Emotions and Healing in Indigenous Oaxaca

Candy Martínez

Mellon Fellow at the School for Advanced Research and Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies, Vassar College

Join Dr. Candy Martínez for a program exploring how Indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec communities in Oaxaca understand emotional distress and healing in the context of inequality, migration, and violence. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, Dr. Martínez will introduce concepts such as susto or fright, and show how people experience emotions as forces that move through bodies, families, and landscapes.

Dr. Martínez will discuss healing rituals as forms of communication and knowledge that respond to overlapping forms of marginalization. Attendees will gain a deeper appreciation for how emotions link personal experience to broader social and historical conditions, and how “transborder affect” helps communities confront and transform the pressures they face on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border.

Register to attend the event in person at SAR

Or watch online at www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia

About the School for Advanced Research

Established in 1907, the School for Advanced Research (SAR) advances creative thought and innovative work in the social sciences, humanities, and Native American arts. SAR is home to the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC), a leader in community-advised and collaborative Indigenous arts engagement and collections management. Through scholar residency, seminar, and artist fellowship programs, SAR Press publications, and a range of public programs, SAR facilitates intellectual inquiry and human understanding. SAR’s historic 16-acre campus sits on the ancestral lands of the Tewa people in O’gah’poh geh Owingeh or Santa Fe, New Mexico. SAR is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational institution.