This article discusses the charity in the Gota de Leche, a medical and charitable institution founded in 1911, by the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia to go in support of mothers and their helpless children. From an ethnographic work carried out during 2015, we analyzed the strategies produced by the institution’s workers around the charity, through the concept of symbolic efficacy from critical medical anthropology. We propose that medical charity would allow sustaining class reproduction and a health care system through assistance to mothers and their children. Mainly because of actions carried out by the cooperadoras: women of the Santiago elite, former volunteers, and benefactors of the Gotas de Leches. Thus, the symbolic efficacy of medical charity would account for a social-historical process in the ways of attending the health and mother-child care system in the poorest groups. This gives to the institution's workers a narrative that organizes reality in a social context marked by vulnerability and suffering, which is an expression of structural social inequalities.
Keywords:
symbolic efficacy, charity, critical medical anthropology, Gota de Leche, mother and child care
Leyton, D. (2021). Medical charity as a symbolic efficacy. An ethnography of ‘gota de leche’ in Santiago, Chile. Revista Chilena De Antropología, (43), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-1472.2021.64439
