Comely, like the fresh blush of a mountain apple, 45-year-old Doña Angelina, curandera, wears a wheat-colored monk-like frock with a heavy twisted cord belt. A traditional lustrous hair braid hangs to her waist. Her luminous smiling eyes greet each new arrival warmly.
The chapel's thick adobe walls and great mesquite beams bespeak earlier days, horse-drawn carts, and revolution. Appropriately, it is here that Doña Angelina practices the ancient arts of healing. There is no sign, no cross, no phone but people come from near and far. She is always ready to put her faith, knowledge and energy to whatever problem, be it mental or physical - the curse of an enemy, revenge of a former lover, a blight on a crop, sexual vigor, fertility, sickness, pain. Backless wood benches seat perhaps 100 and there are two beds in the rear. The earthen floor is swept clean and the walls are whitewashed. A 16" statue of the Sacred Heart looks down from the peak of the altar, which is made of sheet-covered boxes. Hanging nearby is a framed picture of Guadalupe, Mexico's patroness. Cans and jars, some still with labels, contain flowers artificial and fragrant real. Crooked candles flicker. There is a hush of deference.
A young mother sways rhythmically, patting and shushing her feverish, fretful child.
Clutching a handful of fast-wilting flowers, a frail elderly man totters to the altar. In sobbing, trembling, gestured talk his problems tumble forth. Tears, like drops of rain, slide down his furrowed face.
In the corral next to the chapel an old man with skin of brown parchment dismounts his scrawny horse with great difficulty, ties it near a tethered burro and stumbles into the chapel.
A young man with bandaged eyes is led over the chapel's concave, crumbling threshold.
A well-dressed city lady with hat and veil partly covering an ugly skin disorder is embraced warmly as she enters.
Doña Angelina begins the healing ritual with outstretched arms, palms upward. People repeat after her, "Thank you Lord, I receive your charity. In your hands I put my pain and pray your will be done." They chant the Apostle's Creed and Lord's Prayer and sing familiar hymns, plaintive voices embracing hope that their needs will be answered.
In a symbolic gesture of cleansing body and soul, each person individually dusts themselves in front of the altar before presenting their problems to Doña Angelina, who presides in a straight wooden chair near the altar. She and the person sit down, consult privately, her hands holding theirs. Her intent gaze probing deeply, she advises appropriate herbs, techniques, attitudes and sometimes non-prescription medicine.
It was a curandero who saved Doña Angelina's life some 25 years ago when modern medicine failed her. The curandero became her role model and she, his eager disciple as she learned of her own healing powers.
And so it was when Doña Angelina's 75-year old husband, Don José, sought her help some 20 years ago. Desperate and despondent after having been married and widowed 3 times without progeny, his future had appeared bleak. Who would care for him in his old age? Doña Angelina had a special "cure" for him that culminated in their marriage and the miracle of their 6 robust children.
During the service, Don Jose, in a worn charro jacket and needing a shave, sits to one side of the altar pouring water from a pitcher into chipped red clay mugs, said to be holy water. Each person drinks a full mug before returning to his or her seat.
When all have had their turn, Doña Angelina, again with outstretched arms and open palms, leads a recitation: "I have faith with confidence in God in which I am going to get well."
As the service is completed, the people exchange embraces saying, "Peace is with us." Indeed it is. And there is faith and hope.
