Witchcraft in Latin America

A male practitioner of witchcraft is called a brujo in Spanish, a bruxo in Portuguese; a female practitioner is a bruja in Spanish, or a bruxa in Portuguese.

In Colonial Mexico, the Mexican Inquisition showed little concern for witchcraft; the Spanish Inquisitors treated witchcraft accusations as a "religious problem that could be resolved through confession and absolution". Belief in witchcraft is a constant in the history of colonial Brazil: note for example the several denunciations and confessions given to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of Bahia (1591–1593), Pernambuco and Paraíba (1593–1595).

Anthropologist Ruth Behar writes that Mexican Inquisition cases "hint at a fascinating conjecture of sexuality, witchcraft, and religion, in which Spanish, indigenous, and African cultures converged". Cases occurred where European women and Indigenous women were accused of collaborating to work "love magic" or "sexual witchcraft" against men in colonial Mexico. According to anthropology professor Laura Lewis, "witchcraft" in colonial Mexico represented an "affirmation of hegemony" for women and especially for Indigenous women over their white male counterparts in the casta system.

Colonial Period

In the 16th to 18th centuries, witchcraft accusations in New Spain and other parts of colonial Latin America were tied to the Spanish Inquisition. Trials often focused on acts of blasphemy against sacred images, such as spitting, trampling, or insulting crucifixes and paintings of the Virgin Mary. These actions were not always expressions of nonbelief but sometimes reflected frustration, gambling losses, or conflicted devotion. For instance, the criollo soldier Juan de Solís was denounced in 1640 for violating candles and a crucifix after losing at a game of cards. The nun Sor Margarita de San José confessed to spitting on and damaging items in Mexico City in 1717.

Indigenous and Afro-Latin traditions also shaped colonial witchcraft practices. In Peru, healers like Juana Icha were accused of making pacts with protective deities to defend their communities against colonial abuses. In Cartagena, African-descended women were important practitioners of love magic and healing rituals, sometimes taught by clergymen themselves. Objects such as herbs, altar stones, eggs, and chocolate were used in spells, which reflected syncretic blends of Indigenous medical knowledge and African ritual practices. Colonial authorities often saw these practices as "demonic", yet communities relied on them for protection, healing, and negotiation of everyday life.

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Concept

Across the Afro-Latin diaspora, many forms of spiritual practices have emerged: Cuban Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé and Umbanda. What sets the "witches" of Latin America apart from their European counterparts is the blend of religiosity and spirituality. Latin American "witches" are rooted in African magic, European spiritualism, and Indigenous practices, making them practice an integrated version of spirituality.

Mexico

Witchcraft in Mexico comprises various traditions, rituals, and beliefs. Among the many rituals and beliefs rooted in Mexican folklore are limpia and mal de ojo. Limpia or barrida is a cleansing ritual practiced in brujería and curanderismo. The word limpia translates to clean, and barrida means sweep; the practice is intended to cleanse someone. The ritual involves the patient, either sitting or standing, being swept from head to toe with a broom typically made with herbs. The purpose of the ritual is to remove negative energy and bring on spiritual strength. While there are various ways to perform the act, the ritual can also include the use of a lemon or egg as a means to sweep away the negative energy.

Mal de Ojo

Mal ojo, often called mal de ojo or ojo, translates to "bad eye". The belief is that someone can cause another person or object to become ill or damaged by staring with envy or malice. However, since it is believed that it can be done intentionally and unintentionally, staring in admiration may also cause harm. To prevent or combat this, the person who was staring may touch the affected person or item. The symptoms associated with mal de ojo are vomiting, headaches, and fever, to name a few.

A folk remedy similar to limpia called “barrer con un blanquillo” or sweep with an egg is performed to treat illness or ailments caused by mal de ojo. Variations of the ritual differ; however, there are two main components. The first is an egg to be used in a sweeping motion away from the person while the person performing the ritual recites a prayer or chant. The second is to crack the egg into a glass, jar, or bowl of water. However, what is done after the egg varies as well as what is recited during the ritual.

Brazil

In Brazil, witchcraft traditions blend African religions like Candomble and Umbanda with Indigenous and European practices. Bruxos often invoke Orixas, or spirits of nature, in healing ceremonies and magic work.

Peru

In the Andean regions of Peru, particularly around Cusco, spiritual practices revolve around the veneration of Pachamama (Mother Earth) and Apus (Mountain Spirits). Ritual offerings called despachos are a central aspect of these practices, where individuals offer items such as coca leaves, food, and alcohol to these deities in exchange for protection, good fortune, or healing. These rituals demonstrate the deep connection between the spiritual world and nature in the Indigenous beliefs.

Caribbean

Unlike many other Caribbean religions that derive from Africa, Brujería is not based on a stable community, hierarchy, or membership. Instead, practices are more dependent on the ritual preferences of the actual participants. Because of the spontaneity of the spirits, it is impossible for institutionalized doctrines of worship to be enforced on followers and practices of Brujería.

Within sacred altars of brujos, lessons of practitioners, and brujería rituals lie ties to African ideologies, Catholicism, and Spiritism; explaining the erasure of hierarchical order.

Before spiritism was developed, Taíno people and enslaved African people in Latin America developed the convictions that there exist spirits and those spirits can be communicated with. This becomes mixed with the convictions of spiritual worship introduced by Catholic missionaries. Early leaders of Spiritism found interest in Brujería amongst liberal, emancipation minded groups in the late nineteenth century; begging the interest for further research of the correlation between politics and Brujería.

Origins

In Latin America, in the 1500s, when the archbishop of Santo Domingo and fifth bishop of Puerto Rico, Nicolás Ramos, recorded his recollections of ‘black brujos [male and female] who engaged with the devil in the shape of a goat and, every night in front of this goat, cursed God, Santa María, and the sacraments of the Holy Church.’’ Ramos wrote, ‘‘[A]sserting that they did not have nor believe in a god other than that devil...they performed these rituals in some fields [apparently they were in a trance] ,...not in dreams since there were some people who saw them.’’ These people, Ramos continues, ‘‘tried to make them [the sorcerers] refrain from their doings through chanting and holy gifts [dádivas], and with all this [information they] came to me.” This perpetual demonization of elements of African worship set up the forefront to the centuries of demonization of Brujería practices.

From the sixteenth to the subsequent eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slaves were shipped from Africa to Puerto Rico and Hispaniola and were forced to convert to Christianity by the imposing church and the overseeing hacendados—land owners. Branded slaves were baptized to be fully recognized as the property of hacendados.

In the late 1800s to early 1900s during the early days of American occupation within Cuba, there were established attacks to undermine the legitimacy of several Afro-Cuban institutions and organizations— including Brujería.

With the growth of a single Cuban identity came a greater appreciation for conformity and deviation from “creolised manifestations”. However, the declination of faith-based practices in Cuba due to the rise in Marxism from 1959 to the 1990s lead to practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions to have to find innovative ways to survive Castro’s political informants that particularly called for the suppression of witchcraft and Brujería.

The introduction of Spiritism in the twentieth century attracted more participants of all racial backgrounds. It also added new foundations of practice and ritualistic objects such as: santiguos (healing blessings), 19 despojos (spiritual cleansings), prayers, and spells; and an array of indigenous, medieval Catholic, and African offerings.

Brujería

Brujería is a syncretic Latin American tradition that combines Indigenous religious and other magical practices with sometimes roots of Catholicism. It also has African and European roots as the majority of Latin America usually comes from European, indigenous and African ancestry. Practitioners are called Brujas (feminine) or Brujos (masculine sometimes even gender neutral).

Modernization

The Brujas and Brujos inherited traits from Catholicism, and yet the Catholic Church had deemed them as evil and demonized them. In some places, their demonization has come to an end on this scale, and they are left as they are, but in others, brujas are forced to not practice their form of magic. That being said, with the increasing rate of persecution amongst practitioners since the colonization of the Afro-Latino Caribbean, Brujería has been forced into modernization to combat erasure.

As separatist ideals begin to gain more momentum, particularly in Puerto Rico, there becomes more clings to cultural nationalism— including clings to aspects of Afro-Boricua and Taíno folklore. Previously (1950s–1960s), journalists in the island denounced Brujería as a way to help “educate the masses”. However, the shift in cultural nationalism from the 1980s onwards now leads to media outlets uncovering “hidden traditions” of the “endangered Puerto Rican Hispanic, Taíno, and African traditions”

Romberg argues the practice of modern-day Brujería as "the vernacular co-optation of discourses of interest and passions, of consumerism and spirituality, commodity fetishism and morality, and welfare capitalism and magic". And also reveals that despite misconceptions, Brujería builds to social order through both “holistic or individualized types of intervention” and endorsement of positive “mainstream social values”.

Practice

Brujería does not participate in community, hierarchical, or initiation-based practice or membership. Rituals are interdependent on the procedures, practices, and attitudes passed down by its participants and heavily depend on forces of nature and the spontaneity of the spirits. Following specific guidelines and doctrines in Brujería is possible.

However, some commonalities include basic ritual gestures, communication during divination, possession, and specific components of altars. These similarities are often referred to as "a kind of spiritual lingua franca" which explains the ubiquity of the practice cross the Afro-Latino and Non-Afro-Latino diaspora.

In practice, Brujos and Brujas stress to not believe in the ritualistic objects or hold too much pertinence in the material representations of the spiritual entities, but rather focus on the messages and "powers of the entities that inhabit these icons" that are also used to summon ancient beings like deities, saints, spirits and other supernatural beings.

Power is sensed and manifested when the voices of Spiritist entities, Santería orishas, and the recently deceased are brought on by "Brujería rituals, divination, trance and the making of magic works". The spirits' abstract means of revelation include through emotions, through senses, and through healings as a means to transform the "emotional, proprioceptive and (to some extent) physiological states of participants".

Whereas a lot of focus within the practice of Brujería is on the technological systems, Brujería focuses mostly on interpersonal client-patient power that "emerges during healing, divination and magic rituals challenges the assumed precondition"; specifically in regards to health, labor, family relations, and even career management.

Brujos and practitioners of Brujería never question the spirits. The performative methods of surrender training is the only lesson brujos aim to teach. The expectation is to have faith in the spirits and the spirits will theatrically reveal what is meant to be shown.