Jennifer Koshatka Seman - Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo

INTRODUCTION

Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo

Don Pedrito Please

I come in need please

Help us get our money back from where they ripped us off

An[d] please help my boyfriend get hired at Walmart

We really need the money for our children an[d] please help us get a trailer house

Keep my Father an[d] family in good health

An[d] keep my friend strong

FROM A NOTE FOUND AT THE DON PEDRITO JARAMILLO SHRINE IN 2014

These words, written on a torn piece of paper and tacked onto a wall in a humble shrine in rural South Texas, reveal the modest dreams of one believer in the power of deceased curandero Don Pedrito Jaramillo. In 1880, Don Pedro Jaramilloor Don Pedrito, as he was popularly knowncrossed the border from Mexico into Texas, where he practiced curanderismo, an earth-based healing practice that blends elements of Indigenous medicine with folk Catholicism. The shrine, located approximately 120 miles north of the international border with Mexico, houses Don Pedritos tombstone. Inside, there is an altar, usually topped with rows of burning candles all bearing the same black and white image of his face, casting shadows on whitewashed walls decorated with crucifixes, statues of the Virgin Mary, and a banner proclaiming We support our Troops. One of the walls is almost completely covered with notes like the one quoted above, all addressed to Don Pedrito.

The wall of notes is transfixing. Some notes are in Spanish, some in English; some are furiously scrawled on torn scraps of brown paper bags as if the writer was sinking in quicksand while on break at the grocery store. There are notes on lined paper, on notepads bearing the logos of drug com panies offering scientific remedies for illnesses, and stationery declaring America the Beautiful. These notes prayerfully ask Don Pedrito to cure cancer, restore employment, save an alcoholic spouse, reunite families, guide wayward children, or simply take evil away. A frayed tapestry several layers deep, the wall of notes is a scrapbook of sorts that provides a glimpse into the hopes, longings, and American dreams of those who stop at the shrine with faith that Don Pedrito will answer their prayers.

On a warm summer evening in 2011seven hundred miles west of the Don Pedrito Jaramillo Shrine, in the border city of El Pasoa local museum and community center, El Museo Urbano, is celebrating the curandera Santa Teresa Urrea.