@agingexplorer
The women arrive with the dawn, many on overnight buses from the mountains. Their traditional layered petticoats and bowler hats identify them as curanderos (healers) and they gather each week at the witches’ market in Lima, where the faithful wait to be cured.
They are from the mountains, living a life unchanged in centuries: a merging of Catholicism, the Afro-Caribbean religion of Santería and folk superstition, and also the modern world. The healers gather in a huge tent under banners that list their websites and mobile phone numbers, and photos that depict their medical specialities. Business cards detail their healing tools of eggs, coca leaves and even live guinea pigs, all of which they claim can cure anything from broken bones to cancer. Each stall offers displays of fetishes and totems that will cast spells or repel the evil eye, a belief taken seriously here.
PHOTOGRAPHS: ADVENTURE CATCHER
I watch as one curandero, a plug of coca leaves tucked in her cheek, slowly passes a guinea pig over the prone body of a woman on a table, then brings it to her ear as if listening to what it has to say. The woman has complained of stomach pains, and the curandero assures her the guinea pig has identified her problem. It is cancer. Not to worry, though, as the curandero now passes an egg over the afflicted spot while chanting an incantation. The woman is then told to rise and go her way. She leaves, believing she is cured. Another man stands on his broken leg after healing hands are laid on it, and walks out of the door without a limp. A lady claims an evil spell has been cast on her unborn child so a hand-held magnet is used to suck out the offending entity. A line of patients, all waiting in faith, applaud as each patient leaves cured.