Curanderismo at MIKIZTLI
Interview with Jesús Cuauhtémoc Villa
Our 11th Annual MIKIZTLI: Día de los Muertos is coming up on Sunday, October 30 at Steele Indian School Park, and a special part of our festival is having Curanderos there, continuing ancestral practices. For some people, the festival is their first introduction to curanderismo.
To help people understand more about this tradition, Cultural Coalition spoke with Jesús Cuauhtémoc Villa, one of the curanderos who is at our festival each year. With a long family tradition of healers, Jesús was recognized as a curandero in 2020, having been an apprentice with Maestra Patricia Federico (and Cultural Coalition Board Member) for 13 years and he received his Master’s degree studying curanderismo from an academic perspective.
Cultural Coalition: For those who aren’t familiar, what is curanderismo?
Jesús: Curanderismo is the traditional healing art of Mexico and the southwestern United States; it exists everywhere that the Spanish colonized in the 16th & 17th centuries, but the most well-known version (and probably the earliest one) is Mexican curanderismo. Mexican Curanderismo is a mixture of Spanish Catholicism, Indigenous traditional medicine, African traditional medicine, and Asian traditional medicine, all of which met and mixed during the colonial period.
C.C.: Why do you feel it is important to have curandero/as at the MIKIZLTI festival?
Jesús: I feel it’s important to have curanderos at MIKIZTLI because curanderismo is an important and unique part of Mexican culture, but also because our community needs healing. Curanderismo is a beautiful way of reclaiming and reviving our Indigenous, Black, and Asian ancestral medicines that were almost destroyed during the European invasions. MIKIZTLI is all about building and supporting nuestra hermosa comunidad y nuestra linda cultura, cultural reclamation, breaking the chain of generational trauma, and starting the process of generational healing and empowerment.
C.C.: What is one thing you hope people walk away with after having a visit with you at MIKIZTLI?
Jesús: I hope that visitors to MIKIZTLI walk away knowing that death is a natural and beautiful part of life, that we can celebrate it as much as we celebrate life, and that they are part of an amazing, growing community of healing. ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!