If Not a Cure, the Healer Offers at Least a Comfort

It all seemed too good to be true. A candle to bring me the love of my life? A prayer to bring me success? Tarot cards that would tell my future?

The promises of the curandera struck me as absurd. But in Sylmar, in a Latino neighborhood where immigrants bring with them old customs, you don’t want to dismiss them too lightly.

Curanderos, or healers, practice a mix of Spanish, Native American, Greek and Arabic traditions; some dateback to the Maya and Inca civilizations. The centuries-old traditions play on mysticism and superstition to help those seeking cures for life’s ills. With a candle and a few prayers, curanderos say they can help people do everything from finding love to putting a little extra cushion in their checking accounts.

In Mexico, one usually finds curanderos working out of their homes in remote villages or small towns. In Los Angeles, one finds them in strip malls.

Botanica de la Selva in Sylmar is sandwiched between a pizza place and a pharmacy on Glenoaks Boulevard. The name means “Botany of the Jungle.” Curanderos use exotic herbs and oils in their work, so many use the word “botanica” in their business name.

The Sylmar shop is about the size of a living room. Shelves filled with herbs, spiritual books, religious figures and glass candleholders line the walls. The place smells as if somebody has been burning incense.

Candles of all colors sell for about three bucks. Each one holds a different promise.

Light it up and the man or woman of your desires would succumb to your pleasure, says the wrapper on a green candle.

I had to admit, it sounded intriguing.

I first heard of a curandera as a child in the small Mexican town where I was raised, Juchipila, Zacatecas. My grandmother, a small woman with a rugged face, had crosses all over her brick home, along with candles, pictures of her children, and paintings of men and women wearing what looked like royal clothes. “Saints,” she would say, “they are saints.”

I would hear my grandma talk about the trabajitos (little jobs) her curandera would do for her. “Oh, she is good. She is. She has the power to heal and bring you luck,” my grandma Maria would say.

Well, it’s really God, she would add, making the sign of the cross every time she mentioned God. “You know, God works in different ways. God is almighty. But she can help you, the curandera.”

The sound of a soft voice brought me back to reality.

“Can I help you?”

It was the curandera, Fidelia Pineda, a short, stocky woman with long hair and thick glasses. She told me she had taken over the operation from her brother six years ago, when he moved to Oregon.

For $25, the 38-year-old Pineda agreed to read the Tarot cards for me--kind of a general checkup.

“We all have the gift,” she said. “We just have to find it.”

She laid out the cards, then began uncovering them one by one.

She told me I have not kept in touch with my family back in Texas. Not a good thing, she says. Heard of a phone?

I had to admit, she was right. I should call more often. Someday.

She laid out a few more cards and asked me if I had children. No children, I said. “Are you sure?” she persisted.

I think I would know.

Other cards said that there was a person who was trying to control my life and that I was often depressed--but that at the same time, I had so much energy.

This confused me. I’m not always smiling, but then again I’m always going faster than the Energizer bunny.

Then Fidelia pulled a card showing a skeleton wearing a monk’s robe. The word DEATH seemed to say it all.

“Death?” I said out loud.

Fidelia smiled. Nobody is dying. But it seems like your communication with your family has been dying out, she told me.

Other than that, you are OK, she said. Nobody has put any spells on you and you don’t need a limpia. That was a relief--in a limpia, she scrubs herbs all over your half-naked body to cleanse away all evil.

That was about it. It seemed more like a horoscope reading. Some things rang true and others, well, not so true.

But to some people, at least, she offers a comfort.

Sometimes customers show up with unexplainable pains and periods of bad luck. For luck, she asks them to light candles she prepares for them. She also does a limpia or recommends that they take certain herbs, like te de tila, a tea for the nervous system.

That is why 28-year-old Alma Sanchez of Sylmar came to see her. She believed somebody had put a spell on her to separate her from her husband and make her ill.

Fidelia gave her some herbs, told her to light some candles and gave her a lucky charm to protect her from evil, Sanchez said. After she lighted candles and prayed, she said, the pains went away.

“My life is so much more peaceful since I started coming to see Fidelia,” Sanchez said. “She told me to have faith. I light up candles. She prayed for me. The pain is gone. She is a good one.”

Fidelia sees mostly women, typically immigrants from Latin America. Some have been abandoned by their husbands and want them back. Some light candles to bring luck and money into their homes. Some want protection for their loved ones. Others want to fight black magic.

Sanchez said Fidelia’s fees are pretty low for the cures her customers seek. About $20 for a first consultation and $30 or $50 depending on what kind of job the person needs--a card reading, a candle or an herb.

Sometimes things don’t turn out the way they plan and so they come back for another candle, another prayer, another herb.

Dr. Shirley Fannin, director of disease control for the Los Angeles Department of Health Services, noted that selling herbs and candles and giving advice to the lovelorn are legal activities, and that all a curandera needs to set up shop is a business license.

But they cannot cross that line and give medical advice, she stressed, and she cautioned that anyone suffering from illnesses should go to a real doctor, not a curandera. Still, she didn’t completely rule out the healing powers of curanderos for other sorts of woes.

“We do not know everything that there is in the universe,” Fannin said.

Then I remembered how my grandma was always able to go to sleep at night, thinking that the candle at the end of the room protected her youngest son working in fields across the border.

Then it hit me why the tradition of curanderos has survived all these years. It’s faith--something cold logic has never been entirely able to squelch.