Celestial shield against COVID-19. Ethnographic report

Abstract

In this ethnographic exercise presented in the form of a report, we proposed to make a first reading of the practices, narratives and perceptions that account for the constant formulation of certainties or doubts about the existence or lethality of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Otomí and Mazahua communities in many towns of the Toluca Valley. We will describe what we consider to be the deployment of a protective shield that these villages built for themselves in the face of the health crisis. This shield is constructed by means of various ritual elements (prayers, pilgrimages, penitences) or policies, and whose ultimate goal is to safeguard themselves from a disease that comes from the world of the mboehoe (the non-Indians) and therefore must be treated with great caution.