2022 Americo Paredes Award, Center for Mexican American Studies at
South Texas College A historical exploration of the worlds and healing
practices of two curanderos (faith healers) who attracted thousands,
rallied their communities, and challenged institutional powers. Santa
Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo were curanderos—faith
healers—who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
worked outside the realm of "professional medicine," seemingly beyond
the reach of the church, state, or certified health practitioners
whose profession was still in its infancy. Urrea healed Mexicans,
Indigenous people, and Anglos in northwestern Mexico and cities
throughout the US Southwest, while Jaramillo conducted his healing
practice in the South Texas Rio Grande Valley, healing Tejanos,
Mexicans, and Indigenous people there. Jennifer Koshatka Seman takes
us inside the intimate worlds of both "living saints," demonstrating
how their effective healing—curanderismo—made them part of the
larger turn-of-the century worlds they lived in as they attracted
thousands of followers, validated folk practices, and contributed to a
modernizing world along the US-Mexico border. While she healed, Urrea
spoke of a Mexico in which one did not have to obey unjust laws or
confess one's sins to Catholic priests. Jaramillo restored and fed
drought-stricken Tejanos when the state and modern medicine could not
meet their needs. Then, in 1890, Urrea was expelled from Mexico.
Within a decade, Jaramillo was investigated as a fraud by the American
Medical Association and the US Post Office. Borderlands Curanderos
argues that it is not only state and professional institutions that
build and maintain communities, nations, and national identities but
also those less obviously powerful.
Les mer
The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781477321942
Publisert
2023
Utgiver
University of Texas Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter