COVID-19 and the Reordering of the Social Space of Community Health in San Miguel Canoa, Puebla

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the social space of community health in San Miguel Canoa, Puebla, by transforming relationships among households, the community, and the State in the face of an unprecedented public health emergency. This study aimed to analyze this process from a socio-spatial perspective, considering its material and symbolic dimensions, as well as how Nahua farming families confronted the disease by drawing on resources from both institutional and Indigenous medicine. A predominantly qualitative study was conducted, based on 23 semi-structured interviews, direct observation, snowball sampling, the administration of 100 questionnaires, and the analysis of Civil Registry death records from 2020 and 2021.The findings show that the household became the primary space for caring for and attending to people affected by the disease, while the community mobilized support networks and collective knowledge to address the health emergency. At the same time, State intervention through vaccination and public healthcare services shaped new forms of interaction between the population and health institutions. In this context, families drew on both institutional medicine and Indigenous medical practices, including the use of medicinal plants, the temazcal, and other forms of local knowledge, in response to uncertainty, limitations in healthcare infrastructure, and distrust of public healthcare services.The study concludes that the pandemic extended beyond the biomedical sphere by reconfiguring the social space of community health, revealing the interplay among community practices, public policies, and local knowledge.