Culture and Migration: Visiting a Curandera

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Culture and Migration: Visiting a Curandera

If a person had never experienced it before it would probably be strange but through stories and personal experiences the setting was familiar and inviting. Curanderas are almost the equivalent of over-the-counter medicine for Latinos, not really, but close. If there is a symptom it is easier, faster and more comforting to visit the local curandera than it is to visit a doctor. Doctors require tests and until they are certain of the illness, their remedy is Tylenol.

Typically, curanderas treat individuals in rooms inside their homes. The curandera we interviewed, Rosa heals in her home and has a small porch that serves as the waiting room which people are lucky if they find a seat because usually curanderas have many patients that are waiting to be cured. As the door opens you can feel your eyes adjust to the dim light within the narrow stretch of porch but once focused it is evident that standing is not an option because there are at least twelve other people waiting for “la mano santa” roughly translated means the curanderas heavenly touch.

Sitting there it is difficult not to listen in on the many conversations that people are engaging in, while waiting. So many different voices all whispering because in the next room everyone knows that the curandera is healing; using her spiritual tools (prayer) to cure. Two women sitting to the right of us were having a detailed conversation about their reasons for coming to the curandera. The younger women with skin the color of “canela” (cinnamon) as is typical among Latinas was sharing her story with an elderly women that seemed to be in her early sixties, she had so many laugh wrinkles around her eyes and mouth that it was easy to diverge into another train of thought about the type of life that the old women might have lead. The younger girl was telling the older women that she works at the United Postal Service (U.P.S.) unloading boxes from the back of semi-trucks. This is where she was injured, in an attempt to pick a box she hurt her shoulder. The elderly woman asked her a series of questions such as why she worked at a place that seemed so labor intensive and if see complained to her supervisor. What was

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