This is Paty Zacarias, a Mexican Curandera who lives just outside of the town of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, near the Texas Big Bend region. She is a curandera with a "don" - a special spiritual gift of healing - who practices this ancient healing technique for "patients" who sometimes travel long distances to get "cured" of either physical or spiritual ailments.
This photo was taken in 1999 when she participated in the filming of the PBS and BBC television series Conquistadors.
Click here to purchase the book from this series. Or here for the video.
Later on we will feature an interview with Paty on this page. Paty cures people both by herbal treatments and by rituals. The rituals include prayers and ceremonies, and also the use of candles and pictures of saints. The saints that Paty appeals to for her cures are mainly the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Santo Niņo de Atocha, Santa Barbara, San Ramon Nonato, San Cipriano, and San Miguel Arcangel.
Paty believes that she must have spiritual protection at all times to prevent the witches and sorcerers who cast evil spells on her patients from taking their revenge on her for having removed the spells. In addition, in the case of the so-called "timed" spells, it is assumed automatically that the evil power will move into the body of the curandera or curandero who cures the patient.
Paty has informed us that she continues living outside of town, in a location where she has no close neighbors because Ojinaga itself is full of "witches and novice curanderas" whose vibrations interfere with her thoughts, as she says that she is very sensitive to their presence.
Even more renowned that Paty is don Martin Martinez, a curandero, whom we interviewed back in 1995 and published a website about him, which we think is the most extensive and in depth treatment of this subject on the internet. See http://ojinaga.com/curandero. Yet another curandera whom we have interviewd is Manuela Porras, who is a devotee of the Santisima Muerte, a very peculiarly Mexican "banned saint" whose cult believed to be rooted in an Aztec Goddess often depicted as a skeleton.
Here is a very interesting tale of activities of brujas and curanderas that we investigated, which we call the tale of the "Santos Cuates".
Ojinaga.com will be glad to make contact with Paty for interested parties. Just e-mail us at patycurandera@ojinaga.com
