In Borderlands Curanderos, historian Jennifer Koshatka Seman provides a vivid depiction of the storied, unconventional lives of curanderos (healers) Teresa Urrea and Pedro Jaramillo. Both healers were born in Mexico, yet crossed the border, living out their final days in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century; both received a don (spiritual gift and divine responsibility to heal others); and both attracted a multitude of followers and were deemed dangerous by the medical and political authorities of their time. Seman plumbs the depths of university, state, and national archives, published primary sources, and contemporary newspapers to inform this richly detailed monograph about two wildly popular curanderos who cared for the poor and the disenfranchised, exerted leadership, and provided a vernacular response to mainstream religion, science, and wellness.
Seman begins by orienting the reader to the practice of curanderismo, a syncretic “set of folk medical beliefs, Indigenous and Catholic rituals, and practices that address people’s psychological, spiritual, social, and health needs” (5). Curanderismo is a holistic practice that requires extensive knowledge of locally available herbs and roots, the crafting of salves, poultices, and teas, and a sensitivity to the social and psychological stresses being experienced by one’s patients. Curanderos then, as now, viewed themselves as instruments of God. Though neither was beatified, Seman explains that both Teresa Urrea and Pedro (“Pedrito”) Jaramillo were considered folk saints by the people to whom they ministered. She uncovers the experiences and challenges faced by these vernacular saints and uses the stories of their lives as a window onto the broader political upheavals and social transformations in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: the Indigenous resistance to the brutal dictatorship of Mexico’s Porfirio Díaz, the spread of French Spiritism in Mexico, the thrill of modernity and the impact of its technological innovations, and the political repression endured by Tejanos as Anglo newcomers sought to claim the Río Grande Valley as their own.
The book is divided into two parts and begins with the story of Teresa Urrea, the better known of this duo. Readers who are familiar with Mexico’s political history, particularly the peasant and Indigenous movements of resistance to Porfirio Díaz’s capitalist rationalization, will have heard of Urrea’s miraculous works and leadership. People throughout northern Mexico flocked to her home on the Rancho de Cabora, where she healed thousands of (mostly poor and Indigenous) individuals using herbs, water, earth mixed with her own saliva, and the laying on of hands. Urrea dismissed the authority of the Catholic Church, and she spoke out in defense of the Yaqui people, who were being deported en masse because of their resistance to the government-sponsored theft of their homeland. Díaz and his oligarchs perceived Urrea as a threat and depicted her followers as fanatics, ultimately forcing Urrea, along with her father, into exile in the United States. These details of Urrea’s life will be well known to Mexicanists and other regional scholars. Yet Seman uses the borderlands-focus to spotlight fascinating, lesser-known aspects of Urrea’s activism: her involvement, while living in El Paso, in writing the “Plan to Restore the Reformed Constitution” which “called for an armed revolution to overthrow the government of Porfirio Díaz” (47); her move to northern California, where she performed healings on stage in front of live audiences; and her call for ethnic solidarity and better wages for Mexican railway workers in East Los Angeles.
Part II attends to the life of Don Pedrito Jaramillo, the South Texas curandero who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1829. After experiencing his own miracle and receiving the ability to heal, he moved to the Rancho de Los Olmos in South Texas and used everyday ingredients, including “tea, lemons, tomatoes, beer, coffee, and cheap whiskey” (89), along with recipes for bathing regimens, to cure his Indigenous and working-class Tejano patients of an array of afflictions, from “wounds, blindness, [and] stomach ailments,” to tuberculosis, sustos (frights), and “nervousness, anxiety, insanity, and addiction” (94). Jaramillo never charged for his cures and was perceived as a benevolent, capable caregiver. People made pilgrimages from both sides of the border to seek Jaramillo’s counsel. Seman begins Part II with the story of Doña Tomasita Canales, an elite Tejana who experienced a high fever, lost consciousness, and was deemed “incurable” by medical doctors. In desperation, her family reached out to Jaramillo, who prescribed a sequence of bathings in “‘natural,’ or cold water” (87). Jaramillo’s remedy cured Canales and made a true believer of her skeptical husband. Jaramillo was later charged with fraud by both the American Medical Association and the U.S. Post Office. Though it was ultimately dismissed, the case against Jaramillo exposes the tensions between curanderos and the emerging medical establishment, between vernacular knowledge and standardized education, between reciprocity and profit.
Because curanderismo enacts a loosely related constellation of vernacular practices and beliefs, monographs about curanderismo can sometimes feel disjointed; a reader can get lost in the details. In this sense, Seman’s book is a triumph. Her effort to embed the stories of Teresa Urrea and Pedrito Jaramillo in the larger political, religious, economic, and scientific currents of their time pays off, providing the reader with a solid framework through which to grasp the astonishing impact of two folk healers. This book will be of interest to medical historians and anthropologists, as well as to scholars of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and those studying religion, embodiment, and modernity. Borderlands Curanderos demonstrates how the vernacular can be seen as subversion by some, even as it provides succor for others. Seman unveils the early twentieth-century borderlands as a fluid zone of cultural exchange, and her study of Urrea and Jaramillo aptly demonstrates her contention that this fluidity facilitated the ability of these two extraordinary curanderos to care for individual maladies and the body politic (9).
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[Review length: 966 words • Review posted on March 11, 2022]