South America is a primary example of a setting in which colonialism led to the infusion of two distinct cultures, becoming one through time. The potential of economically valuable areas lead colonizers to become intertwined with the culture of indigenous populations in South America. The Spanish first came to South America in search of gold and later with hopes of taking advantage of the natural resources again through the rubber industry. As the transformational period of colonization took place, two cultures came in contact. They both perceived their cultures as distinct and separate entities, complete cultural opposites with distinctly different lifestyles of subsistence. Both began contact with very ethnocentric views of each other’s culture, as could be expected. Yet, the reality of the situation was that they would be and become interconnected as their histories were now linked together. One distinct way that this is evident is through the evolution of healing practices and spiritual beliefs of the indigenous South American population as a reaction to colonization. In addition, the stereotype of the “wild savage” by the European colonizers, the instituted religion of Catholicism, the complex relationship between the healer-patient relationship within shamanism and the creation of a “colonial consciousness” all serve to show elements of cultural fusion as a result of dominance. Indigenous people and the dominant white culture became integrated to the point that certain beliefs now coexist between both groups. ‘What distinctly happened within the culture of the South American indigenous population was syncretism, or the synthesis of both old and borrowed traditions, a common occurrence of colonization in which one civilization dominates the other and forces elements of conversion’(Kessing, 394). In addition to this process of syncretism, both of these cultures became stronger, ...
