On the Texas border, folk healers are bringing modern touches to their age-old practice

Known as curanderas, they continue a tradition long revered in local Spanish culture.

WHY WE ARE HERE

We explore how America defines itself one place at a time. In the Rio Grande Valley, which straddles the Mexican border in Texas, cities like Edinburg, Pharr and McAllen are steeped in ancient Mexican-American traditions.

December 16, 2023

Recently, Chriselda Hernandez heard a knock on her door in the border city of Edinburg, Texas. It was a student who said she was suffering from a series of setbacks. A drunk driver had hit her car. Then someone broke into the new car she was driving and stole her laptop. ‘I need a limpia,she begged – a spiritual cleansing.

Ms. Hernandez moved to an altar in her living room with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She slowly mixed a mixture of sage and palo santo, a type of wood native to South America, and lit it with a match. Then she turned back to the young woman and waved the healing smoke over her body.

“You’re holding something,” Mrs. Hernandez whispered to her. “Let it go. There is no shame.”

For generations, Latin American communities along the southern border have turned to curanderas, or folk healers, like Ms. Hernandez, who is often seen in the popular imagination as old women with candles and religious icons operating from rusty huts in the shadows of society.

But ancient medicine does entered the age of Instagram. More and more younger people are adopting rituals they learned from their grandmothers and using them to tackle the problems of the 21st century. They carry out limpias on public beaches, trading online recipes for blocking “envy energies” and sell artisan candles depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe in stores. Their clients are often college educated, like Clarissa Ochoa, the young woman who asked Ms. Hernandez for help.

“I consider it an honor to be a curandera; it is a very beautiful thing, but also very limiting,” said Ms. Hernandez, 42. “I feel like we are crossing those boundaries, that curanderas are just herbs and little old ladies. My calling is to heal whoever I can.”

A culture of folk healing preceded the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Latin America and Mexico. Over time, curanderos, a term used for healers of both genders, began to blend indigenous rituals with elements of Catholicism and influences from Asian and African folk traditions.

The practice took hold largely out of necessity in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a stone’s throw from the Mexican border. Hidalgo County, home to McAllen and a majority Hispanic population, has one of the highest rates in the country of people without health insurance, and many people rely on curanderas in the absence of other affordable options, said Servando Z. Hinojosa, professor of anthropology. who teaches a class on Mexican American folk medicine at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Mr. Hinojosa said many Spanish-speaking residents also tend to be suspicious of the medical establishment. This is especially true when it comes to mental health. A recent study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that while the number of Black, Asian and white people seeking mental health treatment has increased in recent years, there has been very little movement among Latinos.

“There is an element of distrust, but there is also structural alienation,” Mr. Hinojosa said. “It is a population group that is looking for affordable resources, and they are going to where the products are and where the advice can be found.”

In the past, the medical community has warned people not to rely on folk remedies for physical ailments, some of which can be harmful. Lots of Latino kids have become ill and even died after consuming such remedies known as albayalde, azarcon and rueda, powders commonly used for stomach-related illnesses that have been found to contain lead.

Curanderismo has become so accepted in the Rio Grande Valley that it is not uncommon to see street signs and TV ads promoting folk medicine services.

Mrs. Hernandez said her great-grandmothers had both been parteras, or midwives. When she was a little girl, she said, she discovered she had her own gifts; As she grew older, she said, she began interacting with an entity she believes to be the Angel of Death, Azrael. She works at a mobile call center and lives with a friend in a modern house on the outskirts of Edinburgh, a city close to the border.

“You make it your own. There is no right or wrong. Do what is right for you,” Ms. Hernandez said.

Another modern folk healer, Danielle López, 39, a former student of Mr. Hinojosa who said she also learned that as a young girl she had a don, a gift, has embraced the name of millennial curandera. She has combined the ancient traditions she learned from the grandmother who raised her, Consuelo López, and an aunt, Esperanza Rodriguez, with new skills she learned at institutions of higher learning.

Her academic record includes a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Mexican American Literature, Medical Anthropology, and Latin Art History from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is completing a PhD in English with a focus on borderlands literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she is also a lecturer.

“For me it’s a continuity,” she said of her spiritual work. “I feel like we need it more now.”

It is not uncommon for people to ask her for trabajitos, small jobs, including blessings, limpias and home remedies, when she is not buried in books. Not long ago, Ms. López received a request to bless a new business for a friend. When Ms. López cleaned the establishment with a bouquet of roses, six petals fell, prompting her to warn her friend that six people “didn’t have good intentions.”

“They may say they’re happy with her new company, but they’re not.”

Sometimes she also offers more scientifically based advice. When people tell her they feel anxious or can’t sleep, she recommends they reduce their sugar or caffeine intake. Because the advice comes from a curandera, she says, people tend to trust that she has their best interests at heart.

The concept of a curandera is so widespread in Latino enclaves that the Texas Diabetes Institute, a state-of-the-art facility managed by University Health on the west side of San Antonio, a historic Mexican-American neighborhood, returned to its lobby in September. an expansive wall size painting ‘La Curandera’ by the Chicano painter Jesus Treviño, who died earlier this year. The painting had been removed for restoration.

But when it comes to happiness and matters of the heart, many people avoid professional help and turn to curanderas because there is no alternative, says Sasha García, 39, a curandera known for her fiery red hair.

In northern Mexico, where indigenous culture is not as widespread and the influence of the Catholic Church is stronger, her ancestors often operated in the shadows, avoiding the stigma associated with folk healers. On the American side of the border, by contrast, not only does she feel freer to practice openly, but some Catholic priests also come by for her advice, she said.

Ms. García welcomes customers to La Casa de la Santísima Yerberia in the town of Pharr, near McAllen, next to two imposing statues of La Santísima Muerte, skeletons each wearing red and black robes. Ms. García reminds people that while the image of La Santísima, a Latina version of the Grim Reaper, may evoke frightening emotions, death should be revered.

“If you pray to her well, she can heal and bring love, freedom and wealth,” she said. “I only ask her for positive things.” (She laments that criminal elements along the border and in Mexico have appropriated the image.)

On a recent afternoon, Jocelyn Acevedo, 27, a regular customer of hers who runs a credit repair service, arrived for her monthly limpia. She heard about Ms. García four years ago, and after the first limpia, she said, she watched her business begin to flourish. She was so convinced by the session that she has since regularly driven 60 miles from nearby Starr County, near the Rio Grande, for her sessions. She now has a tattoo of La Santísima.

Ms. García instructed Ms. Acevedo to rub three coconuts all over her body. Ms. García then broke them on the ground to release the negative energy her client was carrying.

“Did it work? Of course,” Ms. Acevedo said.

In addition to the old ways, Ms. García has also embraced a touch of modernity, including consultations now offered via FaceTime. Her customers have responded with their own offerings from popular culture, including a sign they brought along that now hangs on the front door: “Witch Parking Only.”

“No one is listening,” Ms. García said, smiling. “The word may be becoming more modern, but we curanderas are still here. Just don’t park in my spot.”