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Curandero: A Life in Mexican Folk Healing. By Eliseo "Cheo" Torres, with Timothy L. Sawyer, Jr. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. x + 170, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustration, notes, bibliography, index. $14.95 paper).
Eliseo "Cheo" Torres and Timothy L. Sawyer offer an introduction to the folk healing practice known as curanderismo as it is used by Mexicans in Mexico, South Texas, and other areas of the Southwest. Written in an accessible style, it is enriched with photographs and personal-experience narratives, an academic interweaving of history, anthropology, and folklore-and, on occasion, the unembarrassed use of "composite" characters ("A couple of the personages I have employed in these pages are actually composites of a number of people I knew, or have read about, but they are no less real or true to life, despite this poetic license" [4]). The book is meant to establish, document, and preserve links between formal medicine and curanderismo as an alternative healing practice. The authors are academically trained, yet both have direct knowledge of curanderismo. Torres, the principal author, grew up with the practice (see below), and each author has done several internships with curanderos. Throughout, their book provides insight into the historical and present role of curanderos and curanderas in Mexican and Mexican-American culture.
Through thirteen chapters, the narrative follows a path of...