Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

friends than strangers waiting for a doctor. We chatted easily about the
difficulties encountered on the road, the details of each person’s ailment,
and the hot weather.
When the patients spoke of Don Elijio, they respectfully called him el
viejito, the old man, numero uno, or el mero, the authentic one.
Panti finally stepped inside and announced he was ready for patients. “I
have been healing in this way, with my prayers, my roots, my vines and
barks for forty years now,” he told us, moving his arms about to punctuate
each sentence. “I cure diabetes, high blood pressure, even cancer. I never
went to school—cannot even sign my name—but up here, it’s full.” He
tapped his forehead with a plant-stained fingertip.
The parents of the sick child got up, lifted their daughter, and followed
him into the cement house. I peered into the room and saw the parents lay
the girl down on a makeshift bed: an old door frame laid flat across two
cement blocks. When they took the wrappings off her legs, I was shocked to
see many infected, staphlike sores.
“The child has worms and ciro [gastritis]…and dirty blood,” said Panti.
“But ciro is her main problem. Oh, I know that old cabron [goat] Don
Ciriaco well. He loves to fool doctors, but he can’t trick me.
“There are three types of ciro,” he explained. “There is dry ciro, with
constipation, red ciro, with bloody stools, and white ciro, with mucus in the
stools.”
First her digestion had gone bad and her blood become dirty. Then the
worms had proliferated and the sores developed. “Dirty blood always has to
come out through the skin,” he explained.
“For me it is no mystery. She will be cured, mamasita, have no fear.
God will help us all.”
He ambled back into the kitchen/waiting room to fill a cloth sack with
dried herbs, scooping them out of a large sack leaning against the hearth.
He reached overhead to crush some dried plants hanging from the rafters,
which I recognized as Epasote (Mexican Wormseed), and then he retreated
to the cement house. Soon uproarious laughter came spilling out.
The same pattern ensued with each group of patients. “I’ve been healing
this way for forty years,” he’d boast dramatically, reminding me of an actor
on stage. Then he’d take the patients to the cement house. He’d come back
to the thatch hut for herbs. Then I’d hear laughter.