Along The Texas-Mexico Border, A Wickedly Strange Axis...God and Satan...Voodoo, Too...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The story is told of the young teen-age girl who went against her mother's wishes and danced the night away at a local bar, sailing across the dance floor with a charming man who seemed the answer to her dreams. It wasn't until midnight that she looked down at his feet and saw that he had none, only two hooves that now hopped heavy on the bar's concrete floor.

It is also said that the girl's mother wasted little time the next morning in taking her to a "Curandero," a largely uneducated shaman who went about performing some sort of exorcism to supposedly rid her of any lingering satanic effect. In the story, the mother gives the Curandero her last dollars and a lengthy, respectful bow, eventually coming up to clasp his hands in gratitude, as if holding hands with the Pope.

They tell that story in every Hispanic household from Brownsville to Rio Grande City in the Rio Grande Valley, not only as a lesson for young girls, but as a clear example of how witchcraft, known around here as "brujeria," works, solves a mother's headaches.

Much of it is derived from the practice of Voodoo, a faith and belief loose science that centers on handing over your brain to the Devil. Buy a jar of weird weeds bottled in some yellowy-white liquid and be told that it will keep your enemies at bay. Throw a crucifix in it and be told placement under your matrimonial bed will rid your husband or wife of that desire to cheat. Get a packet of ground mesquite seeds and use it for good luck in romance, not for drink but for carrying around in your purse. Place a pig's foot at the entrance to your doghouse and curb a dog's barking at night. Throw a bit of tamarindo in your spouse's dinner drink and see his or her constipation go down the, well, toilet.

It's all there at your local Yerberia, out-of-the-way storefronts where you'll find remedies and counterpunches to a myriad of problems - from the aforementioned woes to do with marriage to baldness and body odor. Botany has an answer to most of Mankind's mental problems, goes the industry line. Lack of confidence and hexes, included.

In essence, what curanderismo says is that modern medicine does not have a monopoly on treatment of all ailments. Curanderos know their customers as "Skin & Seven Holes;" that is, biology that, when it treats the orifice, can always be made a bit more comfortable, if only, they note, because it's all in your head. Think you're too short, exhibiting dwarfism, well, curanderos will tell you to drink a mixture of pulque and kelite, and, in a few months, voila! - you've gained an inch or two in height. Can't write or spell? Try soaking your head in goat urine before bedtime. Goat or sheep will do, cat in a pinch.

Life is a big mystery to most laymen. Doctors know it all. Curanderos will only bullshit you and take your money. But it's true: The power of "Miracle Workers" is unquestioned in the Hispanic culture. Parents will drive their sickly kids for hours into the mountains of Mexico in search of a mystical curandero who will cure the boy of everything from shyness to bed-wetting. Others will promise the Heavens they will crawl on their knees into the farthest Catholic church if only their son or daughter can be cured of thievery, of lying, of taking drugs, of bad manners and of anti-social language.

What to make of it in the Year 2011, is the question.

Not much, would be the quick answer. Curanderismo is centuries-old and now a big part of the border culture. Prospective mothers seek a curandero in the same way that other mothers seek an Obstetrician - not for the birthing, but for the "read" into what awaits the newborn. Fathers who are told their baby will be born with serious abnormalities run to the Curandero before they head for Big City hospitals. The practice is not only accepted, but in many cases is expected. Word filters down from Grandpa that his parents bought the aid of Curanderos for all medical problems and diagnosis. "Welita dice que tenemos que llevar al bebe con Don Panchito Jaramillo in Falfurrias."

And so it goes.

Belief is a huge part of this particular exercise in blind faith. Faith means you put your trust in the person you trust. End of story. Dr. Smith may be best for those babies, but El Curandero knows much more about mine.

No one knows how many residents of the border have availed themselves of the ancient remedies, but the lore is heavy with testimonials from all sectors of the Hispanic community. Some will swear by bizarre treatments that, for some reason, work. Others will insist that a formal education in modern medicine is not needed in their world. Why pay $300 for a routine doctor's visit when you can spend a third of that buying herbs and plants and weeds and other rare fauna that do the job.

A story that comes to mind concerns a woman who was told by her doctor that she had a tennis ball-sized tumor growing in her stomach. Immediately, she was against any sort of surgery, so she went to a curandero. He treated her for several weeks with a variety of egg rubbings, warm porridge-like mixtures applied to her belly and monotone lullabyes he explained were so awful they scared the demons away. Convinced and seemingly feeling better, she went back for an X-ray and discovered the tumor was gone.

Some say it's all about giving your brain a chance to believe in something different. Fix the brain, say the curanderos, and the rest of the body will cure itself.

It's something to think about when you find yourself at the end of your rope on pretty much everything to do with being an Hispanic.

I know that when I had those killer kidney problems a few years back, my ex-mother-in-law called some distant relative in deep Mexico and then next thing I knew she was fixing me some warm tea that tasted sort of bitter and left a taste that was hard to get rid of for days. But the damned thing - called junco - worked like a champ.

My pee moved freely and painlessly again, and has ever since...

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