ABSTRACT
Curanderos and Spiritist mediums treat patients “whose expectations and conviction regarding the efficacy of the method of treatment” are high, and relief comes often enough to reinforce those expectations. If more effective mental health care is to be made available, the beliefs and practices of curanderismo and Spiritism should be regarded as the products of particular historical, social, and cultural processes, as is Western scientific medicine. A profile of the Spiritist medium, Juan Luis Martinez, will illustrate the social, political, and psychic needs of many Mexican Americans. Mexican-American Spiritists were able to establish very personal and direct relationships with a prestigious, scientific, Masonic, solid Anglo-American figure on the one hand, and, on the other, with a powerful prescient, erstwhile Catholic being. The Mexican-American Spiritists no longer have to feel that they are “forgotten people,” or “strangers in their own land.”
