A Study of Curanderismo

Guest article by Bryant Holman

The notion that the practices of curanderos and curanderas might be based primarily in the practices of Native Americans is actually a myth. Although Native American cultures have made important contributions to these arts, the fact remains that the bulk of these traditions come from Spain, where these practices survive even up to today, and that which is practiced there, and throughout the Spanish speaking world, is not that much different from what is practiced in Mexico.

It was not hard, actually, during the development phase of curanderismo, when Old World practices were blending with those of the New World, for them to find common ground, due to the simple fact that they had many common roots. Here are some examples:

1. In "Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids", by Peter Tompkins, the author makes what I consider to be a very good case for the influence of the Phoenicians in the development of mesoamerican civilization, and these people had their roots in Canaan, as did other Semitic peoples whose roots are the same, and who developed, not only the Bible, but more importantly, sets of occult bodies of knowledge that later formed the basis for the type of magic practiced throughout the Mediterranean during the last two millennia, such that when the Spanish reached Mexico, they found a civilization rooted, ultimately, in many ways, in the same foundations as that of their own, particularly when it came to topic of the occult. It should be pointed out that runes and other hieroglyphic writings have not only been found throughout the Americas, they have been translated, and dated, even.

2. The "Black Legend of Malinche" and other such tales were actually invented by political writers in the first decades of the 19th century, with a view to propagating a myth that vilified everything Spanish and mystified such people as Cuauhtemoc, for instance, who, as we know, insisted that the Mexica fight to the death, but then tried to escape with a load of treasure and save his own hide. These myths were ostensibly promulgated by persons who were allied with the Jacobin cause, but it has been shown that they were actually members of Masonic lodges. Their motives were simple: they were attempting (and they were successful in this) to generate a political climate that would lead to the expropriation of Spanish and Church goods, including most of the mines and plantations - the major sources of income in the country - so that these goods would then go up for auction, where they were almost all snapped up by banking houses in Boston and New York for pennies on the dollar. It turns out that the sponsors of the Masonic lodges where the Mexicans who participated in these scams (Hidalgo, Morelos, Iturbide and others) were members, were the lodges in Boston and New York, where the grand masters were the same heads of the banking houses that benefited from this scam. Besides being left with looted economies and the ensuing misery (no more schools or hospitals, for instance), the Mexicans also have the baggage of these improbable myths, which people continue to take on as a cause celebre down to the present, which practice steers investigations into Mexico's past into all sorts of fallacies and blind alleys. I would suggest, just as a start, that people read "La Malinche in Mexican Literature: From History to Myth" (Texas Pan American Series) by Sandra M. Cypress, which you can find at http://zapatistas.org/books/

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