By the thread of memory, health is woven: multiplicities of indigenous-bolivian presences in Sao Paulo

Abstract

Currently, the largest immigrant community in Sao Paulo comes from Bolivia, and part of this population is indigenous. In the media, Academy, and the widespread popular image, various discourses circulate regarding their presence, many of which (re)produce miserabilism, reducing their multiplicity to labor in sewing workshops. Betting on health narratives that might be found on memory records, this article analyzes five documents about and by indigenous bolivian people. First, it revisits the notions of memory and health in Indigenous Psychology, Social Psychology, Anthropology, and andean cosmovisions. The statements are analyzed dialogically, considering the context of their production and their effects on what they name. Narrated and embodied memories, both personal and collective, are brought into tension, reverberating multiple narrative possibilities. From this, the right to memory and forgetting is envisioned, through fissures in colonial borders, to ensure health promotion, reaffirming the agency of indigenous-bolivian people in telling their own stories and weaving healthy ways of existence.