Curandera is the image by Carmen Lomas Garza that I have a personal connection to. When I was 5 years old, I was playing in the construction zone of my grandparents’ house. While playing I fell in the ‘cal’ mixture (chalk mixture for cement), and it got in my eyes. I ran to my mother, and she cleaned me up but noticed that my eyes kept getting smaller like I was falling asleep. She rushed me to a ‘curandera’, and she cleaned my eyes. After coming back home my grandmother said that I had a bad vibe and they did a deep cleansing with candles, an egg, copal smoke, and herbs. Every time anything bad happened she would do a deep cleanse to ensure that we would scare the bad spirits away. I always enjoyed them because it felt like a protection from my grandmother. When I came to the U.S. my grandmother stayed behind and, in the neighborhood, I was growing up ‘curanderas’ were a thing of the past. Every time we got sick my mother would look for a ‘curandera’ and every time my mom asked around, she would get weird looks. Later, my mother found out that many people did practice it but were afraid of people finding out because they were often reported by schools since any sick child was supposed to seek help from a professional doctor. Every healing process is different based on where the healer is from. Many healers have different methods depending on what needs to be healed. I have not been to a ‘curandera’ since I was maybe 10 years old. Once my mother found one the lady passed away and my mother did not want to go through the trouble of looking for one. She believed that it was a sign to leave those practices behind.
Figure 17. Carmen Lomas Garza, Curandera, 1974. Etching. 48 ¼ x 56 ½ inches. Artist’s collections. (pg. 27).
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