personal interviews and medical records to uncover the history of women’s experiences with unwanted pregnancy and abortion in the South American country of Bolivia. This Andean nation is home to a diverse population of indigenous and mixed-race individuals who practice a range of medical traditions. Centering on the cities of La Paz and El Alto, the book explores how women decided whether to continue or terminate their pregnancies and the medical practices to which women recurred in their search for reproductive health care between the early 1950s and 2010. It demonstrates that, far from constituting private events with little impact on the public sphere, women’s intimate experiences with pregnancy contributed to changing policies and services in reproductive health in Bolivia.

In Who Counts? Diane M. Nelson explores the social life of numbers, teasing out the myriad roles math plays in Guatemalan state violence, economic exploitation, and disenfranchisement, as well as in Mayan revitalization and grassroots environmental struggles. In the aftermath of thirty-six years of civil war, to count—both numerically and in the sense of having value—is a contested and qualitative practice of complex calculations encompassing war losses, migration, debt, and competing understandings of progress. Nelson makes broad connections among seemingly divergent phenomena, such as debates over reparations for genocide victims, Ponzi schemes, and antimining movements. Challenging the presumed objectivity of Western mathematics, Nelson shows how it flattens social complexity and becomes a raced, classed, and gendered skill that colonial powers considered beyond the grasp of indigenous peoples. Yet the Classic Maya are famous for the precision of their mathematics, including conceptualizing zero long before Europeans. Nelson shows how Guatemala's indigenous population is increasingly returning to Mayan numeracy to critique systemic inequalities with the goal of being counted—in every sense of the word.

One of the first books to explore this influential spiritual and magical tradition, covering its philosophy while also providing a practical hands-on guide. Espiritismo is the Spanish word for Spiritism or Spiritualism, spiritual traditions that emerged to great popularity in the US following the Civil War. In the US and Canada, Spiritualism’s primary focus was on communication between the living and the dead. The spiritual tradition traveled around the world, especially in Latin America, where it evolved in different ways. The Puerto Rican influence on modern Western magic is profound but largely unheralded. Beginning in the early 20th century, Puerto Rican immigrants to the US introduced Espiritismo to the US spiritual landscape, strongly affecting the way magic was practiced. Hector Salva’s book places Puerto Rican Espiritismo in this broader perspective.

Un excelente libro para la introducción acerca de la tradición religiosa Afro-Brasileña de Quimbanda. Un manual excelente para que los principiantes aprendan sobre el reino espiritual de la Santísima Trinidad de Quimbanda y los Siete Reinos de Quimbanda. Este libro contiene la historia de Quimbanda. Aprenda cómo hacer hechizos y rituales para el espiritu Exu y Pomba Gira. Este libro contiene las instrucciones para hacer un Ritual de Siete Días de Quimbanda para la protección, suerte, dinero, salud, fama, fortuna, escapar de problemas legales y para triunfar sobre sus enemigos.

Confesiones de un Psiquiatra un relato escrito en forma coloquial sin someterse a tradiciones o formatos literarios. El autor relata algunos fragmentos de su vida exitosa y azarosa en una forma sencilla a la vez que hace reflexiones sobre diversos temas que tienen alguna relacion con sus vivencias, desde aspectos muy comunes de la vida cotidiana hasta reflexiones sobre aspectos de tipo filosofico, psicologico, sociopoliticos entre otros. En sus relatos no sigue una forma cronologica exacta sino que mucha veces avanza y retrocede para comunicarse con el lector como si lo tuviera frente a el como un interlocutor valido. Siendo un libro motivador, comunica no solo experiencias conducientes al exito sino tambien comparte situaciones de fracaso y dolor y la forma de superarlas. Lo mas caracteristico es la transmision en forma consistente de mensajes positivos que insiste en transmitir a sus lectores haciendoles participes de las experiencias de un ser real y hasta cierto punto considerado reservado y enigmatico como se suele pensar de un psiquiatra. El autor vencio todas esas barreras y se revela tal como ha sido y sigue siendo a como lo haria en el sillon de un psicoterapeuta o en el confesionario. El autor esta consciente de los riesgos que puede correr un profesional de la salud mental que se destapa y desprende de todo prejuicio con la esperanza de poner a la disposicion de sus lectores un testimonio del cual pueda sustraer algo util para sus vidas y sus ocupaciones o profesiones. Habiendo enfrentado tantas situaciones de alto riesgo, el autor hace apologia del ejercito de angeles que lo han protegido y que el identifica con los seres a quien ha dado amor y respeto y que le han retribuido esos afectos en forma incondicional, tanto en su familia como en muchas personas que fue encontrando en su largo recorrido por el mundo. De formacion transcultural, el autor ha podido convivir armoniosamente con personas de diversas creencias religiosas, politicas y origen etnico. El autor ha hecho muchas renuncias excepto renunciar a vivir en libertad, lejos de los opresores de las libertades y derechos individuales, y no renuncia a la esperanza de algun dia vivir en un mundo libre de prejuicios, estereotipos y dictaduras depredadoras y brutales, ni tampoco renuncia a la esperanza de que cada ser humano pueda aprender a usar los recursos personales que todos poseemos para ser ricos, interdependientes y exitosos en vez de pobres, lastimosamente dependientes y fracasados. El mensaje que el autor intenta transmitir en sus confesiones es un mensaje de vida y prosperidad por medios eticos, repudiando enfaticamente el lema de que "los fines justifican los medios"

A cutting-edge anthology that opens the door for emergent voices from African American, Indigenous, Latin American, and Asian embodiment traditions to transform the field of somatics The notion of “body” that underlies most available writings about somatic theories and practices often assumes a universal normality of structure and function that has now come into question. In this collection, viewpoints grounded in neural, hormonal, gender, and physiological diversities challenge convention and open up a more inclusive world of somatics for psychotherapy and many forms of bodywork. The authors embody these differences and have developed their particular somatic practices out of direct experience. Their narratives offer new approaches to the transformation of our social order’s bodily roots enabling a healing of the recurrent traumas of the past. Covering topics such as the autistic body-mind, how the human body is both shaped by and shapes contemporary society, and somatic psychotherapy as a trustworthy resource for healing within the African American community, these poignant essays will help students and practitioners of somatics broaden the scope and efficacy of their therapeutic practices.

Based on more than thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork in Highland Guatemala, this study of Maya diviners, shamans, ritual dancers, and religious brotherhoods describes the radical changes in traditional Maya religious practice wrought by economic globalization and political turmoil. Focusing on the primary participants in the annual festival in the K’iche’ Maya village of Santiago Momostenango, the authors show how older religious traditionalists and the new generation of “cultural activist” religious practitioners interact within a single local community, and how their competing agendas for adapting Maya religiosity to a new and continually changing political economy are perpetuating and changing Maya religious traditions.