http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/religion/ci_3492646

Article Last Updated: 2/09/2006 07:14 PM


Mexican curanderos practice a unique kind of medicine

Gregory Elder
For the Daily Facts
Redlands Daily Facts

I am standing in a small religious shrine, not very far from the Mexican border. This building is about 20 square feet on a side. There are windows and doors but most of the space is empty, aside from a few chairs, and a rough black metal altar table on the left hand side where a prodigious amount of incense has been burned and a lot of something has left a lot of ashes. There is a vent in the ceiling above this altar. To the left of the door is a grave, covered in hundreds of fresh flowers and as many tall candles in glass tubes. This could be a shrine from a medieval parish in old Europe, but I am in rural Texas.
The grave and shrine are dedicated to Don Pedrito, or Pedro Jaramillio, a Mexican faith healer born in Jalisco, Mexico in 1829. He migrated to Los Almos, Texas about 1881. He claimed to have powers which came to him directly from God to heal the sick. In the Mexican-American community here in Texas he gained great fame, and people came from all around the area to consult him and ask for prayers and healings. He charged no money, but he accepted whatever offerings and gifts people chose to give him. Whatever he did not need on a given day he simply gave away to the poor. He prayed over people, laid hands on them, and gave blessings. Until his death in 1907, hundreds of people claimed to have been healed by him.

Don Pedrito was a colorful character. He came to the United States after his mother had been taken ill. He appealed to God to save her, and warned the Almighty that he would leave the sacred lands of Mexico if God refused his prayer. Pedrito's mother died and he marched off to the United States.

He apparently knew a lot about the Texas frontier because he carried a lot of illegal whiskey across the border in his youth. But when he fell from a horse and badly injured his nose, he found wonderful healing in prayer. After a vision, he claimed God had sent him to heal others. He spent the rest of his life attempting to heal people.

Don Pedrito was what is known as a curandero, or a person who has supernatural abilities to heal people. Even today they are not unknown in Mexico, Central and South America, and in some Spanish-language parts of the United States. They are becoming more common in the U.S. Remember that the U.S. is the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world, and the Mexican American community is the fastest-growing minority in the nation. The area seeing the greatest Spanish language growth is the old south, the places which were once the States of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Keep an eye out for the curandero nearest you. They can be men or women, old or young, and they are often known only by word of mouth.

Curanderos offer physical healing to the faithful. They employ prayer, laying on of hands, massage, herbal teas, poultices and a number of other folk remedies. Newspaper medical advice columns in Texas regularly have questions from modern Hispanics complaining that Mama will not see a ordinary doctor for such and such an illness, but will only see the curandero. One doctor advised a writer to seek out the curandero and ask for their help in getting the mother to a doctor who would work with the faith healer.

Don Pedrito placed a great emphasis on drinking a lot of water, with various rituals and prayers attached to each drink. He also believed that childhood traumas often led to later problems in life, an idea scorned at the time, although Sigmund Freud in Vienna also came to the same unorthodox conclusion at about the same time.

On the day of my visit to Don Pedrito's grave, a modern curandero was present. He spoke only Spanish, and my guides explained that he came from Columbia, where his family had been healers for generations. He wore ordinary clothes and a knee-length white robe covered with red crosses, triangles, circles and other nominally Christian symbols. I was told that he often prescribed massages, and he came here regularly to lay hands on whoever came to him. The flowers on the grave were all fresh and the candles new, so someone was visiting the shrine. A lot of people probably came frequently. During my visit, three Hispanic women of three generations dropped by and were greeted warmly. We left them with the healer to give them some privacy. Before I left, I noted that the walls had a series of bulletin boards chock full of photographs and letters, many addressed to the long-dead Don Pedrito asking for healing, or just posting their picture. Almost all of the photographs were of different ethnic minorities in inexpensive clothing, in less-than-perfect physical shape. These were the poor, asking for help.

Few religious shrines are without a gift shop, and of course I could not resist visiting Don Pedrito's. In another small wooden building was a set of glass counters, linoleum-tiled floors lit by cheap fluorescent lights. In addition to bottled water, snacks and soft drinks, they sold pictures of Don Pedrito, soaps which would aid healing, teas and herbs, books about healing and other prayer books. There was nothing which smacked of black magic, but let me simply say that we had crossed out of the frontiers of Christian orthodoxy.

Candles play a considerable role in the curandero tradition, and the gift shop had two walls covered with them. On one wall were traditional Catholic candles. These were a foot tall, two inches wide, circular and had an image of a saint or Jesus on the outside. You can see some of these in the ethnic food aisle of your grocery store, which is where I purchase most of my food. But in the gift shop were hundreds of different saints who might be invoked for a variety of needs, far more than I had ever seen in one place. Our Lady of Guadalupe commanded a huge set of shelves.

On another wall reposed the less orthodox candles. These offered prayers and spells for a variety of needs printed on their glass sides, which would become effective if the candle was purchased, lit and the prayer recited. These spells offered such things as making more money, deliverance from debt, the gaining of physical health, deliverance from addiction, conversion of souls and healing for various parts of the body. One claimed the power to keep law enforcement officers away. Yet another claimed power to solve problems with irksome neighbors. My very favorite was a "shut up" candle which claimed, if lit in faith, that it had the supernatural power to keep blabbermouths quiet. My own admittedly simple Christian faith absolutely forbids indulgence in magic, but I must admit that I had to fight the temptation of purchasing one of this last category and taking it to my next faculty meeting at the college.

My companions on this journey included five seminarians from a Catholic seminary in Indiana, who took a calm but silent view of all of this. My guides assured me that none of this had the official approval of any ecclesiastical authority but asked us to keep an open mind. I knew that many secular anthropologists maintain that the curandero tradition is nothing more than raw paganism, varnished with a thin coat of Catholic Christianity. But my heart went out to the poor folks, the people on the bulletin board who could not afford medical care. I would never suggest than one neglect modern medicine in favor of faith healers. But who am I to say that a kind word, a long conversation and a gentle touch from a friendly curandero might not do a poor troubled soul a bit of good?

Perhaps if mainline churches placed more of an emphasis on healing, the troubled would not feel the need to resort to magic. Six centuries before Christ, the Greek doctor Hippocrates laid down the law that the first obligation of medicine was to do the patient no harm. I suspect that Don Pedrito might agree with him.


Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Riverside Community College. You can write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375, or send e-mail to Gnyssa@verizon.net