LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
spring 2003
Student Research Project
Ashley Salter
LITR
5731 2003 project
Understanding
Ultima: Las curanderas y las brujas
Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima has as its protagonist the boy Antonio, and the story is told in the first person from his perspective. But it is the title character, la curandera Ultima, around whom the entire story is built. Her name is the first word in the novel, and her death brings the narrative to a close. Our class discussions included several attempts to understand Ultima. Interpretations ranged from comparing her with the Virgin of Guadalupe to insisting on her similarities with las brujas of the novel, the Trementina sisters. I was intrigued by the divided opinions of my classmates, especially those who identified Ultima as a bruja, or witch. They became somewhat skeptical of her roles as benevolent healer and religious guide to Antonio.
Several incidents related by Anaya encourage an ambiguous reading of Ultima. Readers can make ample connections between Ultima and things they have been told about witches. They can also correlate Ultima with things the novel has explained about brujas. Ultima’s use of three clay dolls (101) to break the curse on Antonio’s uncle links her with traditional conceptions of witches. She sticks pins in the dolls, and at least two of the Trementina sisters die. The novel doesn’t explicitly connect these events, but the reader is invited to conclude that Ultima’s clay figures are “voodoo” dolls and she has contributed to the brujas’ deaths. When Tenorio appears at the Marez house and accuses Ultima of witchcraft, the mob requires that she walk under a cross hastily assembled from two needles (134-5). She passes their test, but immediately afterward Antonio spots the needles lying on the ground, no longer fashioned into a cross. Readers have to wonder if la curandera actually walked through the doorway with the cross intact. Ultima’s owl, even before the novel’s ending which powerfully connects the animal with her, reminds many people of a witch’s familiar. Recent – and rather benign – examples of familiars can be seen in the Harry Potter books and films where young wizards and witches are allowed to bring a rat, a cat, a toad, or an owl with them to school. Through the use of the owl, the cross, the dolls and other elements, Anaya cultivates the doubts my classmates expressed.
My classmates’ opinions of Ultima made me want to investigate curanderismo and brujeria, to see what similarities and differences exist between these practices. In terms of the novel, I believed Anaya was intentionally blurring the boundaries between bruja and curandera, creating an atmosphere of doubt and confusion that mirrors Antonio’s religious searching and his grappling with the concepts of good and evil. As students who haven’t been exposed to actual curanderas, however, we were much like Antonio – not sure exactly how to sort out the two concepts. I thought some information on Mexican folk healing and its practitioners could lead to a better understanding of the novel and the minority culture.
The process of researching curanderismo led seamlessly into exploring its relation to brujeria. I fund useful information in biographical accounts, folklore narratives, scholarly journals, another novel, and articles from Business Week and the New Yorker. Sometimes the sources overlapped, other times they contradicted each other. I’ve tried to convey this complexity by choosing to include the supporting or contradictory information. There were numerous instances when I wanted to interject parallels between what I was learning of curanderismo and brujeria and what happens in the novel. The sheer volume of information I had to compile compelled me to not comment much on these interconnections, but they will be obvious to anyone who has read the novel.
Bobette Perrone, H. Henrietta Stockel
and Victoria Krueger. Medicine Women, Curanderas, and
Women Doctors. Norman, OK: U of
Oklahoma Press, 1989.
This text profiles women healers of three types and includes a section on curanderas. According to Perrone, Stockel, and Krueger, a curandera is a traditional Hispanic healer. Curanderismo is practiced not only in the southwestern United States but also in places from Florida to Spanish Harlem. The specific methods of curanderismo vary with the background of the practitioner and may include influences from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico (85). Curanderas heal using herbs, massage, and other techniques. Religion, usually Catholicism, is also integral to their healing methods (94). Ritual and symbolism are often incorporated into healings (90). The authors determined that curanderas typically learn from an older family member and their skills are honed treating their own families (87). They describe different types of curanderas: “While curanderas total are analogous to general practitioners and have the highest status, there are others, specialists in discrete areas” (91). They profile three such specialists from New Mexico.
The first profile is of Sabinita Herrera, a yerbera or herbal specialist. She told her interviewers about gathering and drying herbs to make remedios (100-1). She learned about herbs when she was young, and she works with a clinic doctor whose patients expect traditional herbal remedies (102-3). Although she works with a physician, Herrera refuses to take non-herbal medicines even for her asthma.
Gregorita Rodriguez is a sobardora, a person who heals through rubbing or massage. She is particularly skilled at easing abdominal complaints. She learned curanderismo from her aunt and grandmother. Rodriguez has been known to clash with medical doctors over the diagnoses of patients and she refused medical treatment for injuries she suffered in an auto accident. Rodriguez told interviewers, “A curandera is more than a doctor . . . The curanderas cure with their minds, with their experience and with herbs” (109).
Jesusita Aragon is a partera or midwife. She began helping with deliveries when she was thirteen years old, and within two years she had seen all sorts of birth defects and complications. She learned some aspects of obstetrics from women doctors and used this knowledge to enhance her midwifery (115-6). Each of las curanderas also mentions prayers to saints and the Virgin or other religious aspects of their healing.
Curanderas
and Witchcraft
Perrone, Stockel and Krueger also discuss cultural perspectives on witchcraft (177-196). They maintain that people generally associate witchcraft and women, especially through popular Halloween images. They point out that many modern Americans don’t think of bewitchment as real, but some do. “Many Southwest Hispanic people believe in witchcraft because of tradition,” they write. “For centuries, concepts about bewitchment persisted in Europe and were carried across the ocean to the New World. The concepts were so ingrained in the folk culture that it was natural, not unusual, to conclude a neighbor was under a spell when a bad stomach got progressively worse despite being treated with available remedies” (183).
In Hispanic and Native American cultures, the authors relate, witches are thought to be able to cause sickness. Bewitchment is regarded as the only reason a curandera’s healing would not cure a patient. But only after exhausting all other treatment options would the person turn to an arbularia, a specialist healer who could undo or alleviate the effects of witchcraft. Arbularias must learn a good deal about brujeria in order to remove bewitchments, and this can make them seem suspiciously close to being a bruja (179-80).
Sandra D. Atchison.
“A Few Herbs, a Prayer – and Often a Cure.” Business Week 2
August 1993: 16A.
This brief article from Business Week offers some additional concrete information about curanderismo as practiced by Sabinita Herrera. Atchison writes that only a few curanderas remain in northern New Mexico where Herrera lives, because doctors have rendered them almost obsolete. She notes a growing interest in curanderismo among young Anglos. Such interest helped convince Congress, in 1991, to allot $2 million for the study of folk remedies. Atchison describes Herrera as a “devout Roman Catholic” who is apparently accepted by the church and the local priest.
Herrera decided to become a healer at age 10, she told Atchison. Her father and grandmother also practiced curanderismo. She knows uses for 105 herbs, and travels up to 100 miles to gather them in places less polluted than the local road sides. She washes the herbs in the creek that supplies all of her water and dries them indoors on sheets. She was once offered $2,000 for the formula to an ointment which helps heal skin conditions. She declined. She charges most patients five dollars for herbs, but gives them the remedies if they cannot afford to pay. “Her remedies bring her roughly $1,500 a year, some of it in bartered potatoes, beans, and chili peppers. Advice – and house calls – are free.” For most of her patients, healthcare is a combination of conventional and folk treatments. When Herrera cannot offer a cure, she refers her patients to a medical doctor.
Trotter, Robert T.
“Curanderismo: A Picture of Mexican American Folk Healing.”
Journal of Alternative and
Complementary Medicine 7 (2001): 129-131.
Trotter, an anthropologist, writes specifically about Mexican American curanderismo, while noting its shared traditions with Mexican and Latin American cultures. He identifies several historical roots of curanderismo from the ancient Greeks and early Judeo-Christians to Medieval European magic and witchcraft, Moorish influences, and Native American traditions. He mentions the religious dimension of curanderismo and explains that most curanderas have “altars that they use as their primary workbenches” (130). On these altars, the healers keep herbs, crucifixes, holy water, images of saints, ritual candles, and other objects used in their rituals. Curanderismo recognizes illnesses with both physical and supernatural causes. They deal regularly with conditions not recognized by conventional medicine – “problems of a social, psychologic, and/or spiritual nature, as well as physical ailments. The total list of problems presented to the curandero or curandera is nearly inexhaustible and includes virtually every uncomfortable human condition” (131). For physical complaints, curanderas heal with herbs and massage. They practice midwifery. They also heal illnesses such as susto, soul loss, and treat brujeria or witchcraft.
Elena Avila and Joy Parker. Woman Who Glows in the
Dark: a Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual
Health. New York: Tarcher/Putnam,
1999.
Woman Who Glows in the Dark is an autobiographical account by Elena Avila, a curandera with twenty years experience who also holds a master’s degree in nursing and worked as a psychiatric nurse. She began learning curanderismo while working as a nurse. Eventually, she became frustrated with work situations that did not allow her to use the insights of curanderismo to help her patients. As a full-time curandera, she can use these insights and refer patients to medical doctors when needed.
Avila offers some definitions of curanderismo and a history of the practice. Curanderismo is derived from the Spanish word cura which means “to heal” or “to be a priest” (16). Avila sees curanderismo as “an earthy, natural, grounded health-care system that seeks to keep all of the elements of our being in balance. Curanderos believe that human beings – along with animals, plants, minerals, water, earth, air and fire – are a part of the living earth system. Illness occurs when one does not live in harmony with all aspects of self and nature” (19).
Avila traces the roots of curanderismo to three cultures – Spanish, Aztec, and African. When fifteenth century Spaniards arrived in the New World, they brought a sophisticated system of medical knowledge that had already distilled and incorporated knowledge from Greek, Roman, and Moorish sources. The Spanish believed that illness could be caused by either physical or spiritual factors. Spiritual causes included curses, magic, and punishment by God for committing sins. Curanderismo was born when Spanish medicine encountered another sophisticated system, one belonging to “the spiritual, earth-oriented medical practices of the indigenous people of Mexico and what is now the southwestern United States” (15). Avila admits that curanderismo draws from more than one indigenous culture, but she focuses on the Aztecs because she knows most about their influences. From teachers of Aztec ancestry, she has learned nawi ollin teotl, or “the essence of the four movements,” a formula for keeping the body in good working order. The third cultural influence on curanderismo came from the African slaves that Spanish settlers brought with them. These slaves shared with Native Americans the view of “soul and spirit not as something holy and disconnected from the body, as the Spaniards did, but as inside of us, grounded in our physical body, emotions, and mind” (22).
Avila differentiates the approach of curanderismo from that of medical doctors, because a curandera focuses on the whole person rather then just physical ailments. “Curanderismo treats problems that are recognized as illnesses in Western medicine, as well as many that aren’t,” she writes. “I have treated people with eating disorders, diabetes, heart problems, cancer, chronic back problems, hypertension, and just about anything that a medical doctor treats. I have also worked with people who were struggling with shyness, self-consciousness, a broken heart, bad luck, a wish for greater prosperity, nightmares, envy, loneliness, rage, anxiety, family problems, marriage problems, sexual problems, infertility, how to find a partner, or how to leave a partner (41-2).
Avila further examines some of the illnesses that curanderas treat and how those illnesses are categorized (43-69). Physical ailments include bilis (rage), empacho (stomach or digestive troubles), and mal aire (cold symptoms and earaches that result from being out in the night air too much). Emotional diagnoses include envídia (envy), mal ojo (a designation for babies or young children who become cranky and slightly ill after too many people have fussed over them) and mala suerte (bad luck). Mental conditions are never treated separately because they are entangled with other health concerns. The main spiritual diagnosis is susto or soul loss. Avila’s Aztec teachers believe that 52 percent of a person’s energy should go into maintaining her physical body. The emotions need 26 percent and the mind 13 percent. That leaves nine percent of a person’s energy for maintaining a healthy soul. When the other components require more than their share of energy, the souls is deprived of needed energy and susto occurs. In the case histories that Avila details, she almost always treated susto as well as the patient’s other health concerns.
Avila describes some varieties of curanderas and the healing methods they specialize in. Hierberas are herbal specialists. Most curanderas use herbs, but some make it their specialty. Sobadoras are similar to massage therapists, and touch is their primary tool. Parteras, or midwives, deliver babies and provide the community with pre- and post-natal care. “In the old days, the midwives would take the umbilical cord outside and bury it under a tree so that the child would always know that he was connected to the earth,” Avila relates (75). This parallels Tony’s dream about the argument between his parents’ families. Consejeras are counselors. They heal through pláticas – listening, talking with, and guiding the patient through their troubles in a much more involved manner than that of psychological counseling sessions. Esperitualistas are trance mediums, and Avila notes that these curanderas are not common in the United States. Hueseras are similar to chiropractors and heal by relocating joints. The Curandera Total is a healer who utilizes four levels of healing: education (such as teaching a person about proper nutrition), bodywork (such as massage), medicine (such as herbs), and sacred tools (from feathers and crystals to X-rays and sonograms).
Avila analyzes her presentation of curanderismo and comments on why it differs from some other sources. “Many of the old wisdom keepers died without passing on what they knew because my generation and my parents’ generation were being pressured to assimilate, to turn our backs on the old beliefs.” She has sought out “old wise ones” who are still living, but they haven’t always been able to explain why curanderas do certain things. She has had to make some connections on her own, and other questions remain unanswered. The example she gives concerns the limpia, a healing procedure in which an egg is rolled over a person’s body allowing the healer to read the person’s energy and help the patient to release negative emotions. She states that she has not been able to discover why the limpia uses an egg specifically (36).
Bewitchment, Brujeria,
and Connections to Curanderismo
Avila discusses one other emotional diagnosis – mal puesto, a hex or curse. She doesn’t believe that patients with mal puesto have actually been bewitched. She points out possible mundane causes of sickness or bad luck to these individuals who believe they are cursed. “Many of our misfortunes are the result of our own actions or the ups and downs of everyday life,” she tells them (57). Claiming to lift curses is the work, in Avila’s view, of charlatans and impersonators who are only interested in profit. She has met and heard of alleged curanderas who accept exorbitant payments and tell clients they will remove a curse. She believes these people “as evil as the so-called brujos who supposedly cause the curses” (27-8).
Avila also comments on how popular thought sometimes connects curanderismo with witchcraft: “Even though some modern curanderos, or at least the scholars who write about them, still talk about hexes and brujeria (black witchcraft), I would like to make it clear that I personally have had little or no experience of it. I don’t know any brujos who do the things that many academic papers claim the do. I have never met anyone who collects graveyard dust, mixes it with urine and feces, and concocts evil spells to put on people. As a modern day curandera, however, what I do see are people who come to me because they think they have been hexed or cursed, and some of them feel as if the person who cursed them went to a specialist to get help” (27).
Some aspects of Avila’s curanderismo are reminiscent of witchcraft or brujeria. The use of burning candles, an altar with symbols of the four compass directions, the use of dolls symbolizing the lost part of a person’s soul – these are a few of the things that parallel my knowledge of witches. She has some of the ambiguity of Ultima. I will return to these ambiguities and the similarities between curanderas and witches/brujas throughout this investigation.
Stanley L. Robe, Ed.
Hispanic Legends from New Mexico:
Narratives from the R. D. Jameson Collection. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1980.
This is a group of narratives collected from communities in northwestern New Mexico between 1951 and 1957. Folklorists drew on strong oral traditions in the town of Las Vegas and locations in San Miguel, Mora, and Guadalupe counties (vii, ix). “Legends that deal with witchcraft form by far the largest thematic category” within the legends. They make up 38 percent of the material (219). Robe asserts,” Definitions that apply to witches elsewhere in the world are applicable generally to these features of New Mexican belief” (220). He offers a basic definition of witches as persons who cause harm to others by using extraordinary powers. Robe notes that colonization of the Americas took place during a time when witches in Europe were being scrutinized, hunted out, and killed. The Spanish effectively transported their beliefs about witches and witchcraft to the new colonies. In the communities where these legends were gathered, these beliefs have remained consistent for four centuries (221).
Robe defines four types of individuals involved in witchcraft. Each uses magic differently. The bruja is the traditional witch, capable of turning into animals and flying through the air to meet other witches and worship the devil. She uses her magic to harm others. The brujo also uses his magic for evil purposes, but does not join the meetings of the brujas. The curandero or curandera uses folk remedies to cure illness. He or she may also treat illness caused by witchcraft. The herbolario or albolario specializes in using herbs to treat witchcraft. These definitions reflect the way each of the terms is used in the collected narratives about witchcraft (222-3).
The volume contains 279 narratives which relate to witchcraft (223-413). Some are merely short descriptions or anecdotes about a person believed to be a witch. Others feature witches dancing and flying, witches appearing as balls of fire, and witches turning into coyotes, toads, dogs, hawks, cats, and other animals. At least 17 mention a witch taking the form of an owl. More than 30 relate incidents of witches causing illness. A half dozen comment on witches’ inability to look at or walk under a cross. More than a dozen illustrate witches’ use of sympathetic magic, including statues and dolls. Several of the legends also differentiate between white and black magics.
Carol Mitchell.
“Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me,
Ultima: Folk Culture in Literature.”
Critique 22 (1980): 55-64.
The role of healers and witches in Bless Me, Ultima is one theme that Mitchell explores in this article about how aspects of folk culture appear in the novel. She evaluates their respective places in the story: “Anaya uses the curandera and the bruja to show the traditional ties between the sacred and the secular worlds” (59). For Mitchell, Ultima resembles folk healers from various traditions. Her use of herbs, faith healing and Catholic prayers, psychology, and magical rituals define her as a folk healer. Unlike many curanderas, Ultima requires an advance payment of forty dollars in silver before she will lift a curse. Many healers do not accept payments or only accept donations when they have succeeded in a cure (60). Mitchell identifies three times when Ultima acts as curandera or hechicera (white witch). These are the exorcism of the Luna uncle, the curing of Tony’s pneumonia after his encounter with Tenorio, and the lifting of the curse that causes ghosts to disturb the Tellez family (60-2). Mitchell asserts that Anaya’s presentation of the curses on the uncle and the Tellez family treat the bewitchments as real events. A skeptic, she writes, would try to explain the curses in psychological terms, but she doesn’t believe the novel supports this reading (62). She also notices that Ultima uses her magic only for good and this seems to justify her killing of the Trementina brujas (64). Good magic always conquers evil magic in the novel, but even good magic must be careful of tampering with fate (64).
Mitchell notes that the reader never witnesses the four black witches, Tenorio and his daughters, practicing magic. Based on the information that is provided about their magical workings, she thoroughly summarizes the characters and how they compare to other notions of witches: “The description of the brujas, like that of the curandera, conforms to the traditional pattern for witches in Christian societies. They sell their souls to the devil; they have black masses and a sabbat of sorts; they read from the Black Book; they stir up horrible concoctions of such things as blood of bats, entrails of toads, and blood of roosters; they use incantations and magical words; and, of course, they can perform image magic. They can change into animals, especially coyotes, and also into balls of fire – two forms that are found in Southwest Indian beliefs as well as Spanish-American beliefs. Witches cannot pass by a cross, nor can they stand the sight of it, and the names ‘Christ’ and ‘Mary’ hurt their ears. They can be killed in their own bodies or in their animal shapes by shooting them with bullets etched with a cross” (63).
Thomas A. Bauder.
“The Triumph of White Magic in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima.” Mester
14 (1985): 41-54.
Magic, according to Bauder, used to be an important theme in Western literature – the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek tragedies, and the Arthurian myths. In contemporary writing, magic is more frequently found in works of doubtful literary merit. Bless Me, Ultima is an exception to this trend (41). “White magic is the instrument of Antonio’s spiritual awakening. The rites of healing and exorcism are his starting points” (42). Ultima is a practitioner of white magic, in possession of magical knowledge handed down from the Nahuatl Indians, a group from the Southwest with a history going back at least one thousand years (41-2). Ultima also possesses knowledge of pre-Columbian myths. She begins teaching Antonio about both the myths and the magic. “Through her, he participates in a uniquely Chicano syncretic world view, which dates to the Aztecs and their Nahuatl ancestors” (42).
The Nahua believe good and evil are in constant competition. Devils using black magic attempt to steal souls. White magic can be used to counter their attempts. For modern Nahua, the battle between good and evil is led by the Christian figures of Jesus and Satan (43). In the novel, Tenorio’s daughters serve the devil. Ultima’s powers derive from Nahuatl white magic. Ultima “can marshal the forces of the ancient gods as well as the strength of Christian healing to help her combat evil” (44). In Nahua culture, healers like Ultima were benign sorcerers whose magical practices were approved by the community. They did not face the ambivalence that the people of El Puerto show Ultima (45-6).
The Nahua recognize totems such as Ultima’s owl and the kind of link that healer and animal have in the novel (46). They would recognize the sickness that befalls Antonio’s uncle as being cause by black magic (46) and the exorcism performed on the uncle an exercise of white magic (50). The Nahuatl were also familiar with sympathetic magic. Examples from the novel are Ultima’s insistence that Antonio wear her scapular for protection and the creation of the clay dolls (49). Ultima also exhibits understanding of Nahuatl cosmology which emphasizes the precarious harmony of nature. Ultima warns that this harmony has been upset and predicts that the deaths of Tenorio and herself will restore the balance (47-8). “Ultima is the one character in the novel with direct access to the beliefs of the Nahuas. As such, she symbolizes knowledge and a way of life from a dimly-known past. She is an anachronism. The people do not understand her” (45).
Cisneros,
Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New
York: Vintage, 1984.
There is a chapter in Cisneros’ novel titled “Elenita, Cards, Palm, Water” (62-64). It offers a markedly different view of a witch in Mexican American literature. In this brief chapter, the narrator has gone to see the witch woman. She pays five dollars for Elenita to tell her future. This includes a tarot card reading, a palm reading, and some method of divination that requires the narrator to look for faces in a glass of water. Many of the props that fill the witch woman’s work space and top her refrigerator are the same as those that grace a curandera’s altar – holy candles, a cross, and a plaster saint. Elenita is apparently also knowledgeable about folk remedies. The narrator tells us, “She’s a witch woman and knows many things. If you got a headache, rub a cold egg across your face. Need to forget an old romance? Take a chicken’s foot, tie it with red string, spin it over your head three times, then bun it. Bad spirits keeping you awake? Sleep next to a holy candle for seven days, then on the eighth day, spit.”
Brenner, Marie.
“Letter from Brownsville: Murder on the Border.”
The New Yorker 13 Sept.
1993.
This piece from the New Yorker relates some circumstances of a murder that took place in Brownsville ten years ago. Eventually, a curandera was arrested for her alleged role in planning the murder. Its relevance is as an example of a contemporary curandera with a shadowy reputation and a source of information about curanderismo in Texas border towns. Brownsville, Brenner writes, “is a city where there are curanderos and curanderas – Mexican medicine men and women, sometimes benign but sometimes somewhat sinister, who practice brujeria, or witchcraft.” According to Brenner, belief in curanderismo remains strong in border communities, and in Brownsville even professionals visit las curanderas.
“Curanderismo and brujeria have always been powerful elements in the cultural history of Mexico,” she writes. “Although Catholicism was well established in Mexico by the end of the eighteenth century, many of the native Mexicans never truly gave up their ancient beliefs, much to the annoyance of the local religious powers. A return to folk-based religious practices occurred during the Mexican revolution, when the bishops and priests fled northern Mexico for the safety of South Texas.” Curanderas in rural Mexico are respected healers. In Brownsville, there are also curanderas who specialize in trabajos, either white or black magic. Brenner talked with Antonio Zavaleta, an anthropologist and dean of liberal arts at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He is a recognized expert on “folk medicine and witchcraft of the Mexican border.” Zavaleta equates trabajos with brujeria. “Clients seek out these curanderas to affect a relationship – to bring about love, to end a marriage, to attract a husband or boyfriend, or to harm someone.” Zavaleta told Brenner that these practitioners generally use a wax or rag doll, and hair, an eyelash, or clothing from the person they are trying to harm or influence.
María Mercedes Martínez was one of Brownsville’s curanderas. Seventy-two years old, she was practically unknown among the other curanderas in the city. She earned her living charging five dollars for tarot card readings, a skill not usually practiced by curanderas. She was accused of setting up the murder of a local teenager on behalf of one of her clients.
Connections and Conclusions
My original hypothesis was that Anaya intentionally blurred the distinctions between bruja and curandera in the interest of dramatizing Antonio’s development. My research disproves that hypothesis and indicates that his portrayal is fairly accurate. Ultima’s ambiguity reflects the mixed feelings that actually surround curanderas in Mexican American culture. Practitioners of curanderismo are often respected healers, but, because of similarities with brujeria, they are sometimes treated with suspicion and fear. Even the terminology can become tricky. Differentiating between bruja and curandera is relatively easy until one considers alternate designations such as arbularia, trabajos, and hechicera. My research seemed to turn up three definitions for every title. Each author had a slightly different perspective.
One issue that the research raised for me concerns a point of agreement between most of my sources. Several of the authors – Robe, Brenner, Mitchell – differentiate brujeria by defining it as evil. Avila, on the other hand, says she knows brujos and they are not involved in any of the evil-sounding activities usually attributed to them. I’m curious whether the brujos of Avila’s acquaintance consider their brujeria a religion and if they identify with practitioners of modern witchcraft and Wicca. In my introduction I alluded to the fact that I didn’t have the same reaction to Ultima’s ambiguities as some of my classmates did. I did make the connections between Ultima and the brujas, but this didn’t bother me. I know a lot about Wicca and witchcraft as an alternative religious movement, and I was able to draw parallels between curanderismo and these practices. Ultima’s statements about fate and harmony, her use of herbs, even the dolls – these were vaguely familiar and parallel. (I’ve included two books about witchcraft in the bibliography so there is some reference for the things I’m discussing. Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance is a popular treatment of the topic. Cynthia Eller’s Living in the Lap of the Goddess is a scholarly approach).
Wiccans are often interested in traditional healing, myths, and folk beliefs of different cultures. Some Wiccans specifically try to incorporate the ideas of whatever cultures are reflected in their ancestry. For some, this means looking to brujeria. Yet, Avila is the only writer I encountered with a somewhat positive view of brujos/brujas. If I were to take this research further, my goal would be to speak to local curanderas (and brujas if that’s possible). Among other questions about curanderismo, I would ask how these healers perceive brujeria and whether it is necessarily concerned with evil-doing. It might also be interesting to explore whether those Wiccans who have proposed drawing on brujeria should actually be looking into curanderismo.
This project also sparked some ideas for different topics I’d like to explore in the future. The research occasionally led me to sources that, although they didn’t contain information particularly relevant to the current topic, got me interested in semi-related ideas I would like to study. For example, I came across an article about Anaya’s use of myth and another about religious syncretism in Bless Me, Ultima. Syncretism came up in class discussion, and I put it on my original list of possible topics for this project. Now I’m wondering if the same ideas will be relevant to post-colonial literature and perhaps make a suitable topic for research in that course. This project also piqued my interest in looking at folk healers from other cultures, starting probably with African examples. I’m beginning to look around for any African American literature that has a character similar to Ultima.
Works Cited
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. New York: Warner, 1972.
Avila, Elena and Joy Parker. Woman Who Glows in the Dark: a Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.
Atchison, Sandra D. “A Few Herbs, a Prayer – and Often a Cure.” Business Week 2 August 1993: 16A. LexisNexis.
Bauder, Thomas A. “The Triumph of White Magic in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima.” Mester 14 (1985): 41-54.
Brenner, Marie. “Letter from Brownsville: Murder on the Border.” The New Yorker 13 Sept. 1993. 30 April 2003 <http://www.mariebrenner.com/articles/border/murder2.html>
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage, 1984.
Eller, Cynthia. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. Boston: Beacon, 1993.
Mitchell, Carol. “Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima: Folk Culture in Literature.” Critique 22 (1980): 55-64.
Perrone, Bobette, H. Henrietta Stockel and Victoria Krueger. Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Robe, Stanley L., Ed. Hispanic Legends from New Mexico: Narratives from the R. D. Jameson Collection. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1980.
Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.
Trotter, Robert T. “Curanderismo: A Picture of Mexican American Folk Healing.” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 7 (2001): 129-131.