Guest column: Mi Jefita Santos — La Curandera

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MI jefita would always lovingly counsel me, when she saw those clouds of rebellious doubt and angst circle around my youthful conquer the world hardheaded mindset, as she ran her curandera hands through my hair she would gently remind me,”Chato no pienses tanto, estas en las manos de Dios” (Chato don’t think so much, you are in the hands of God!). As with every aspect of her magnificently monastic minimalist life my mother was of few words; intuitive, gut/heart felt faith guided her, and she never wavered. I did not yet understand the power of her words, but her loving voice and her assuring hands always calmed my racing mind. I know today that my mother was a curandera, as was her mother, mi abuelita Chavelita, and on down through our feminine ancestral linage. The Aguila women, from the ancient tribe of Cocatlan (present day central Jalisco) were healers.

Lately my saintly mother memory and her words has been on mind 24/7 and her advice that we are (literally) in God’s hands has began to sink in and transform the way I think,  process and act on my daily activities.  Perhaps we are the hands of God, and assigned the celestial mission to love and work toward healing ourselves, our family and the community, and our reward is peace here on earth and into eternity.  Maybe not! But my jefita would remind me to stop thinking so much and act. So that is where I am today, following my mother’s advice a lot, turning off the noise of the mind and acting out what on my heart/soul tells me to do.

This then bring around to the current work that I am doing with the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health (OMMH) Coalition, where the alienated and marginalized communities of Oxnard are attempting to craft a mental health wellness movement that is congruent with our unique needs. So I hear my mother’s words loud and clear, I know what to do and I act. I am going back to my curandero ancestral roots; within all us, to an astonishing degree, is the cure to our physical and mental health.  It has been there all along, we just let the noise of, and the doctors, the experts, the functionaries and others contaminate and then control the power of our bodies, minds and hearts.

The noise in the current mental health industry is deafening and driving us literally crazy. The principal best practices mental health model pedaled in barrios and ghettos is sit down, shut up, open up and swallow the bullshit and the pill! How can this pathetic mental health model help us? We would be crazy to go to such a mental health model for service, so we don’t go. Within the past month the Latino Committee of the OMMH conducted a short, but very representative survey of mental health needs and practices in the Oxnard. The findings screams out the clear findings that the low income Latino community of Oxnard does not use mental health services, they do not know how to access existing services and they do not trust the existing mental health service delivery model.

So where do we go with our mental health need? We go to wellness; we go to prevention and intervention, before the problems need reactive and ineffective protocols. That is where my jefitas world guides me the clearest, “You are in God’s hands”, and the cure is us. We at OMMH are currently looking at and actively participating in the much maligned and discredited community defined practices that we have used to ameliorate and efficaciously  address our mental health issues for centuries;  before they where hi-jacked by the western medical model. We have gone back to the drum, the flute, to the communal dance, to the fire where we wail, scream and chant to release our mental anguish and pain, to scared herbs and plants to restore the balance between the mind and body. Back to our mother god that will help us restore  and find within us  our own unique balance of body and mind, and our scared place here on earth so that we can be the hands of God and serve to help our brothers and sisters in our communities.

I feel you jefiita, you are in my heart, and it is there as you told many years ago that I will find both the blissful silence of peace and the redemptive power of oneness with the universe where I will find mental and spiritual wellness. Jefita, because of you I am back home!

— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.