Curanderismo

To heal illnesses of fright, envy and imbalance, to cleanse a person or a house of a harmful influence, and to restore a family to right relation

Curanderismo is the Mexican and Mexican-American healing tradition, a synthesis of Spanish Catholic folk devotion, Indigenous Mesoamerican herb and body knowledge, and the humoral medicine that came with the colony. The curandero or curandera treats susto (fright), mal de ojo (the evil eye), empacho, caida de mollera and other conditions that clinic medicine does not name, and generally works alongside a family's Catholicism rather than against it. In the United States it has been studied as a community health resource as much as a magical practice, because for many families it is the first and sometimes the only care available.

Treatment is by limpia, a cleansing with an egg, a lemon, herbs or a bundle swept over the body; by massage and bone-setting (sobada); by herbal teas and plasters; by prayer, including the Creed and the psalms; and by barridas, sweepings with a branch or a bunch of herbs. Diagnosis may come from reading the egg after a limpia, from the pulse, or from the curandera's own sense of the case, and the healer's authority rests on a calling (el don) rather than on a certificate.

Curanderismo is a community vocation. The calling is understood as a gift that is not to be sold as a commodity - a curandera charges for materials, time and travel, and one who profiteers loses standing - and the healer's authority comes from the community's recognition and from the Church's ordinary devotional life, not from a course or a certificate. Its practices are also a family inheritance, and taking them up as an outsider's spiritual hobby severs them from the obligation that makes them work.