Curanderismo Workshop 1: Intro to Curanderismo

Part 1 of 8 in the CAHAM curanderismo workshop series!

Led by curandero Jesús Cuauhtémoc Villa, this class introduces students to the basics of curanderismo's history, philosophy, and practice.

Students will participate in a traditional opening ceremony and walk away with practical healing skills for holistic health & wellbeing, including:

• traditional grounding techniques
• protection rituals
• self-cleansing rituals
• how to prepare oneself for doing healing work, ritual, and ceremony
• and more!

Jesús Cuauhtémoc Villa, M.A., is a curandero, a co-founder of the Patiloni Collective, a co-founder of and Director of Programming for the Sonoran Desert Cultural Preservation Society (SDCPS), the head instructor for the SDCPS's Center for Ancestral Healing Arts and Medicines (CAHAM), and a Ph.D. candidate in the Arizona State University School of Transborder Studies. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology (with a focus on Forensic Anthropology) and a Master's degree in Religious Studies (with a focus on Anthropology of Religion) from Arizona State University. His Master's thesis examines the African, European, Indigenous Mesoamerican, and other multicultural influences on Mexican curanderismo, the traditional medicine and ancestral healing art of Mexico and the Mexican diaspora. His doctoral research is in thanatology: the scientific and humanistic study of death and dying in a cross-cultural perspective and in the context of the México-U.S. borderlands. Villa is a community-recognized curandero (meaning "healer," a practitioner of curanderismo) who learned his healing arts from a family lineage dating back to pre-colonial Mexico; from a 13-year apprenticeship with local curandera Doña Patricia Federico; and from master curanderas, curanderes, curanderos, Conjure Doctors, Indigenous medicine people, and other traditional healing experts from all over Mexico, the U.S., Central America, and the Caribbean. When not in school or working on CAHAM and SDCPS matters, Villa enjoys gardening, hiking, making traditional Mexican and Chicano folk art, playing music, falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, and talking to plants, rocks, bones in the desert.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Arizona Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, this and all other installments of the CAHAM curanderismo workshop series is free and open to the public! The Sonoran Desert Cultural Preservation Society, its Center for Ancestral Healing Arts and Medicines, and the curanderismo workshop series instructors sincerely thank AZ Humanities and the NEH for making this project possible. ¡Muchísimas gracias, patrones!

Host or Publisher The Sonoran Desert Cultural Preservation Society