M-Look, I'm from Astla in San Luis Potosí.

H- Ah hah!

M- Born there. And from there we moved to Villa Santos, San Luis Potosí. And then from Villa Santos, San Luis Potosí we came to a little place they call ejido Benito Juárez, Municipio of Gómez Faríaz, Tamaulipas. Twelve kilometers on the way there, on this side, twelve kilometers before you get to Ciudad de Mante. Then we came here for a year. We left our house and everything in Tamaulipas and we came here for a year, and now we have twenty eight years here, thanks be to God.

H- And where you lived there were lots of floods. Right?

M- There where we lived, we were living in the middle of four rivers, the Rio Frio, the Rio de las Casas - there we used to live, there where the sun would set - the Rio Frio and the Rio Comandante.

The Rio Comandante comes from Ciudad Ocampo, Tamaulipas, and the Rio Frio is born in the Sierra de Gómez Faríaz. From the same municipio - then from there from the house, from the houses where the sun rises - pass the Rio Bayalejo and the Rio Sabina.

Other rivers, the Rio Bayalejo - that one, yes, I don't know where it comes from, it is large in Ciudad Victoria. Over there this river, the Bayalejo - who knows where it originates. It might be that the origin of this river, the Rio Sabinas, is born also in the mountains, but who knows where it comes from. This river, too, who knows?

H- And you worked as a fisherman when you lived there?

M- I fished, worked, and I helped my mother. I worked - that is - that I helped my mother cure on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

H- Uh, huh.

M- And the next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I help my mother again.

H- You told me one time that you went on a trip to Tamaulipas and it turned out that you were fairly well known by the people there. And you had a lot of work to do curing people, and later they sent you a lot of letters. How was that?

M- Look, it's that we went over there where we used to live, to Rio Frio, Municipio of Gómez Farías, Tamaulipas. I went there to bring back medicinal plants. Now I don't do that, now I don't have the chance to get anything together. And right away, "Martincito has arrived here. Martincito has arrived, let's go so that he can cure us", and "Martín Martínez Gonzáles has arrived. Well, let's go", and from there I started.

From Rio Frio I left for Benito Juarez, Ejido La Misión, Loma Alta, Cinco de Mayo, Ciudad de Mante, the village of Limón. This side of Samay, ejido La Azteca, to Ingenio de Jicotal, where they mill the sugar cane. Ingenio Azucarero, to the city of Jicotelcan, to Ciudad Mante, to Congregación Quintero, Ciudad Madero, Tampico. Okay, I was in Panuco, Veracruz. With costs paid form Rio Frio they took me to they weren't paying me. Not a time to cure some sick people. Then after the tour I came back to Ojinaga. I was only going to go for eight days and I stayed away five months.

H- My gosh!

M- Yes.

H- When did this occur?

M- In 1986, my old lady - my mother - still lived. Then in `87 I went with my daughter Rosita. "Let's go bring back medicinal plants for next year."

We were going to stay fifteen days, she said, and we wound up staying six months, because they took us to a lot of different places to cure some people, and I told them, no, now I brought my daughter. Well we practically have no money to travel with.

"No, sir. Don't you worry. We'll pay the cost of the bus."

Okay. Well, that's how it is. I went with them, and wherever I went my daughter went with me.

H- Which of the cures which you have done here in Ojinaga seemed to you to be the most notable or the most typical? - or something like that.

M- Look, here we cured a girl from Carlsbad, New Mexico. Her last name was Pineda...Pet... Peneida?

I can't remember her name or that of her parents either right now. Well, so many people come to see me! Anyway, they had placed some nastiness for the teacher at the school, because some people hated her and they said, "so that you remember us, you'll see."

But it turned out that the child came to school, ndt she received that illness. She had the symptoms of being pregnant without being so. Well they brought her and we cured her twice, my mother and myself. We prescribed medicinal plants, they bought them and they left. They returned fifteen days later, now very happy, and the child was much better. But she was as if she were pregnant. For the next, or that is, the third time they came - now thanks be to God - the child was now much thinner. That's is how she had been placed, because that's what they were going to do to the teacher.