Curanderismo: Mexican American Folk Healing

PREFACE

PREFACE THE DATA that support the information contained in this book, along with an associated film (Los Que Curan] and slide series (Curanderismo: An Optional Health Care System ], were initially collected as a part of Proyecto Comprender (Regional Medical Programof Texas Grant 75-1080). A considerable amount of additional information has been collected in the four years since Proyecto Comprender. Proyecto Comprender was developed to document the practices of Mexican American folk healers and to present this information as an educational package consisting of a film, a slide series, and a monograph on the MexicanAmerican folk health-care system, curanderismo. The primary goal of the project was to lessen cultural barriers to the delivery of health care to Mexican American patients by providing health-care professionals and others with information that may help them understand events occurring in the lives of some of their patients. Within a short time after the beginning of the project, we discovered that only a small part of the total Mexican American system of folk medicine had been studied in depth, while other areas were either poorly represented in the literature or completely undocumented . This discovery changed the scope of the project dramatically . Unfortunately, we had only a limited amount of xix xx Preface time to complete this project. Consequently, a number of areas within the curanderismo system were identified by the project which have not yet been fully researched. Other practices reported by informants during the research are not discussed here because we lacked rigorous, firsthand data pertaining to them. Far more research needs to be done on curanderismo before the complete relationship among beliefs, values, and health for Mexican Americans has been adequately documented and illustrated. Therefore, the information in this book should not be considered absolutely complete or immutable but merely a base or a starting point for further research. The cooperation and hard work of a large number of people made this work possible, and we feel those people should be given the recognition they deserve. The Pan American University staff of Proyecto Comprender consisted of: Julian Castillo, director of the Division of Health Related Professions ; Robert T Trotter, II, project coordinator and coprincipal investigator, medical anthropologist; Juan Antonio Chavira, coprincipal investigator, medical sociologist-anthropologist ; Aida Hurtado, research assistant and photographer ; Liz R. Chavira, script writer for the slide series; Lucia Rodriguez, research assistant; Silverio Arenas, research assistant ; Antonio Rivera, photographer; Esperanza Cantu, project secretary; and Olga O. Ambriz, division secretary. This manuscript has gone through several revisions, and we would like to thank Velma Garcia and Jose Luiz Gonzalez, our student assistants and secretaries, who helped tremendously by their speedy and accurate revisions of the manuscripts. Others who contributed to the book through their expertise and knowledge of curanderismo include Jose Alfonso Trevino, Maria de la Luz-Rosalez, Maria Marta Balderas, Socorro Bravo, Jose Meave, Guadalupe Meave, Herminia Chavez -Bianco, Juventina Martinez, and many others. We would like to thank them for their help. They not only provided us Preface xxi with much detailed information, but also had the patience to allow us to repeat it to them and check for accuracy numerous times. The accurate details in the book are to their credit, while any mistakes are due to our inability to present what we have learned from them in an adequate fashion. This page intentionally left blank Curanderismo This page intentionally left blank ...