Every year on the first thursday of March, a cavalcade of sorcerers, healers and conjurers descends upon Catemaco, reminiscent of some Dark Age witches’ gathering. They perform dramatic public cleansings (or limpiezas), cast spells, swap potions and engage in endless theatrics.
Originally intended as a knowledge-sharing convention for the region’s healers, it has now become a major tourist event with much posturing and angling. And outside of the occasion, Catemaco’s widespread fame means many of its sorcerers are now more interested in financial gain than genuine spirituality.
“Who is the town’s most famous brujo?” I ask a prominent hotelier as I make the rounds of Catemaco’s modest lodgings.
“The most famous? That would be Tito Gueixpal. His name is actually Hector, but he calls himself Tito. He has a big blue house down the road there. He has lots of properties. And lots of wives too. And a child by each one!”
I decide to pay Tito a visit. A large sign emblazons the house:
“The Power of the Tiger”
I wander into the premises, trying doors and scouting around. It all seems to be empty when suddenly a woman with a broom emerges on a balcony and starts shrieking.
“What do you want?” She scowls. “What are you selling?”
This must be one of Tito’s lovely wives. Nearby, behind a closed door, a pack of dogs erupts into savage barking.
“I’m not selling anything, Señora, I’m a writer from England.”
“What?!” She spits. “No, no, I’m not interested. Go away.”
Nostrils flared, face painted with abject disgust, she shakes her head in the negative. I sometimes have this effect on people. Perhaps it’s my dirty aura.
“Ah no, Señora, you don’t understand me. I’m a writer. I need to speak to El Señor Gueixpal – el maestro.”
“What? What did you say? I can’t understand you. What did you say?”
I can hear the dogs barking for all their worth, throwing themselves against the door. A young man with a motorcycle helmet suddenly appears from a passageway.
“What are you looking for?” He asks, more reasonably.
“Information,” I tell him.
“Information on what?” Glowers the woman with the broom, unconvinced.
“Brujería.” I tell them. “I’m writing a book.”
“Ah, escritor.” He says. “Then you must come back tomorrow. El Señor Gueixpal is away on business.”
I thank him, turn around and head on my way. The dogs bark after me and can I feel the woman’s eyes on me, evil eyes, burning a hole in my skull.
Later that day I meet a girl from McAllen, Texas, now a resident of Catemaco and descended from a long line of sorcerers.
“Don’t trust any of the witch doctors in this town,” Rochelle tells me. “They’ll rob you without a second thought. My grandfather was one of the old brujos, the original brujos. He had real power.
But these ones today, they’re all fakes. They’ll read your cards and wave some incense over you and charge you whatever they think they can get – and then some.”
Present-day brujos are pale imitations of their forebears, Rochelle explains. Drawn by the promise of fame and easy money, most Catemaco sorcerers are little more than skilled manipulators practising psychological magic on gullible believers.
After all, faking your credentials is much easier than a lengthy – and potentially life-threatening – magical apprenticeship.
“A lot of what they do here just isn’t traditional anyhow.” She says. “It’s a mixture of all kinds of things. A lot of it’s New Age and some of its from different cultures. People come from all over and bring something new to it.
For instance, there’s this new Cuban woman in town who likes sacrificing doves and drenching people in blood. That’s new here.”
But what of the Old Ways, lurking strangely in Catemaco’s distant past? How did the old brujos operate? What were they like? And from where did they derive their power?
“I never met my grandfather,” says Rochelle. “He died just before I was born. But there are a million stories circulating around town.
They say he had the most piercing eyes and that if you looked straight into them, it felt like he could see right through you and actually hear what you were thinking.
My grandmother said he had a pact with the devil and that he could conjure him up whenever he wanted. He owned The Devil’s Book of Spells, which is – they say – indestructible. It’s wrapped in human skin and when you throw it on the fire, it doesn’t burn. Apparently.
My uncle owns a ton of my grandfather’s books and manuscripts, so who knows, it might be in there, but right now he won’t let anyone see them. He wants to keep all that stuff hidden from my aunts – they’re all crazy and dangerous, you know.
But anyway, these are just stories. And people around here believe in them because they need to believe them.”
Indeed, people believe what they need to believe, from desperate New Age seekers to the fraudulent ‘spiritualists’ who nourish them, belief is the magic power that binds and drives the whole illusion.
But belief is the power that drives all the world’s illusions, yours and mine too. For endless, shifting delusions permeate and penetrate our universe, constantly bought and sold, swindled and conjured, layer upon layer upon layer.
Fiction, fantasy and lies are not just important to the human condition – they are absolutely fundamental to it – as vital as food, water, sex and breath.
And without believing the lies we’re supposed to – without blindly subscribing to the shared hallucination we call ‘reality’ – the world as we know it comes to a painful, difficult end. We’re exposed to the naked, shivering truth of our predicament.
And naked truth – for those accustomed to the warmth and comfort of ignorance – can be an horrific and dangerous thing.
Catemaco is definitely weird, but it’s nothing unique in a world of bullshit and madness. We all live in collective fabrications, fictions of varying sophistication, insanities, barely tenable and teetering on the brink of abyss. No one is free – least of all scientists and the so-called rationalists.
Agnosticism – neither believing nor disbelieving – is the only honest position for anyone who’s sincerely sought an answer to life’s deeper questions. Agnoticism and personal responsibility.
The next day I wander over to the big blue house down the road and linger for a moment outside. It’s quiet and still. Nothing happening. I look at the sign – ‘Power of the Tiger’ – think for a moment, and then turn around and leave.
I go back to the hotel, pick up my bags and wander down to the bus station. I get the next bus out of town, lean back in my seat and watch the scenery roll past the window. A flock of white herons escapes from the dense green foliage. High in the sky, four black vulture circle anti-clockwise over the earth, hungry. No truth here. On to the next place.
Gracias por toda la informacion, saludos!