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interpreter. Moreover, she could help us, through her numerous relatives
scattered in the region, to pave the way to contacts with curanderos and
curanderas who used the hojas de 1a Pastora in their practice. Because of our
delayed arrival in Rio Santiago, Dona Herlinda, who was acquainted with the
dangers of the region, had been apprehensive about us, fearing we might have
plunged down a rocky path or been attacked by robbers.
Our next stop was in San Jose Tenango, a settlement lying deep in a valley, in
the midst of tropical vegetation with orange and lemon trees and banana
plantations. Here again was the typical village picture: in the center, a
marketplace with a half-ruined church from the colonial period, with two or
three stands, a general store, and shelters for horses and mules. We found
lodging in a corrugated iron barracks, with the special luxury of a cement
floor, on which we could spread out our sleeping bags.
In the thick jungle on the mountainside we discovered a s-pring, whose
magnificent fresh water in a natural rocky basin invited us to bathe. That was
an unforgettable pleasure after days without opportunities to wash properly.
In this grotto I saw a hummingbird for the first time in nature, a blue-green,
metallic, iridescent gem, which whirred over great liana blossoms.
The desired contact with persons skilled in medicine came about thanks to the
kindred connections of Dona Herlinda, beginning with the curandero Don Sabino.
But he refused, for some reason, to receive us in a consultation and to
question the leaves. From an old curandera, a venerable woman in a strikingly
magnificent Mazatec garment, with the lovely name Natividad Rosa, we received
a whole bundle of flowering specimens of the sought-after plant, but even she
could not be prevailed upon to perform a ceremony with the leaves for us. Her
excuse was that she was too old for the hardship of the magical trip; she
could never cover the long distance to certain places: a spring where the wise
women gather their powers, a lake on which the sparrows sing, and where
objects get their names. Nor would Natividad Rosa tell us where she had
gathered the leaves. They grew in a very, very distant forest valley. Wherever
she dug up a plant, she put a coffee bean in the earth as thanks to the gods.
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