Medical anthropologists have demonstrated that there is significant variation in illness explanatory frameworks across and within cultures. The Explanatory Model (EM) is a method used by medical anthropologists to elicit culturally specific beliefs about illness causation and possible human responses to suffering. In the Mexican cultural context, a variety of psycho-social causes, sometimes in interaction with physical processes, feature prominently in the understanding of a number of illnesses, from diabetes and hypertension to cancer and alcoholism. This paper is based on fieldwork conducted by the authors between 2009 and 2013. The state of Oaxaca is an ethnically diverse, culturally rich but economically poor region in which medical pluralism thrives. Health seeking is an obvious aspect of Pentecostal conversion, given the central role that faith healing plays in this religion. Mexican Pentecostals distinguish themselves from other types of popular or folk healing in the region by emphasizing the spiritual causes of illness, elaborating a unique model of illness causation, and promoting a program of healing that requires “spiritual warfare.” Drawing on a key passage from the 10 Commandments, the community of study places particular emphasis on “intergenerational curses” to explain illnesses: “…I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” This model is used to understand the causes of a wide variety of illnesses, but the pastors and congregants apply this explanation with particular vigor to alcoholism, which features as a significant concern for most members of the church, particularly for women whose partners’ problem drinking has caused them suffering. Thus alcoholism is rooted in demonic curses, which will fester through the generations unless vanquished by a strict program of prayer, fasting, and faith healing to exorcize the demons.

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