Mexico is often defined as a multicultural nation. Its Indigenous peoples represent one of the country’s greatest historical and cultural treasures through their languages, territories, ancestral knowledge, and unique ways of understanding life, illness, suffering, and death.
However, when examining one of today’s most complex public health issues—suicide—a paradox emerges: there is still limited knowledge about how this phenomenon manifests within Indigenous communities and the sociocultural meanings it holds in each territory.
Suicide is also a social and cultural phenomenon. Every society develops its own explanations for death, pain, the body, family, illness, health, and community belonging. Understanding suicide requires examining not only individual factors but also collective histories, systems of meaning, and the ways each community interprets human suffering.
Mexico is one of the world’s most culturally diverse countries. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), millions of people identify as Indigenous, and nearly seven million speak one of the country’s 68 recognized Indigenous languages. This diversity is a fundamental part of Mexico’s national identity.
Greater understanding is needed to identify differences among communities, recognize protective factors, understand culturally specific ways of coping with suffering, and develop public policies that respond to the unique needs of each Indigenous people.
Some states with large Indigenous populations, including Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, have historically recorded relatively high suicide rates. At the same time, other states with significant Indigenous populations, such as Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Veracruz, have reported lower rates according to official statistics. This raises important questions about the factors behind these differences.
These variations demonstrate that suicide must be understood through the lenses of history, culture, social change, community conditions, and the unique experiences of each territory.
A Little-Known History: Voluntary Death in the Nahua World
Historical sources concerning voluntary death in ancient Mexico are limited and, in some cases, difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, anthropological and historical research has provided valuable insights into how Indigenous societies understood the relationship between life, death, and transcendence.
One of the most significant studies is Patrick Johansson’s Nenomamictiliztli. Suicide in the Pre-Hispanic Nahua World, which examines concepts related to voluntary death within Nahua culture.
Johansson explains that the Nahua language contained its own expressions referring to these experiences. The term nonemictiloca, translated as “my voluntary death,” indicates that self-inflicted death was not an unknown concept but rather one interpreted within a specific cultural, religious, and social framework.
Within this worldview, voluntary death could carry meanings associated with sacrifice, honor, spirituality, or particular circumstances of suffering. This illustrates that voluntary death has existed throughout human history, although its meanings vary across cultures and historical periods.
Cultures do not remain static. Colonization, Christian evangelization, economic transformation, migration, and new forms of social organization profoundly changed how communities understand both life and death.
The Complexity of the Maya World: Memory, Symbols, and Social Representations
In the Maya region of southeastern Mexico—which today includes Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, and parts of Tabasco—the relationship between death and society has been examined from multiple academic perspectives.
For many years, one figure has occupied a prominent place in popular interpretations: Ixtab.
Numerous publications have described Ixtab as the “Maya goddess of suicide” or the “goddess of those who died by hanging.” However, anthropologists argue that this interpretation requires careful reconsideration, as there is insufficient evidence to support such a definitive conclusion.
Historical references originate mainly from colonial-era sources and belong to a complex symbolic system in which death, the spiritual journey, and sacred beliefs carried meanings different from contemporary interpretations.
Qualitative research conducted by Badecano in Maya communities of Yucatán found that deeply rooted social beliefs surrounding suicide continue to exist. Families may carry stigma for many years, homes where a suicide occurred may be avoided by community members, and expressions such as “the family of the person who hanged themselves” remain in use.
Research by Hernández similarly documented how these social representations form part of a cultural framework shaped by the blending of ancient Maya beliefs with religious traditions introduced during the colonial period.
Mexico possesses one of the world’s richest cultural traditions surrounding death. The Day of the Dead, recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, reflects a symbolic and communal relationship with those who have passed away.
While rituals surrounding death help preserve memory, strengthen symbolic ties with ancestors, and promote remembrance, suicide continues to be associated with pain, silence, unanswered questions, and stigma in many communities.
Toward an Intercultural Approach to Suicide Prevention
International experience offers important lessons. Studies involving Indigenous communities in Canada, Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand have shown that national suicide prevention programs often fail when they do not take into account each community’s cultural characteristics.
Applying standardized models developed in urban settings is not sufficient. The most successful prevention strategies are those developed together with Indigenous communities rather than simply for them.
This requires incorporating Indigenous languages, territories, local histories, community authorities, families, young people, and traditional forms of social organization into prevention efforts.
Suicide never has a single explanation—especially not in a country as historically and culturally diverse as Mexico.
Understanding suicide among Indigenous peoples requires looking beyond statistics and listening to the meanings that each community assigns to life, death, and suffering. That understanding is the foundation for effective and culturally appropriate prevention.
The author is a sociologist with a Ph.D. in Collective Health Sciences from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM-Xochimilco) and holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from the National School of Public Administration of Québec (ENAP). Her academic and professional work has focused on suicide prevention, social policy evaluation, and the analysis of the sociocultural determinants of health.
Source: eleconomista
