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April Mayes: “We need more professional, trained, educated people now we're going to call doctors instead of the curanderas and the curanderos.”

It wasn’t until her 40s that she was ready to begin her apprenticeship with a curandero in Tecate, Baja California, and understand how to heal a whole person.

The contents of Abuelita’s bulto looked like it may have belonged to El Niño Fidencio, the famous curandero of olden times, and I watched in awe as she sorted the ingredients for Pita’s treatment.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras goes on to explore her family’s history as curanderos — South American shamans like her grandfather, whose bones the family decides to disinter in accordance with his spectral request.

When I told Colombians and other South Americans that my grandfather was a curandero, I often received a story back: “Oh, my grandma used to say this,” or “In my family we do this.”