Tag Archives: mexican folk belief

“Cuando el Tecolote Canta, el Indio Muere”

Informant Info:

  • Nationality: Mexican
  • Residence: San Diego
  • Primary language: Spanish/English

Text and Context:

M.W grew up in a small rural town in Mexico, where superstitions are dominant in everyday life. From a young age, her parents instilled in her the belief that owls are a bad omen. She says, “Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere.” This translates to,  “When the owl sings, the Indian dies.” Basically, if you were to hear the owl sing, it was thought that someone known or close to you is about to die. M.W says there are lots of superstitions involving owls, and all are negatively associated. She recalls once when it was night, an owl sang and then something unexpected happened right after. A bird hit itself on a wall shortly after, and then in the morning it was known that her neighbor passed away around the time the owl sang. M.W recalls that every time she heard the owl, someone died, ended up in the hospital, or very sick. In her culture, the owl was feared and when seen, it led to an eerie sensation. 

Analysis:

When talking to M.W, what stood out was when she told me, “Something about the owl had always unsettled me. In the night time, the eyes are so spooky and the fact that they can move their head 270 degrees is just creepy.” After doing some research, I found that the association between owls and bad luck runs beyond just Mexican culture. Amongst many cultures, owls are also seen as omens of death and are avoided. For example, in Native Cherokee culture, the owl is believed to be an embodied spirit of the dead. In my Mexican culture, I was also told that owls are also called “lechuzas” in spanish. Lechuzas are typically referring to barn owls or larger owls. There are lots of myths associated with owls, another one being that witches can transform themselves into owls. 

Día de los Muertos

Text:

AG: “In the Mexican culture, they believe that our ancestors that have passed come back to the land of the living for two nights. We build ofrendas, which are little, a shrine is not the right word, but you put all their favorite foods, pictures of them. Alter is a more colloquial term. 

In our culture, we believe that people die three deaths. The first is when we physically die, when our bodies just stop working, our hearts stop, whatever. The second is when we’re lowered into the ground and buried, so we’re out of sight, or cremated, I guess. And the third one is when there’s no one left to remember us. There’s three deaths or three phases of death.

Usually, my parents put up an alter and we put up pictures of people who have passed in our family with a bunch of flowers, candles, because the candle represents their spirit, essentially. Sometimes we’ll go to, they have a cemetery, called Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and they put a bunch of marigolds up. They do a bunch of alters, ofrendas all over, and you can just visit and pay your respects, and just really reflecting on the lives of the people who have come before.”

Context:

AG is a 20-year-old Mexican-American college student from Los Angeles. She celebrates this holiday, which falls on the first two days of November, with her family every year. On this holiday, the living reunite with the spirits of their deceased ancestors. AG said that in comparison to melancholic death rituals like funerals, Dìa de los Muertos is a happy event which celebrates the people who passed away rather than mourning their deaths. She explained that according to Mexican belief, the first two deaths, physical death and burial, are inevitable. However, the third death, which she describes as “dying in the land of the dead” where individuals “fade into oblivion,” can be avoided by remembering individuals who passed away. Dìa de los Muertos functions to prevent this final death, as AG explained, “you preserve their memory through storytelling, through folklore, thereby keeping them alive through their spirits.” 

Analysis:

I find the Mexican folk belief in a realm between life and obsolescence very compelling. Many ideologies delineate life and death as two incompatible states of being which never intersect, so that once a person has passed away, the living have no way of accessing them. This boundary blurring view of life and death places power into the hands of the living, so that there are specific things that they can do and practices that they can carry out in order to come into contact with their lost loved ones again. This power of being able to reconnect with the dead comes with responsibilities, however, where one must continually honor and memorialize their loved one’s lives if they want to maintain this connection. The insistence upon keeping a person’s memory alive after their passing, which prevents the deceased from entering the third stage of death and disappearing, conveys how deeply one’s ancestry and elders are valued and respected in Mexican culture.

Dìa de los Muertos exemplifies the ritualization of liminality, where specific traditions and extraordinary practices are carried out at the time that the realm of the dead and the realm of the living overlap. That the holiday is comprised more of celebration than of mourning shows the comfort found in the belief that physical death doesn’t mean spiritual death.

The Cursed Daughter

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND:
The interlocutor (JG) has many relatives living in Mexico and is a first-generation Mexican American themself. The area their family is from is very superstitious about witches, curses, and magic. The following describes one of the stories about curses being put on a member of that community.

DESCRIPTION: (told over a phone call)
(JG): “Okay-but, so- basically, um…my grandma has a house in Mexico. She lives here now, um, ‘cuz she came over here but like, she still has her house in Mexico. And that’s where we stay whenever we go visit. Um, and she told us this story about how when she was younger, her next-door neighbor, this older woman, had a daughter. And the daughter got cursed by someone. They don’t know what happened. They probably think it had something to do with a…cheating situation, ‘cuz that was a lot of the things back then, or…even now. Yeah. And so she got cursed.

So apparently she got really, really skinny, like she completely lost her appetite. Um… she started throwing up lizards, and they said that like, nails started coming out of her head. I’m not sure if it’s like, fingernails or if it was like, steel nails. But yeah, my grandma wouldn’t really ever see her, since she was always inside the house and stuff, but she started getting really, really bad. And so they started a healing process, like, they brought a healer. And one of that included like, putting a lizard in a jar and like letting it shrivel up and die, and that killed off that part of it. Um… and then they tried to do like, an exorcism-type-of-thing. But, something went wrong and like, the house started catching fire. But it was only that house.

And so like, that house is still burnt—like, we can see it when we go. The daughter, I think, turned out fine, like everything turned out okay, but that was one thing that happened.”

FINAL THOUGHTS/OBSERVATIONS:
I’m curious about the effects of the curse, from the lack of appetite to the more surreal aspects, such as the lizards and the nails. I’m conflicted about the legitimacy of this story, since JG did bring up how everyone in their grandmother’s community knew about it but never really saw the girl, so all of the information they had was mostly word-of-mouth. I’m also unsure about whether this was a result of homeopathic or contagious magic, and while JG doesn’t know too many details of the curse itself, they do know that many kinds of these curses have some connection to the person’s corporeal self, so I’m leaning more towards understanding this curse as a form of contagious magic.

Milagros

Nationality: American
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

HS: So what are milagros?

MR: So they literally mean “miracles”, but from the perspective of my Catholic family, they are kind of like a blessing that we would do in my parents’ hometown. Like not a lot of people would know saints from my hometown. People hear about Saint Jude, you know, or, La Virgen de Guadalupe, but there are also lesser-known saints that are only known in the small towns that they had an effect on.

HS: So what is an example of a saint that was special and important in your town just outside of Guadalajara?

MR: Well in Guadalajara the saint that everyone knows is Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos, but in my mom’s town of Guanajuato, they all know the miracle baby Jesus.

HS: So what are some examples of Milagros that you have?

MR: So you’d ask your saint, for example, I had a major issue with my car motor that would have cost me thousands and thousands of dollars and I didn’t know what to do because there was no way that I could afford that expensive of a repair. So I asked my saint for a Milagro/blessing to help me with the situation and it ended up costing half as much, and so I promised my saint that when I return to my town I will visit and show my appreciation. Another time, at the beginning of COVID, I asked the Miracle Baby Jesus from my parents’ hometown of Guanajuato for a Milagro to protect me and my parents. Luckily my parents never got COVID so I plan on also showing my appreciation for fulfilling my Milagro when I am home.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family.

Context:

These religious traditions were brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. We were discussing a tradition/ritual of crawling on one’s hands and knees to honor one’s saint when she brought up the topic of Milagros. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers.

Thoughts:

I found this tradition to be very interesting. Although not discussed in this transcription, my coworker showed me a list of tributes that she planned on giving to her respective saints once she arrived back in Mexico. Included in this list were 25 dollar coins for the Miracle Baby Jesus and some pictures of her family. While researching Milagros, I found a very precise explanation from an online article, a “person will ask a favor of a saint, and then, in order to repay the saint after the favor has been granted, one must make a pilgrimage to the shrine of that saint.” This is a very cherished and respected tradition in the social circles of my coworker, and she emphasized how personal a lot of Milagros get, going on to divulge some sensitive details about how the use of Milagros has helped her family through particularly hard times. I had never heard of anything like this before and found the tradition to be rather beautiful and unique. I also came to the realization that Milagros are a way to keep people who have left their hometowns connected to their community in some way. Because the saints that people make their Milagros to are usually particular to the region that they are from, Milagros provide people with an incentive to come back home after they have departed.

The article where I found a good explanation of Milagros:

https://zinniafolkarts.com/blogs/news/36153281-what-do-milagros-mean

Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 04/4/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

MR: So when you ask a saint for a blessing and then you have to make a promise to them. For instance, I would say a prayer, and then when it is fulfilled I would promise to come back to the saint’s temple and crawl from the beginning of the temple to the altar.

HS: What are some examples of saints that you have performed these acts for in the past?

MR: I’ve been to the temple of the Miracle Baby Jesus, or even another saint that is more well-known is the Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos. She is the saint that cures sick people. So you ask her to heal you or anyone else. So people go to her temple in my home of Guadalajara but it is not just a place that you casually go to like a church here in the United States. It really varies. Some people trek for miles and miles and miles. People walk on foot from their homes for days. In my case, I just drive up to the entrance because I don’t have the time for all that. And then once you actually arrive at the temple itself, you crawl on your elbows and knees from the entrance to the altar and then leave a candle and family picture of us four, like my mom, my dad, my sister, and myself in an area where you’re allowed to leave stuff.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family.

Context:

These religious traditions were brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. I had just watched an episode of one of my favorite shows that included a scene where Roman Catholic Mexcian crawl on their hands and knees to worship an idol and so I decided to ask my coworker about it. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers.

Thoughts:

I have been extremely interested in Roman Catholicism ever since I watched the Breaking Bad series. While watching the series, I had no knowledge of any traditions pertaining to the religion and was confused when out of nowhere, I saw Mexican drug lords peacefully giving up all of their material possessions and crawling on their hands and knees with other people trying to cross the border. This scene in the series made me curious about the tradition, and so, knowing that my coworker came from a devout Roman Catholic family, I asked her about the subject. She was quick to inform me that the drug lords were crawling on their hands and knees to ask the saint Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte for protection as they cross the United States-Mexico border, but that the tradition of crawling on one’s hands and knees to honor saints was widespread across all of Mexico out of respect for them. She also informed me that Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, is a cult and is not recognized by her church.

For more info on these saints:

Allison McNearney. “The Death Worshipping Cult of Santa Muerte: From Argentina to Canada, There Is No Religious Movement Growing Faster, Says an Expert. But How Serious Is Worshipping ‘Saint Death?’” The Daily Beast, The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC, 2015.

Graziano, Frank. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico. Oxford University Press, 2016, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790869.001.0001.