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This chapter establishes the cultural and thematic contexts for understanding folk saint devotions. It explores the nature of devotion, the means by which devotions are initiated and disseminated, and the relation of folk saints to canonized saints and to the Catholic Church.

Divine healing and liberación (liberation or deliverance) became the primary tool for evangelization and church growth in Pentecostal and evangelical Protestant churches in Argentina between 1985 and 1990. Key leaders are Carlos Annacondia, Omar Cabrera, Hector Giménez, and Claudio Freidzon. Pentecostal missionaries who founded churches in Argentina since the 1940s did not promote healing. Annacondia supplanted the old missionary gospel with a new, culturally resonant repertoire of practices appropriate to the Argentine popular sector. Divine healing, by providing an alternative to visiting expensive curanderos (traditional healers), was a primary attraction. Evangelicals united behind Annacondia’s crusades and imitated his pentecostal methods and style of casting out demons, divine healing, testimonies, and popular music. Freidzon’s “new anointing” brought pentecostal practices to sectors of the historically Protestant churches that had previously not participated in the movement. The ecumenical Charismatic movement may further break down barriers between Protestants and Catholics.

This book has explored how transcultural exchanges have occurred between Mexican American folk healers and Anglo American patients. It has also discussed the impact of Mexican American religious and folk healing traditions not only on Mexican Americans but also on a small but significant number of non-Mexican American patients. It has shown that the narrative predispositions of Mexican American folk healing have encountered channels of convergence with the predispositions of the American metaphysical tradition, making transcultural healing a possibility. One positive outcome of this transcultural exchange is that curanderismo has established a place for itself in the expanding world of complementary and alternative medicine. It has also allowed some curanderos in the United States to reconnect with the perceived indigenous roots of Mexican American religious healing.

This chapter examines medical pluralism and the diverse therapeutic practices that exist parallel to the national health care system in Mexico. It explores how different medical practices coexist and how those practices are interwoven and sometimes clash in people's experience of illness and in formulating strategies to restore health. It also mentions that medicina popular, curanderos, and homeopaths show distinct correlations between specific etiologies and ideas of sociability, of individual sin and redemption, as well as ideas about science and faith in the alternative medical field.

This book presents a transcultural and multiethnic history of curanderismo, the folk and religious healing arts and practices of Mexican Americans. It looks at the religious and cosmological foundations of curanderos as well as their impact on multiethnic communities in the United States. It also explores curanderismo's relationship to American religious, metaphysical, and alternative medicine and healing, suggesting that curanderismo has been a constant part of Mexican and Mexican American interactions with Anglo Americans since the Mexican–American War. It shows that the practices and beliefs surrounding curanderismo, and Mexican American religions more generally, occupy an integral and influential place in religious life in the United States.

This chapter focuses on the various practices of curanderismo in the United States. Drawing on historical and ethnographic accounts, it examines the customs and habits of Mexican American religious and folk healing. In particular, it chronicles the lives of two prominent folk saints, Teresa Urrea and Pedrito Jaramillo, as early examples of Mexican American folk healers who interacted often and successfully with mainstream white America. It also considers Anglo cultural assumptions that allowed Mexican American folk traditions and medicines to be transculturally efficacious. Finally, it discusses the herbal remedies, prayers, and typical techniques of several mid- and late-twentieth-century curanderos, who practice mostly in Mexican American barrios.

This chapter examines New Age interest in curanderismo and Mexican American folk healing. It considers how the more “traditional” curanderos extend their practice to Anglo clients who almost always participate in alternative healing and have been impacted by the American metaphysical religious tradition and New Age spirituality. In order to elucidate contemporary curanderismo's convergence with New Age and alternative healing communities, the chapter focuses on the continued development of American metaphysical religion into the twentieth century. It also looks at one of the most prominent contemporary curanderos, Elena Avila, and her way of practicing Mexican American religious healing to show that curanderismo continues to undergo hybridization. Finally, it discusses the use of the concept of chakras by curanderos to explain how Mexican American as well as Mayan and other Mesoamerican healing traditions work.

This chapter examines the ways that contemporary curanderos as well as neo-shamans have endeavored to continue to “import” knowledge from Mesoamerica and South America. It shows that contemporary curanderos, in an act of cultural memory and reclamation, reconfigure their healing tradition as one that is largely indigenous rather than the result of colonial contact and oppression. It also considers new directions in curanderismo by focusing on the University of New Mexico's course on curanderismo and the growing role of neo-shamanism in contemporary Mexican American metaphysical healing. The chapter suggests that contemporary curanderismo combines an overt return to an imagined indigenous Mesoamerican and South American past with attempts to incorporate with other common alternative healing traditions such as ayurveda, Reiki, and massage therapies.