ALBUQUERQUE — Pungent white incense wisps into the air from an earthen burner as Maria de Lourdez Gonzales Avila begins a cleansing ceremony with her students. Gently blowing the perfumed smoke on their heads, arms, legs and into their mouths, Avila aims to purify the students' minds and bodies from negative energies.
Avila is a Mexican curandera, or healer, invited by the University of New Mexico to participate in a two-week course on the practice of indigenous folk medicine, also known as curanderismo, in Mexico and other Latin American countries.
A steady stream of Latino immigrants is fueling the demand for curanderismo in the Southwest. Often misunderstood as witchcraft, the practice also has piqued the interest of doctors trying to educate themselves about different ways to approach medicine and healing.
Curanderismo is a holistic, spiritual approach to medicine that uses the natural world to heal the mind, body and soul. Curanderas often prepare teas, creams and tinctures from herbs and plants, and use massage therapies to treat a wide variety of ailments.
"Mexicans and Hispanics have been doing this type of medicine for centuries," said Eliseo "Cheo" Torres, university vice president for student affairs who started the course. "[Curanderismo] is a mixture of knowledge and ritual and indigenous medicine. Not only is it a healing practice, it is a source of pride for Latinos. It is part of our culture."
Beyond creating plant-derived remedies, curanderas are revered in the Latino culture as people with a gift of healing and supernatural intuition. Marco Antonio Campos Romeu, a curandero from Mexico City, will treat a baby's earache with a drop of hand-mashed garlic oil or recommend a cup of cascara sagrada tea for a patient with digestive problems.
But for psychological ailments such as post-traumatic stress, anxiety or depression, Romeu might try a combination of treatments such as incense, massage, candle rituals and sweat cleansing ceremonies.
"I don't make magic potions or anything like that. I treat people with la vida de las plantas [the life of plants] and the forces of life," Romeu said.
One of the major appeals of curanderismo and folk medicine in general is that it's cheap and accessible, especially for people in rural areas.
