Abstract

MONTESI, Laura. Diabetes as a Metaphor for Vulnerability: The Case of the Ikojts from Oaxaca. Rev. pueblos front. digit. [online]. 2017, vol.12, n.23, pp.46-76. ISSN 1870-4115.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2017.23.287.

This article presents the results of an ethnographic research (2013/2014), that based on phenomenological approach, explored the sociocultural representations of diabetes and the lived experiences of diabetes sufferers in an Ikojts community in Oaxaca. This study suggests that for many Ikojts diabetes is an idiom of vulnerability, symptom and metaphor of the many changes they have recently endured in their community. Diabetes allows them to articulate the experience of vulnerability at multiple levels. The article encourages the inclusion of ethnicity into the understanding of the unequal epidemiologies of the country but warns against the perils of new forms of racial and cultural essentialization.

Keywords : type 2 diabetes; vulnerability; indigenous peoples; Ikojts.