Medical education in the Amazon: Experiences of student movements for an anticolonial and popular education

Abstract

This text critically analyzes the challenges of medical training in the Amazon region in light of
the 2014 National Curricular Guidelines (DCN), highlighting student and popular experiences that point to
the construction of a territorialized, anti-colonial medicine focused on the peoples of the forest. The study
argues that the hegemonic biomedical paradigm is insufficient for the region’s socio-epidemiological realities
of the area, where health is a social process determined by historical inequalities and colonial logics. The text
proposes the construction of an ‘Amazonian medicine’—an anti-colonial, popular, and humanist praxis—and
highlights the experiences of student movements such as the Indigenous Student Movement of Amazonas
(MEIAM), the Amazonian Multidisciplinary Indigenous Health League of Amazonas (LAMSI-AM), and
the National Executive Directorate of Medical Students (DENEM) as insurgent pathways. The conclusion

emphasizes that the institutional commitment of universities and funding agencies is fundamental to consoli-
dating this curricular transformation, reinforcing the potential of these experiences as a model for practice.