Healing the Other: a comparative history of missionary healthcare among an Amazonian people, Suriname-Brazil 1959-1994. (360G-Wellcome-097509_Z_11_Z)

Healing the Other is a comparative study of two missionary primary healthcare systems established among the Trio, a native Amazonian population who live on either side of the border separating Suriname and Brazil. From 1959 until 1994, Franciscan priests and Protestant missionaries were granted exclusive access for the provision of healthcare by the states of Brazil and Suriname respectively. As agents of contact and sedentarisation of a Central Carib semi-nomadic population, they designed and p rivately ran primary healthcare systems with little supervision from national authorities, which took advantage of the missionaries' desire to reach isolated peoples to colonise the frontiers of their remote interior. Based on archival research on hitherto unexplored records at the headquarters of the Medical Mission in Paramaribo (Sur) and of the Franciscan mission in Bel m (Br), in private archives and in the archives of mission and governmental offices, and on oral testimonies from Trio elder s and leaders who witnessed the arrival and settling of the foreign missionaries, this project builds on my previous ethnographic involvement in the area as a social anthropologist. It will contribute to the wider study of the organisation and impact of faith-based international non-governmental medical agencies in developing countries.