Word: josefina
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Like 250,000 other Venezuelans, Señorita Mercedes Urbina and her cousin, Sefiorita Elena Josefina Gonzalez Urbina, enjoy taking a modest flyer on the Five-and-Six, he country's fabulous Sunday horse-race lottery, based on a five-or six-horse combination. But since they are sheltered girls who find form charts hard to puzzle out they relied mainly on Mercedes' brother Nelson for expert handicapping in last week's races at Caracas' Hipódromo track. With proper humility they accepted his picks for the first four races; then girlish independence took over...
...most people have probably forgotten the story of a frail heroine from the Philippines named Josefina ("Joey") Guerrero. After the Japanese invaded the Philippines. Joey became a guerrilla; when the Americans landed on Leyte in World War II. Joey continued to be a U.S. spy. flitting back & forth across the Japanese lines, carrying messages, maps. food, clothes. She had a sure immunity from capture: her face and body were blotched with the sores of leprosy, of which the Japanese soldiers were morbidly fearful...
Rancher Joe S. Chavez was above such superstitions and the poor Mexicans who believed in them. Joe was big, tough, and handsome. After he married beautiful Josefina Puebla back in 1929, she inherited a ranch near the Superstition Mountains. Joe raised white-faced cattle. Joe leased section after section of Government grazing land. Joe prospered. But ten years ago a dreadful thing happened to his wife. She began going blind, suffering from trancelike spells, and complaining that her head was swelling up like a balloon...
...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...
Then one day Maria Miranda-for it was Maria herself, as it turned out, who had cursed Josefina-sneaked into Chavez' house, shrieked at Josefina: "You will never see again!" and fled. Next morning Joe's wife was blind again. Fruitlessly, Joe took her to witches in Tucson, in Nogales, in Pitiquito, in Sonora and Cavorca, Mexico. Finally Joe went humbly to Maria herself; in her flyblown parlor, with its green altar and its saints' pictures (some laid face down with coins placed against their lips to protect Maria's clients from gossip), Joe begged...