
The University of New Mexico
NEWS RELEASE
Media Contact: Laurie Mellas, 505-277-5915, lmellas@unm.edu
July 2, 2007
Popular Summer Mexican Folk Healing Class is July 16-27 on UNM Main Campus
Teachers/Healers provide consultations at Community Health Fairs
For the sixth consecutive year, a popular two-week intensive course on curanderismo, or the art of Mexican folk healing, will be held on the University of New Mexico’s Main Campus. The course is July 16-27 in the Anthropology Building, room 163, Monday-Friday 8:10 a.m. to 12:40 p.m.
Dr. Eliseo “Cheo” Torres developed the course and is the instructor of record. The second week of the class features Mexican curanderos from the Cuernavaca and Mexico City areas, who will be accompanied by Dr. Arturo Ornelas Lizardi, director of La Tranca Healing Institute in Cuernavaca.
“This class will, as it has in the past, bring together American students, American healers like Elena Avila from Albuquerque, and the wonderful folk healers of Mexico,” said Torres, who is the vice president for student affairs at UNM in addition to being a scholar of curanderismo, a tradition that he has known intimately since his south Texas boyhood.
“Our students will get to learn about a beautiful ancient tradition that combines elements of Old World western and Arabic and Asian medicine with Aztec and other New World healing traditions,” Torres added.
Between 30 and 40 different curanderos will help teach the class from July 23-27, providing demonstrations of various healing techniques, which include a combination of massage, reflexology, iridology, and especially herbal and other natural remedies for common health complaints.
A series of health fairs, or ferias de salud, will be held on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday of the second week of the class, all of which will be attended by the Mexican curanderos, who will provide health care consultations for the general public (see attached fair schedule).
Between 50-70 students from around the state, the country and even abroad attend the class each year.
“This class really is one-of-a-kind,” Torres said. “I believe we are still the first, and only, university to offer a class of this kind in the United States, that is, one that incorporates seveal healers from the U.S. and Mexico and talks specifically about Mexican Folk Healing as a part of the larger spectrum of alternative medical practices.”
The course also places Mexican Folk Healing within a larger historical and cultural context, including a lecture on the traditions and healing aspects of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, and within the context of conventional, or allopathic medicine, which has in recent years begun to accept curanderismo as a necessary gateway into Hispanic traditions and practices.
“Conventional doctors and nurses have begun to see that they need to understand this ancient tradition of curanderismo in order to reach their patients of Latino ethnicity,” Torres said. “In the process, they have also begun to see that the power of the mind and the soul plays an integral role in the care of the body – something that curanderismo has always known.”
“I encourage anyone with curiosity about ‘integrative medicine,’ as alternative medicines that emphasize an holistic approach to healing the soul, the mind and the body have come to be known, to sign up for this class,” Torres said.
For further information about this class, contact Eliseo “Cheo” Torres at 505-277-0952. For information about the Community Health Fairs, contact Sandrea Gonzales at the Women’s Resource Center, 505-277-3716.
(Attached is Community Health Fair Schedule.)
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