Word: brujas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Among the poor Mexicans and Yaqui Indians of the Southwest, witches still flourish as hardily as desert cactus, and fear of their dark power is as real as the daily struggle for a living. For years there has been no more powerful bruja on either side of the border than sly, dark-haired Maria Concepcion Estrella Miranda, leading practitioner of the occult in dusty Guadalupe, Ariz. (pop. 850). Few in Guadalupe did not believe that she could cause sickness or death simply by sticking bobby-pins with little doughball heads into any of the 200-odd photographs she kept secreted...
...month she was almost totally blind. Not until then did a cautious Yaqui Indian sidle up and tell Joe what had really happened: "She's had a curse put on her by a powerful witch." Joe snorted. But when the Yaqui recommended that he see a Puerto Rican bruja about a cure. Joe went. The witch knew all about Josefina's case, and offered to save one of her eyes for $100. Joe paid...
...cure children of espanto (nightmares caused by fright), the bruja uses a kind of primitive shock treatment. The child is set in front of a container of water in which bougainvillea blossoms-or some other red flowers-are floating. When the child's attention is caught by the flowers, a relative squirts a mouthful of alcohol on the back of the child's neck, and the bruja claps a red cloth over its head. The treatment for clubfoot is simpler: the curandera rubs the afflicted foot with gourds filled with "magical" water containing wine and vinegar...
...reason curanderas are popular is that they charge less than doctors. Furthermore, they treat ailments that doctors cannot touch. Only brujas can cure children of the evil-eye sickness (one way is to rub the child's forehead with an herb called tronadora). Doctors can do little for the pangs of unlucky love, but any bruja worth her fee knows that a dried hummingbird pinned inside a girl's dress will usually bring back a strayed lover...
Belief in medicinal magic is not confined to remote hamlets; in the heart of Mexico City is a shop that does a thriving business in the stuff brujas prescribe, including dried toads and bits of amber. And not all the clients of brujas are unlettered Indians. A U.S. woman living in Taxco went to a bruja recently to get something to cure her little granddaughter's chronic car sickness. The prescription: a copper coin plastered to the child's navel. According to the grandmother, the charm worked like a charm...