Is My Girlfriend a Witch?

     After hearing Maya and Victoria talk about curanderas in their family and some of the fascinating healing practices used to cure stomach pain and back pain, I decided to perform my own little witch hunt on my girlfriend later that evening. My girlfriend, Madison, also comes from a Hispanic family, so I wanted to ask her about the things I had learned about in class that day to see if her family believed in any of them.

    I remember when we first started dating, I had started coughing a lot and she told me to rub Vicks on my feet and put on socks. I looked at her like she was crazy because my grandmother always rubbed a little Vicks on our chests when we were stuffy, but to think about putting it on my feet was bizarre. She explained that in her family, Vicks was the cure for almost everything. I quickly learned that this wasn't too out of the ordinary and isn't culturally specific to Hispanic families. So, she's off the hook with the Vicks thing, but when I started hearing about cracking eggs on peoples' stomachs and pulling the skin on peoples' backs, I decided to put her on the hot seat once again. When I asked her about it, she told me her great grandma had a close friend or cousin that was a real curandero. Her grandma on the same side of the family would always crack an egg on her stomach when she had a stomach ache, crack an egg in a cup to put on her head when she had a headache, and pull the skin on her back to relieve back pain. Her grandma on her dad's side didn't believe so much in the egg cracking practices, but Madison explained that she was a firm believer in "evil eye" and always urged Madison to be nice to everyone.

    Madison told me that when she was very young, she used to get really bad night terrors and would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Her grandma on the curandero side said that Madison's stepdad's ex-wife probably was sending curses at them and wishing evil on the family. At first, Madison's mom dismissed these claims as a joke, but bad things started happening to her and her husband at their jobs, she had gotten into a lot of minor car crashes, and things were going bad for Madison at school. So then she thought that maybe they should look into warding off evil. Madison said that her mom makes sure there is a clove of garlic in everyone's car, and that they sage their house and each other every month. I thought this was interesting because we had read that it was most often those that wanted protection from witches that started practicing witchcraft themselves.

    There is definitely something out of the ordinary about her family taking defense against evil, and maybe there was a point in time when someone did try to put a curse on them. The last piece of evidence I have is that Madison and her family adopted a sort of chant or song to say whenever someone falls over, bumps their head, or gets a minor injury. They say "sona sona colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana" which literally translates to "heal heal the little frog tail, if you don't heal today, you will heal tomorrow." Madison said that its like their version of "let me kiss it to make it better." It looks like its just a cute little chant to say you hope someone feels better, but a chant is a chant nonetheless.... just kidding. Is my girlfriend a witch? Probably. But in the words of Frank Sinatra, "its one that I wouldn't switch, 'cause there's no nicer witch than you." 

Thanks to Maya and Victoria for bringing up curanderos and such in class, and a big thanks to my girlfriend, Madison, for teaching me about some of her family traditions and quirks and letting me poke a little fun at her in my blog post.