Healing traditions: how curanderismo is reviving cultural connection in the borderlands
Mexican folk medicine is being reclaimed during a time of deep uncertainty in the U.S. political climate.
This story was originally published on The Border Chronicle. You can subscribe to The Border Chronicle here.
Imanol Miranda can still recall fleeting memories of curanderismo, or Mexican folk medicine, from his childhood in Mexico City. He remembers the smell of burning copal, seeing a ritual dance in El Zócalo and the overflowing displays of healing herbs in the city’s open markets. A move to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, in his middle school years, pulled Miranda away before he could form a deeper understanding of curanderismo.
“We had an aunt who was a curandera in Mexico,” Miranda said. “But my parents didn’t practice it. In the Rio Grande Valley, I was not really exposed to it.” Years later, Miranda would again encounter curanderismo on assignment as a documentary photographer, an experience that would change his life and lead to the co-publication of the photography book “Curandero: Traditional Healers of Mexico and the Southwest.”
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