“There are healers who charge the same as a doctor’s consultation”

From Germany, where she is a Deutsche Welle international media intern, Gálvez spoke with El Comercio about what it meant to write this book, where she details how the treatment and vision of healers in northern Peru, whose epicenter is in the city of Chiclayo, where magic is seen by its inhabitants as something of everyday life. And where healers have woven their own legend.

“something i explore [en el libro] it is the healer’s ego and his leadership. He is not only like a doctor, he also becomes a leader, he becomes a politician. And many also create a myth. They feel like an extension of the ancient healers who keep the custom alive. They are not only mediators, they also build an identity within society”, he counted.

―The oldest memory I have of witchcraft is the “pasada de huevo”, something very common among those of us who are descendants of migrants. What is your earliest memory of witchcraft?

It’s a little hard to say, but the first thing that comes to mind is a story about my mom. My mother told me that we got very sick when we were little and she said that they had found a bag with excrement, with [otras] things at the door of the house. So what they assumed was that they had “spoiled us.” My mom told me “since their aunts are witches, then nothing happened to them because they are taken care of”. Cared for by whom? It is something that I ask later as a journalist.

―Your book is a chronicle where you are also a character and I understand that, being such a personal subject for you, the story had to necessarily be told with you inside. That sacrifices objectivity a bit, right?

Yes, in fact this was a discussion I had with the people who helped me with the book from the beginning, but it was impossible to get away from the story because I also take the reader through the same discovery that I had. The first thing I thought was “I’m going to write a book on witchcraft”, and in the end I didn’t write a book on witchcraft, I wrote a book on quackery, which was what I thought witchcraft was. Even when I start my research, it’s from a place based on stereotypes, on what I’ve heard. I too rediscover my roots through this research.

― Can northern Peru be explained without curanderismo?

I think not, because they are intertwined. In the history of the north there is a lot of identity with quackery, with religion. As a northerner I would describe that we are very religious, some Catholics; others, Catholics and also believers in quackery. That was frequently heard in Chiclayo, which never seemed strange or out of place to me, it did not make me raise an eyebrow until I moved to Lima and realized that this was a peculiarity of the province from which I came. It is mixed with everyday life and it is something that also, now that I am in another country, exemplifies the Peruvian mix. Of course, this mixture has colonial overtones, due to the mixture of the Catholic religion with the beliefs of our ancestors, but all of that is part of the northern identity.

― And how receptive are the new generations with the shamanic tradition?

I do not perceive that there is much connection with the new generations and, from what I saw, the public that goes to the healers is much older, from 40 years of age and over. It is something that is transmitted, not through networks, but by word of mouth: people who go to a healer do so because their neighbor, her sister, aunt, or her friend has recommended it. In the new generation we communicate in a different way, suddenly we go somewhere because we have seen him on Instagram, and a healer – from what I have known of his personalities – I do not see him opening a TikTok channel looking for patients. I think most of them also take pride in the fact that they have patients without advertising.

―When you talk about quackery and witchcraft you face sayings, but not exactly facts. How did you handle that as a journalist?

Something important that I took for the book is the point of view of anthropology. I had the advice of the anthropologist Luis Millones, who became very important for the book. I try to understand the worldview of healers, how they see the world. Because obviously I cannot know if the healer is seeing the “evil”, the “energy” or that he is hearing the “waves of the sea” through the mother-of-pearl shells and with that he can cure the patients. I cannot see what he says that he sees or feels, I can only report like any journalist: “the person says this.” And indeed, the last healer told me “I’m not going to tell you anything because you won’t believe me; I invite you to the allowance so that you can see what happens”. That’s another reason why I also had to be a character in the story, because I finally admit my own subjectivity.

“You mentioned the allowance. I wanted to ask you if, after all this time, you have reflected a little more on what happened and how that scene lives in your mind.

That scene for me is the most unforgettable in my book and there are many things that I don’t quite understand. But the more I analyze that scene, the more I agree with what I saw happen. Because there are already many things that she did not mention in the book, but my mother went with me and she stays outside with the people who were accompanying the patients and that the healer does not let go. Then something that I always remember is the sound of the roof, which begins to fall as if it were a rain of stones. For me the explanation was “they must be jumping on the roof”, which must be a kind of script, that the actors know when to enter and do certain special effects. But then I remember that all the people, the relatives, were outside in some chairs with a view of the building where we were. If there had been people above the building, they would have been seen. The more I turn the matter around, the less I understand it. I also discussed it with my adviser at the time. Should I put this? They will say that I am making things up. But I write what I saw.

― Last year the Ministry of Culture declared San Pedro as cultural heritage, but beyond that, do you know if the state has any interest in preserving the traditions of quackery?

There are initiatives that still do not have much follow-up, much less funding. In the subsequent editions that I made of the book, I contacted people who at the time were in the regional tourism chamber. I wanted to know if there was any data on the quackery industry, because I saw that it was a big industry. A person who pays 150 soles for a consultation, then 300 soles for an allowance, 50 soles for the ingredients, etc. There is an economic activity behind it, money is moved in quackery and the data does not exist. There is some involvement with the curanderos congress, but it is not annual. There are separate efforts to value curanderismo, but it is not structured or long-term.

―When I read your book, I did not stop thinking about whether there is a relationship between the fact that Peru has dying public health services and that there are so many followers of visiting healers.

Yes, there probably is. But there it also depends on the healer, because they say “You need an operation and I don’t get involved here, I only heal the damage”. But the reality is that many people say “I don’t have money to go to a private practice, so I trust this healer to cure me for less money and faster”. We can only speculate that it is probably one of the reasons. But there are healers, like some of the ones I have interviewed, who charge the same as a private consultation with a doctor. In that case it would not apply. There are also people who use the name of healers or traditional medicine and sometimes try to cure illnesses that cannot be cured.