During the summer, I'm a professor

because I do have an assignment and

a, a calling as a professor and
I'm professor of language, literacy and
sociocultural studies,
but I also, also work and
cross list the course with anthropology,
women's studies Mexicano,
Chicano, Espano studies and anthropology.
The course deals with Curanderismo,
the art of Mexican folk medicine or
traditional medicine.
It's traditional medicine
of Mexico in the southwest.
And I've been teaching this class for
12 years.
It is quite unusual, we may be the only
class in the US that is being taught at
this point for credit hours and
also for continuing education units.
People have an option, and
we started with 40 students.
Sev, let me see about 12 years ago.
It'll be our thirteenth
year this coming year, and
now we have over 200 students that
come from all over the country.
We have a large group coming from
California, from the Midwest,
from Iowa area.
We have a,
even a group coming from New York City.
We have some from Texas and, and then we
have a lot of most of them of course,
about 80% of them come from New Mexico,
and they're students but
they're also community members
that come for this class.
The instructors are from both
the US healers from mostly
the Southwest, but we also have some
from other countries at times, but
the second week we have about 40 healers,
or curanderos, curanderas from Mexico.
They do community service.
They, the curanderos and curanderas,
especially the second week, and
we do what we call traditional health
fairs, or ferias de salud, and
we do three of them,
one here at the University of New Mexico.
It starts at noon until about 4 o'clock,
and we see people from throughout
the community, mostly from theuniversity,
but also from outside of the university.
Probably, we attract about 300 or
400 individuals that come for
sessions outdoors in front of
the student union building.
The second one is at La Placita Institute.

It's a community center in the South

Valley of Albuquerque, and that's a big
one, we attract probably 600 people in
the evening, and the third one is a nash,
at the National Hispanic Cultural Center,
and that's the biggest one.
We attract over 1,000 individuals
that come for that evening,
and it starts about 4 o'clock until 10,
11 o'clock in the evening.
It says that there is a need, that people
are looking for curanderos for holistic
healing, and there is a need for it,
and the curanderos do an exception job.
Now when the curanderos were doing
sessions with the community they have
student interns that help them, but they,
they also have local healers that work
with curanderos, so it's a very dynamic
experience for a lot of individuals
play a role to serve the community.
We share the information of the different
plans by having speakers from different
regions of Mexico as well as
here in the United States.
For example, we'll have Dr. Tomas Enos,
who's an herb, herbologist from Santa Fe,
and he will talk about plants of the
Southwest, of the high desert area, and
he'll bring samples of the plants,
and he'll show this to us,
how to prepare these plants.
And then we'll have someone from Oaxaca.
That we'll talk about Laurencio Nez
from Oaxaca, curandero from Oaxaca,
then we'll talk about plants
from the area of Oaxaca which is
a mountainous area as well
as the coast of Oaxaca, and
he'll share about the, those plants and
how you prepare those plants.
And then we'll have
someone from Cuernavaca,
which is very fertile and
ou, outside of Mexico City.
So we'll have individuals from different
regions actually talk about their plants
and demonstrate how you prepare the plants
and how, or how you use them fresh or dry.
We believe that we have had
an impact with allopathic medicine,
because we do have nurses
that are part of the class.
We have physicians that come to the class,
and
I believe that they're thinking outside
of the box, at least they understand
the cultural differences in medicine
whether it's traditional medicine,
whether it's Ayurvedic medicine,

whether it's Chinese medicine or

whether it's a combination of
Mexican remedies and rituals.
So with the understanding they're more
tolerant to what people bring to them, and
they can start asking questions
about what they're taking so
that there is not an interaction with,
with allopathic medicine, or
the prescriptions that they're taking.
So there's more an open-minded
attitude towards physicians, and
healers now, and they're working together.
I don't actually have a practice.
I, I study, and I teach, and I work with
curanderos but I'm not a practitioner.
I can bring people together.
I'm apprentice under a curandero, but
I don't see myself as a curandero.
There are several curanderos that do
this full-time and I'll work with them.
I attend their classes.
I attend their sweat lodges or
their temazcals, and
I encourage that we continue a quality
program and a lot of training.
And so, these curanderos were working with
curanderos in Mexico, and the curanderos,
curanderos in Mexico are going to,
to classes so
that they can have quality control of what
they do when they prepare their plans,
when they do their rituals, because a lot
of this information in the past has been
passed on by word of mouth and
sometimes information gets distorted.
So we want to tell people
look there's research you,
you have to have quality when you do this,
and you, and
you have to be very careful when you,
when you work with individuals.
And this happening now there's
consistency, there's training,
there's research and I see some wonderful
things happening not only in US, but
in Mexico and a lot of working together,
even with the Native American community,
there's a lot of good relationships now.
The curanderos leave Albuquerque and
they go to Santa Fe,
to the American Indian Art Institute, and
then do a health fair during the weekend.
So, there's a lot of sharing where,
where there wasn't in the past.
>> And is there genuine academic
rigor as part of the program?
>> Definitely, the students are required
to do reflection papers every day.
They do a term paper at

the end of the class.

They do readings so yes it's it's,
it's an academic program as well as a lot
of extra events, like the health fair.
The students go to the health fairs.
We have extra classes
in the afternoons for
those students that want
additional information, so, yes,
there is lot of rigor for the,
for the two weeks of the class.
My interest thing curanderismo started as,
as, as a child,
my mother was not a curandera, she
didn't consider herself a curandera, but
she knew a lot about rituals about plants,
and there were, there were six of
us in our family, and she would say, look,
I'm tak, I'm not taking you to a doctor.
We're not insured, we can't afford it, so
I'm going to take care of your illnesses,
unless you're very serious,
then we'll go to a physician.
So, I grew up with this topic, and
if it was a serious illness there was
a local curandera, Doa Maria,
that really was a specialist, and for
serious illnesses she took care of our
serious problems, so I grew up with,
but I didn't know,
how to explain, the topic,
and after, you know, I went to college,
I managed a curandero
by the name Chenchito Crescencio Alvarado
from Mexico, from Espinazo.
And one of his home was Espinazo where the
famous Nio Fidencio lived and died, and
his other home was in Control, Tamualipas
and I spend a lot of time with Chenchito,
and I invited him to the U.S. a few
times and I learned a lot from him, and
then I came to New Mexico and
this wonderful university which
has a lot of diversity encouraged me to
continue some my studies and here I am.
What I learned this years is that
we don't have enough time but
the students want a lot of hands-on,
so I'm,
I'm trying to think how we can
prepare plans into teachers.
It's a large class, but I'm,
I'm still, I would like hands-on for
the students to be able to
prepare simple plants and
ointments and liniments, and I believe
we'll be able to do it next year.
And we're not creating healers, we're
giving information, but the students are,
are hungry to learn how to do some of

these things that their grandmothers and

great-grandmothers were
doing a few years back.
One thing that we've ent, emphasized
in the plants is the botanical name
which doesn't change, but common names do.
You may have five common names from the US
and from Mexico for the same plant, so
that, that, that's the problem sometimes
with common names, and, and also we trace,
we try to trace a plant to the, to, to
their origins whether it came from Europe,
whether it came from Asia,
or whether it was native.
And a lot of our plants came
from other countries, it, but
it's nice because we've had plants
here that are native, like osha but
in Mexico a osha is chuchupate or
chuchuspate and, and it's, it's
a wonderful plan, we talk about that, we
talk about baraka borage which came from
the Arab word meaning the father of sweat
which is used for fevers and and Nicole's.
So yeah, we, we try,
we try to trace the plant.
I say try because sometimes we can't,
we don't know where it came from.
We have ideas.
>> And maybe that'll be a topic that one
of the students will take up someday.
>> And they do.
Some of the students do
continue the research.
Another wonderful plant is aloe vera.
We k, we don't know where they came from,
Egypt, Cape Verde,
Algiers, it's not native to this country,
but it's native of some country somewhere.
It's a wonderful plant.
Now it's, it's a very popular plant here.
There's a lot of similarities in rituals.
They vary according to the region or
the country, but the, oh,
definitely, I just happened to, to compare
what they call La Mano Poderosa or
"The Powerful Hand", and
you have one ritual in Israel.
You have another one in Egypt,
and you have another one,
another one in Mexico, for the same
concept, but for different religions.
>> Mm-hm.
>> It, it's very interesting how
they're so similar and so different,
but it shows that, that, that we're
more similar than different, definitely.
That every culture has more
similarities and differences, even in,
in the herbal medicines we,

we look at Chinese medicine and

look at Mexican medicine and Ayurvedic
medicine and there's so many similarities.
You have cupping for example or
ventosas for all sorts of body aches and
body problems.
We've always thought it was Chinese but
we think that the Mayans and
Aztecs also had those similar.
Acupuncture, there's,
there's Mexican acupuncture and
there's Chinese acupuncture so as we
study this, we realize that our ancestors