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Hi Julie,
Thank you for joining our group. What you are doing sounds very interesting, and I will comment on some of the items you mentioned, and I will attempt to put some of it into perspective as best I can.
I grew up in New Mexico, and I lived in Northern New Mexico for close to ten years, where I was very close to the Hispanic populations in the part of the state where I lived - in rural and semi-rural settings, mostly, but in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and in the Sangre de Cristos, also. I was actually raised in Roswell, and the very early years of my life, from the time that I was two years old until I was about eight years old, I had sort of a Mexican "nanny" whom I felt very close to, and this was a factor that always drew me very close to the Mexican American community.
This woman, whose name was Eva Gonzales, was the product of a marriage between a man from the Hondo Valley and a woman who has been a refugee from the state of Chihuahua, who had fled the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution to escape the persecution of families who had been supporters of Pancho Villa.
In Roswell, as in many other part of Southern New Mexico, one sees the connection with Mexico, I think, much more that one does in Northern New Mexico. If one wishes to make a case of their being a distinct culture of Spanish Speakers in places like Northern New Mexico, one has to construct a series of circumstances that whittle this community down to a rather small and isolated core, which, in any event, would have practically disappeared by now. On the other hand, it is hard to escape a myth that such a thing exists, because there is an element that is behind the creation of such a myth, and that element is, in the final analysis, rather ugly, actually. The roots of this myth, more than anything else, are the concept that the "Spanish" settlers of Northern New Mexico were essentially Europeans, whereas Mexican south of the border are largely Indians or otherwise racially an cultural inferior. If one strips away this myth, one can see a more realistic assessment of the underpinnings of the often glamorized New Mexican culture as more of a backwater of Mexico itself, a place that was isolated not in the sense that it preserved something more pure that survived from some mythical Golden Age, but rather a place that had pretty much the same cultural underpinnings of the Mexican, and formerly Spanish, state to the south of it, prior to the arrival of the Americans, that state being Chihuahua.
I also learned, during my time in Nothern New Mexico, that there was actually a lot of social intercourse between Albuquerque and Juarez, and the that same thing was true of Bernalillo, such that all of Bernalillo County experience the effects of this, and this same paradigm extended up the Rio Grande Valley to Santa Fe and Española, such that there was always an umbilical chord still tied to Mexico, which never disappeared, by any means.
The real pillars of New Mexican curanderismo, just as they are in Mexico itself, are nested in the Catholic Faith, which is not rooted in some lost string of shamanistic culture stretching back through time to an ancient, but still thriving albeit sublimitated or else secret woman-based subculture, as some writers have actually suggested. Rather, it is exactly as it appears to be, without the need of any tenuous theorizing. It is something brought over from Spain by the Spanish, couched in the trappings of Catholic dogma. Until this avenue is exhausted, which most of these writers have not done - in fact, they seem to have even begun to explore it - it seems rather dubious to begin to try and extract the threads of what really stands as a practically baseless theory from what amounts thin air, essentially.
It is certainly easy to find Chicana persons to act as supposed spokepersons for this theorizing, who have had family members who were involved in curandera and sobadera practices, because these practices have always been extremely commonplace activities. In fact, if every family were to really do any detailed investigations of their family histories, probably the majority of them would discover that someone was practicing some type of folk healing, especially if one were to start counting something like herbal healing among these traditions, or even such things as curing infants of "mal de ojo" with eggs. These practices, in Mexico, are usually not even done by curanderos. Normally, the use of herbs are family traditions, and no one needs to go to a curandera to tell them which herb to take for which illness, because they already know that. The same goes with "egg cures" - the mother or the grandmother will do that herself.
In short, what I am suggesting is that studying curanderismo in New Mexico will usually only lead to one thing, and that is a very provincial and now someone stilted - due to influence by New Age ideology - perspective that can, and does, ultimately leave one with a rather false impression of what curanderismo really is.
Now, having said that, I will now begin a new tangent where I will contradict myself, or so it will appear, until I come back and resolve it:
The Virgin of Guadalupe is certainly based on a sort of Goddess culture, after a fashion. Her temple was built on the spot of the former shrine of the Aztec mother goddess, Tonantzin "Our Lady". However, the Aztecs were just as much usurpers and interlopers in the Valley of Mexico as were the Spanish, and their interpretation of the Mother Goddes that they installed on a location where one had existed since time immemorial was certainly not the last word on that subject. "Tonantzin" was not the first, or the last, and not the difinitive characterization of the goddess that has alwys existed there, by any means. In my own opinion, the one that we know today, Guadalupe, is the closest thing to whom this Goddess really is. But her role is not, by any means, somehow more favorable to her female children than it is to her sons. We are all the same in her eyes, you will find, if you check and see how Mexican feel about this. The introduction of sexual distinctions is something inserted by New Age Angloamericans and their Chicana enablers, from what I have determined, and it is thanks to writers who consciously perpetrate these myths that they are given any credibility at all. In any event, this ideology is completely foreign to Mexicans, and it behooves and serious student of these topics to take their perspective into account, and not ignore it when it does not fit the thesis one proposed to support.
I have also found that what passes for research in this rhealm is usually very subjective and extremely limited, and, although assumptions of historical underpinnings are broadly applied, any systematic review of archival material is likely to be totally missing. The reason why I say this is because the archival material that has been consulted by those who have actually reviewed it offers a completely different picture. This picture is, in fact, much more like that which can be seen in Mexico today.
"Witchcraft" (brujeria), in Mexico, is not anything that is looked upon with any sense of wonder, and certainly not admiration. In fact, the response that people have to witches is try and figure a way to kill them and get by with it. The role of curanderos and curanderas (and you are right - they are one in the same - their sex has nothing at all to do, whatsoever, with their avocation) is, more than anything else, to combat the brujos/brujas and hechiceros, and to try and cure people who have been been hexed by them, in order - in a rather large percentage of these cases - to save their lives.
Now, when I spoke of archival material that references what might be broadly defines as "the supernatural" in colonial New Mexico, and during the post-Mexican Independence era and the period following the American occupation, one can see in that exactly the same situation there. What existed was a great obsession with witchcraft, which involved a lot of feuding, murders, and persons dragged before the authorities to stand trial for these crimes. This description fits exactly the the scenario that I have heard described here in Ojinaga, Chihuahua and the rural regions that outlie it, and extend on into the interior. There are, literally, countless tales that a folklorist can collect from people who are speaking firsthand about being cured by conditions brought about by witchcraft, or curanderos and curanderas explaining how they cured such people; how the hexes were performed, who did it, who was behind it, and other sundry details. In addition, it is possible to collect tales of the lynching of witches, usually by the two favored methods - tying them up and burning them to death with green wood, and tying them up and beating them to death with clubs.
So, having collected these accounts from people whom I consider to be very credible witnesses over the course of some twelve years now, I would submit that what I have just described to is what is really the essence of curanderismo and brujeria. And I would suggest that if you want to see the roots of what has evolved into the modern practices in Northern New Mexico, based on both interviews conducted in the 1960's and in much older archival material, the best book, far and away, on that topic is "Witchcraft in the Southwest", by Marc Simmons (ISBN 0-8032-9112-7)
The practices of the people are, however, actually very diversified. Curanderos/-as also perform what they descibe as "white magic", which is to say they perform spells that do not inflict physical harm to people, but they are designed to achieve specific goals for them. Now, this is tricky business because everyone - the curandero and the client - are always on slippery ground here, because the issue of the ends justifying the means often results on the curandera (I am going to start using the feminine, just out of convenience) is liable to make a pact with a spirit who is associated with the wrong team, in the quest for easy money, essentially, and start down that long and slippery road to oblivion. And all of this thinking, once again, is solidly rooted in Catholic dogma, for all effects and purposes.
The spells that these people do are normally a matter of invoking, and actually conjuring what they believe to be Catholic saints, through the use of their images and prayers, along with candles and other elements. And, once again, even though an anthropologist might show that there is a link to some Indian, or African entity in the "saint" they are appealing to, that notion has no bearing on them, as far as they are concerned. If they believe it is a saint, it really does not matter to them if the Pope, for instance, thinks otherwise. They either don't know that he doesn't, or, if they find out, they will desregard that through the mechanisms of denial.
Okay. I have just given you an introduction to what I think that curanderismo actually is, which I would invite you to compare with what you believe that it is, and I do not mean to invalidate anything that you have accomplished so far. I think, however, that Mexico and Santa Fe have a lot in common that actually escapes the eye, and if one hasn't the eyes to see it, it wil not be apparant. But, on the another note, I also feel that studying curanderismo anywhere in the United States is really sort of like trying to study the West Texas oil patch from Toronto, if you will. If you get a chance, maybe you should come down to Ojinaga and interview some of the people I have talked to.
Again, thank you for joining our group, and I hope that you will have more to say about your studies.
Bryant "Eduardo" Holman
Ojinaga, Chihuahua and Presidio, Texas
----- Original Message -----From: thepoetsdaughterSent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 9:46 AMSubject: [1curanderismo] a master's thesis on curanderasGreetings to all!
I just joined this group and was pleased and excited to discover its
existence.
I wanted to introduce myself and although I know it's presumptuous,
to ask for a favor already. It is my sincere hope that I offend no
one in doing this.
Who am I? I am ethnically white and Jewish, religiously a member of
the Baha'i Faith (although I am interested in many other traditions
and ideas as well), and professionally a social studies teacher.
Right now, however, I am a stay-at-home mom and student, raising
three children and fortunate enough to have the opportunity when I
can find the time, to pursue my own master's work and the occasional
bit of creative writing.
Why am I interested in this topic? My husband, a Mexican-American
and a professor, began teaching courses in Chicano Literature about
ten years ago. Every year we go to Santa Fe for two weeks and he
teaches a course in Chicano culture, literature, and healing. Over
the years he has had a curandera visit the classes (Elena Avila), a
sobadora several years now (Rosina Martinez, daughter of Gregorita
Martinez), and authors who write about curanderismo or are informed
by it(Rudy Anaya, Demetria Martinez, Denise Chavez). I feel blessed
to know these wonderful people, to have had the opportunity to speak
to them personally, and consider them family friends.
I have always been drawn to religious studies and women's studies
issues, and with my exposure through my husband to the literature and
fiction he has shared with me, I became very interested in
curanderismo and decided to focus my master's thesis in this area.
In another life, I would love to pursue my interest personally and
deeper, to attend healing workshops, to meet more curanderas, and
maybe to even apprentice to learn to identify the herbs and learn how
to heal myself if I had any ability to do so. In this life, with the
kids, the house, the after-school activities too numerous to mention,
etc., I will just be pleased to finish my thesis and graduate this
Dec. before my time runs out with the graduate college. I am sure
that NO ONE in this group can possibly relate to having trouble
finding enough time to do everything you want and need to!!
As I mentioned above, I am writing my master's thesis on curanderas.
My title is: Women Healers: Curanderas as the focus in Southwest
Ethnographic Studies and Literary Texts. I have already written a
chapter detailing as best I can the development of curanderismo, it's
history, components, and some major figures, such as El Nino. In
this chapter I also talk about the idea of women's culture and
goddess history as a buried aspect of western patriarchal culture,
and how women are both fragmented and dualized by this history. I
see curanderas as women healers who are, in a manner of speaking,
physical incarnations of the idea of a mother-earth goddess. Because
my area of focus is women's studies, I am looking at curanderas more
than curanderos, but I realize there is no real division, and that
often times women learn from men who are curanderos and shamans.
I am in the midst of writing my next chapter which focuses on the way
curanderas are portrayed in fiction and the portrait of them as
healing women that emerges from fictional text, poetry, and
biographies. Here I am specifically looking at "Bless Me Ultima,"
some short stories by Sandra Cisneros, the Autobiography "Woman Who
Glows in the Dark" by Elena Avila, and "Singing For My Echo," by
Gregorita Rodrigez and Edith Powers.
Here is my request: If anyone knows of any other works of fiction or
biograhy that deal specifically with women healers, I would be very
grateful for the information.
All my best, Julie (thepoetsdaughter)
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