Susto and Mal de Ojo among Florida Farmworkers: Emic and Etic Perspectives

This article addresses emic and etic perspectives on two Mexican folk illnesses, susto and mal de ojo. The approaches of Mexican and Mexican American mothers to treating these illnesses in their own children are compared and contrasted to those stated by physicians in a local clinic. The physicians considered the vast majority of the sets of symptoms given for these folk illnesses to be worthy of medical attention and possibly life threatening if not treated. While folk illness diagnoses may not exactly label biomedical “diseases,” the folk diagnoses do indicate life‐threatening conditions to which biomedical healers should be sensitive and attentive. This research suggests that the perception of folk healers that these illnesses cannot be dealt with by biomedical healers may be as incorrect as the perception of biomedical healers that these are mere “culture bound syndromes,” that is, not real medical problems.