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Articles

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2012)

The Mental Itineraries of the Everyday Lives of Indigenous Women Linked to their Partners’ Excessive Alcohol Consumption

Submitted
June 9, 2023
Published
2012-03-15

Abstract

Some time ago, a psychosocial research project was launched (1999) in an Otomí community in the state of Hidalgo to determine the dynamics of alcohol consumption. It was found, as in many places in Mexico, that alcohol consumption is deeply rooted in culture and that it is a tradition, but also the cause of many social problems, which involve various spheres of everyday life. One of these is women’s everyday lives due to the violence and economic negligence inflicted on them, which produces emotional states of anguish, anxiety, physical and psychological malaise, which increases when they see how their partners’ health is affected as a result of alcohol consumption. Can anything be done for them? Do they want help? Although women are not the only ones to suffer from this, since some children and parents are also affected, they are the main ones to feel the effects. As a means of supporting the family group, a brief intervention model was adapted as an alternative for providing support for the family. The results of the participation in the intervention program and the analysis of the narrations of this process expressed by women are presented in this paper. By mental itineraries, we understand the processes of psychological and cognitive changes undergone by these women in the search for an answer to a situation they could no longer tolerate, which plunged them into a state of crisis. This is analyzed from the theory of experience (Turner, 1994; Mier, 2001) and the Ritual Process (Turner, 1969) understood as, a process of awareness different from previous ones, which makes it different from other similar events. It also drives them to seek help, even though this may involve dealing with cultural norms and patriarchal dominance. What changes an everyday experience for a woman who has tolerated a situation for a long time, suddenly turning it into a social drama that drives her to seek help? The anthropology of experience is based on how individuals experience their culture, in other words, how events are perceived by awareness. To document this experience, we not only recorded data but also cognition, feelings and expectations. Studying this long-established, everyday situation that suddenly becomes a social drama requires examining all the stages in order to be able to reconstruct it. The social drama comprises four stages: rupture, crisis, readjustment and reintegration. Lastly, the study proved the usefulness of the intervention for indigenous communities, despite the fact that the model is counter-cultural, since it runs counter to the cultural habits of alcohol consumption and obedience in a highly patriarchal society that looks for victims and culprits as a means of dealing with situations that cannot be solved or understood.