Starting to Write About Elena Avila

Years ago I started a process of writing about the contributions of Elena Avila, the author of a unique book on curanderismo called,'Woman Who Glows in the Dark.' In this process, two different pieces of writing emerged: One is more typically academic and the other is more descriptive. Here I am going to share a bit of the second, more descriptive version. This one is focused mostly on interviews and has some auto-ethnography, based on principles I work with from the indigenous research paradigm of Shawn Wilson. In that way of thinking, I must situate myself and my relationship to Elena and the subject because knowledge doesn't stand alone and without relationship. In the journal article I am resubmitting right now, most of this material is lost, which I thought  was unfortunate, and so now we have these two different approaches to the same subject.

In the whole inquiry the basic question has been to try and look at what was unique about Elena. In this piece there is a more general focus on her personal life, her immersion in traditional healing practices, and her contribution to the revival of Mesoamerican healing traditions, especially in the Southwest US. There are sub issues like theory, history, the idea of supersition in modernity, and the relationship of theater to ritual. In my other article (not shown here) there is more focus on theater and on a few theoretical points. This will use more scholarly jargon at the beginning, but it should still be accessible, especially as the reader gets into the more concrete material and interviews.

So, here I will share the first part of the interview focused piece. Part of this is to reclaim all the different types of learning about this, beyond just what will initially be published.  None of my work is a claim to mastery over knowledge or text. In the spirit of the medicine, it is apprenticeship to knowledge, only.

Part One

‘I live in the crack of an egg – In the space between galaxies,

and earth mud.

Along thin borders,

of enlightenment and darkness…’(Avila, 2000)

Elena Avila and Curanderismo at the Frontera

The creative margins of both place and psychic/cultural space are a factor in the life and writings of Elena Avila, an Albuquerque traditional healer who passed on in 2011. She is not, of course, the first border Chicana to meditate on border culture, but she is not yet widely discussed.  Readers will be more than familiar with Anzaldúa (2007)  who poetically weaves her own experience of gender, culture, sexuality, identity, and psychology (amongst other elements) as liminal in-between realities, with her own topographical, geographical experience of space as the “Borderlands”. In a similar, but less emphasized way, Elena Avila, a curandera known for her book “Woman Who Glows in the Dark” (2000) can be seen to have lived another remarkable mestizaje,^[1] but from a certainly very distinct angle, integrating not only cultural and personal experiences but discourses of wellness, modernity, post-modernity and tradition without hesitating to take what she saw as the best from each, leaving what she perceived to be unhelpful aside. In this piece, I will introduce Elena Avila and the traditional art of curanderismo. I will further include three interviews with respondents of varied degrees of intimacy with Elena, for the simple reason that an interview with her as Chicana of interest is no longer possible since her death in 2011. This piece is also a brief discourse analysis presented for the purposes of a greater discussion on the filter of modernity and postmodernity in the re-presentation of traditional beliefs. What is presented here is a combination of a largely descriptive approach, combined with notes of critical commentary, based on interviews, ethnographic work (some comparative) and textual discursive analysis. The emphasis on description is not to shy away from dialogue and analysis but because this text is intended to function as one of the first real introductions to Elena Avila’s life and work beyond her mention in doctoral dissertations. 

This piece comes partially through an engagement with the thought of Shawn Wilson, particularly as extrapolated in his text ‘Research Is Ceremony’ (Wilson 2008) in which he proposes a research epistemology and axiology revolutionarily based on indigenous values.  Of those values, as Wilson articulates and interprets them, perhaps the most central is relationality and relational responsibility (Wilson 2008, 7), which he not only describes as a key contribution of the communally focused worldview of First Peoples, but which dovetails with the post-modern focus on the near impossibility of transcending one’s subjectivity, positioning and the suspicion of the semi-theological claim to contextless truth (Wilson 2008, 8). It is, further, a challenge to ethnographic methods common in the western academy that take little account of (particularly indigenous) respondent’s contexts and ethics (Wilson 2008, 45-54). Taking on these critiques, I attempt  to contextualize myself and my respondents, who in turn open up the narrative of Elena Avila’s life through their own experiences with her, in her absence.  I have also taken these critiques into account while engaging in anthropological fieldwork on the role of traditional forms of medicine and healing in modern Turkey. This approach can be applied more widely than only to communities which we classically describe as indigenous.Wilson also speaks clearly of the need to share authentic narratives of the self rather than simply presenting isolated information as though it were entirely detached from the scholar’s life experience.(Wilson 2008, 7) As such, he writes in two parallel forms, with one front for personal experience and another for more generalized reflection on the theme of indigenous epistemologies. In this there is some similarity with the palimpsestic, almost Talmudic style of Derrida’s text on Hegel and Genet, Glas (Derrida, 1990) and other writings in which he utilizes a number of voices simultaneously. Following on from Wilson’s work, this text also includes both first person anecdotal material from those close to the central theme and more generally applicable scholarly themes arising from Avila’s life story. Also in keeping with an indigenous approach (as so described by Wilson and others like him, of course) I have chosen to conclude with an auto-ethnography.

Curanderismo

Like Avila herself, curanderismo is a mestizaje, a hybrid (Bhabha 1994, Canclini, 2005) art of wellness, a result of the merging of medicines between that of the Spanish conquistadores (itself also a hybrid form of merged wellness practices)  and the medicinal knowledge of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. Inevitably, modern biomedicine now also plays a significant role. A number of other convergences are seen by scholars and practitioners of these lineages. Avila opined that curanderismo, (coming from the Spanish for ‘to heal’ and ‘to be a priest’, etymologically) is a product of African, Ancient Greek, Sephardic, Arab, Spanish^[2], and Mesoamerican medicines. (Avila 1999, 16) After the conquest, the Spanish took great interest in indigenous medicine, as seen in their observation and cataloguing of it in such texts as the Florentine Codex by Bernardino of Sahagun (Anderson 2012) and the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis translated from Nahuatl by Martin de la Cruz and Juan Badiano (Latin. "Little Book of the Medicinal Herbs of the Indians") (Byland 2000). At a more grassroots level, Europeans gained local knowledge of herbal medicine from their indigenous servants (Montano 2001, 237) while indigenous practitioners grafted the new European system of the classical humors (amongst other things) and elements of Roman Catholicism onto their own beliefs  (often loosely classed under the umbrella of ‘shamanism2) such as the belief in soul loss or ‘magical fright’ known as susto.

In the course of its development, traditional healing in Mesoamerica has included a number of specializations. Curanderas may be Yerberos, Sobadoras, Hueseros, Parteras, Espiritistas, or the much respected Curanderos Enteros/Totales  (Montano 2001, 237) who are said to have all of the knowledge of the former sub-sections (that of the Herbalists, Masseurs/Masseuses, Bone-setters, Midwives, and Spiritualists). These lists are not exhaustive as there are a variety of treatment systems, with a variety of lineages. It is no surprise that Avila states, ‘Curanderismo’s strength comes from its practice of always incorporating whatever is useful and available into its treatments, in an intuitive and creative way.’ (Avila 1999, 17) And, in fact, this was Elena’s approach, a liminal and hybrid style that embraced few if any myths of purity, even the purity of traditional healing versus modern medicine.

Biography

This information, however, is incomplete without some practical and biographical exemplary grounding. Elena’s person will be presented here via her relationships with others, an approach grounded in curanderismo itself, which Elena described with the axiom ‘corazon cura corazon’^[3], to say that she saw it as a fundametally relationally-based healing modality (echoing Wilson) and correspondingly emphasized platicas^[4] and counselling as fundamental and previous to the rest of her work, which often took a more ritual (rather than talk-therapy based) form as it progressed.^[5]

Elena Avila was born in El Paso, Texas to parents from a mestizo/mestiza background including French, Spanish, Maya, Aztec and Zapotec lineages, with her mother coming from a more privileged background than her father (Avila 1999, 104). She described her mother as a dramatic and complicated woman, a poetess,  unhappy with the unexpectedly non-elite lifestyle in El Paso which she had taken up in order to join Avila’s father, despite her attachment to Mexico.^[6] She refers to her mother when citing certain traditional beliefs that she was already familiar with, prior to taking up a more formal study of curanderismo.(1999, 90-92) Elena states that she married very early, at 16, to have independence from the difficulties in her family of origin. She lost her mother to suicide, dramatically, a week before her graduation from the University of El Paso with a bachelor’s degree in nursing (1999, 95). While raising her own family, an interest in her roots and the traditional medicine of Mexico began in dialogue with an established and successful career as a nurse with advanced trainings and specializations. She was initially prompted to look into curanderismo by one of her teachers during her training, who told her that there was an increasing interest in holistic medicine in the mainstream, leading her to ask Avila about the possibility of doing research on traditional medicine in Mexico.  Elena, reflecting her positioning as a Mexican-American woman of an assimilationist formative era, reacted with some horror at being singled out to do research on what seemed to have been perceived by her as a ghettoizing and embarrassing superstition. During this assignment, however, she slowly changed in perspective. (1999, 96) This is a classical modern to postmodern transition point. The liminal multiple belongings that Elena Avila experienced became more pronounced at this stage as her story of self and change moved from a general cultural ambit and identity concern to one particularly, simultaneously, more focused on work in the health industry and traditional medicine.  As she carried on her research from the basics of what she had learned from her undergraduate presentation, she also incorporated curanderismo further and further into her own lifestyle, at times drawing ridicule from her children for whom elaborate prayers accompanied by burning of copal (incense) seemed bizarre, and her father who saw her re-indigenization as a sign of relinquishing hard earned assimilation and success (1999, 110-101, 103-105). At the same time, her liminality functioned to form a linguistic and cultural bridge with patients who she was often able to help in ways Anglo doctors could not. (1999, 98) Avila successfully worked in neuropsychiatry at UCLA, but eventually moved to Albuquerque where her life continued to be more focused on traditional healing, with frequent trips to Mexico. There she worked as the director of the Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center until she began to feel too constrained by establishment therapeutic guidelines and decided to fully dedicate herself to working as a curandera (1999, 125-128). Amongst other things that came from her work, there was a collaboration with doctors and educators, such as the staff of the University of New Mexico’s Anthropology department which produced an annual summer school, ‘Traditional Medicine Without Borders’ co-organized by Eliseo Cheo Torres, author of Curandero: A Life in Mexican Folk Healing (2005). This event draws a very large crowd including students, traditional healers and academics and continues to date.

Eventually, Avila chose the role of curandera as her main full-time work and some years later was able to write and publish ‘Woman Who Glows in the Dark’ (1999), after which she worked speaking, teaching and practicing traditional healing until her death from cancer in 2011. While pursuing my PhD, I began a conversation with Elena about curanderismo that slowly developed into a process of post-doctoral ethnographic study. For a further sense of her personal impact, interviews are included in the second part of this piece.

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[1] For a wider perspective on the concept for Mexican political and historical discourses of identity see, for example, ‘Mexico, from Mestizo to Multicultural: National İdentities and Recent Representations of the Conquest’ (Chorba 2007) and ‘El Hipertexto multicultural en Mexico Posmoderno: Paradojas e Incertidumbres’ (Coronoda and Hodge, 2004). I use the term mestizaje, in its noun form, to refer to more general sense of hybridity.

[2] In many of these cases, the traditions overlap. While African traditional beliefs and cures came with the arrival of African slaves, the Spanish were influenced by Galenic medicine (from Ancient Greece) via its introduction by the Arabs. A possible Sephardic influence is posited by some involved in curanderismo, including some who see the use of the egg In healing rituals as coming from a Spanish Crypto-Jewish genealogy. See, for example, Jacobs, Janet Liebman: Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews (74-75).

[3] ‘Heart heals heart’ (from my own interviews in addition to her text).

[4] ‘Talks’. These are often used by curandera as a part of the healing process.

[5] Interview, October 2010.

[6] Interview, September 2010.