Author Archives: Carmen Villasenor Santiago

Sweeping blessings out the door

“I remember growing up my mom would tell me that when you are sweeping the floor in your house, uhm you are not supposed to sweep you know the dirt, directly out the door, you are supposed to sweep it into a pile and pick it up with a damp paper towel or some cloth or something and put it in the trash because If you sweep out the door it will sweep out the blessings from your home. My mom learned it from elders in the village she is from.”
For many families it is very important to make sure that their homes are safe and sound and always blessed therefore there are all these traditions in which they have sort of rituals to make sure that no bad omens enter the house and only blessings enter. The homes are seen as this safety harbor that protects the children and overall the families therefore taking extra steps in order to make sure its safe becomes a very common part of folklore.

“Sana sana colita de rana”

“Well I remember that when I would get hurt as a young child my grandma and my family would always rub where I had gotten hurt or was in pain and say ,”Sana Sana colita de rana, si no Sana hoy, sanara mañana”. I think it’s almost like the placebo effect, I thought it was like a chant of magic, believing that it would like magically cure me. Now I do it to my younger siblings, or younger children in my family, because I think just the thought of being cured by magic or being reassured that everything is going to be okay tomorrow is very healing not only to the cut but to the spirit in a way.”
In Mexican folklore this is a very common thing to do to younger children, and it is important to realize how folklore comes in to make children feel better and how this idea of “having magic” is idealized in order to make sure the children have something to believe in.  Many folklore stories were made and said particularly for the children in order to give them stories to hear or have explanations for the many things in life that happen that are not always in our reach of control.

Twitching eyes

“When I was growing up sometimes my eyes would twitch, I know it’s weird, but anyway my mom would always tell me how if your eyelid for your right eye twitches that means something good is going to happen to you soon or like in the near future, but like if your left eye started twitching it meant that something bad was going to happen to you. I guess in a way it was just some sort of superstitions that my mom picked up or like she learned from her family in China and oh yea she also said she grew up with this.”

Little traditions like these make people see things differently or feel more excited about little stuff and it can just be a fun way to pass on tradition through folklore. There are many forms of folklore that were made in order to explain little actions that our bodies do or things that happen that we cannot control or expect and I read that many of these were created because people liked to feel that they were always in control so being able to explain why these certain actions took place was a good way to make them feel more at ease in many ways.

Chiu Chow bonding us

“Well when it comes to my language, Chiu Chow, it was the first language I learned and my grandpa wanted my parents to teach me that language since he wanted the tradition to be passed down to every generation including all my cousins and uncles aunts, any who the whole family. My grandparents grew up from a small village in the eastern coast of china where they spoke the native language there and my grandpa now wanted every generation in his family to know this language as well. The language, I remember hearing my mom say came from a village on the east coast of china called Shantou. Not a lot of people know that language because well clearly it’s like not as popular as Mandarin and the rest of the like more popular languages. Doesn’t really influence us much but if I had to say something then uh I guess it makes our family feel more connected? And my mom found friends who speak the same language as well so it brings them together in ways that I guess like only a language can bring them together. I like having kind of my own secret language with my family cause like not a lot of people know it, but I know it’s not secret but still makes me feel cool.”

When it comes to smaller towns a particular article of folklore that unites them is the language, and in this case being in such a small environment allows them to share the language with those close to them and anyone else who knows it becomes as close as family.  Even though it is not a commonly know language the people that have actually learned it from their parents have managed to pass it on in order to make sure it prevails and future generations of this family are able to hold on to this form of folklore that unites them so much.

The “mal de ojo” (evil eye)

“So my mom has held this belief for a long time that there are like some people in the world whose stare or glance is more powerful than others or it’s supposed to be scary, and well because their stare is so powerful, it has an effect on new born babies. And if these new born babies looked upon someone with such a stare they would like tend to get sick or maybe even die because they are too young to withstand the stare, I know it’s sad. So when I was a new born my parents were, you know, walking around with me being proud parents and whatever when we came home that night I began to get sick for the next few days and I threw up and wouldn’t sleep and cried and was just like in pain. So my parents immediately took me to the hospital but they could not find anything wrong with me and they couldn’t explain why I was as sick. And so finally one of my mom’s friends had a look at me and said ‘la niña tiene el mal del ojo’ which pretty much meant someone who had the evil eye looked at me and I got sick. Uhm and well there are a few ways to cure that: the first is to let the person with the evil eye carry the baby but my mom didn’t know where to find that person, because she didn’t even know when it happened! so instead she had to do something else she got an egg and passed it over my head three times while saying three our fathers at the end of the last our father the yolk broke inside and after that I got almost instantaneously better. So then this story was passed down by her mom because the same thing happened to my aunt.”

Every culture has to have some scary stories or superstitions about the supernatural and I believe it is just a way to unite those cultures because they are all found under the same belief. The way that fear is inflicted it helps people have stories to tell to their children in generations to come.  Even though this started a long time ago as a superstition it is quite strange that it is still so common nowadays for people to fear this supernatural thing that can actually harm people physically.