ABSTRACT
Everything I have discussed in this volume naturally applies to the charm that was used to cure my grandfather. Old Eeky, of course, was a staunch ritualist. His background was in the Mexican folk culture of his day. My great-grandparents came from a different perspective, perhaps one steeped in a greater degree of sincerity rather than ritualism, since it was one heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and Protestantism. My grandfather, however, was an impressionable child, and so his young, developing ego was rather “close” to the collective element from whence resonant things like impressive folk charms emerge and are maintained. Thus in his way Old Eeky engaged with, manipulated, and participated in the biological, psychological, and cultural effects of the deceptively humble healing charm he used to remove the dreaded ojo. My grandfather ends the chapter that talks about his brush with diphtheria and ojo with a wink: not committing himself to either side, he presents the arguments of the physician and Old Eeky—the doctor said the serum healed him, whereas Old Eeky said the charm did it. Like my grandfather, I also refuse to take sides in this false dichotomy, but not because it is a clever way to end the story (and my grandfather was extraordinarily clever), but because in truth it is highly plausible that both the medicine and the charm cured him. Thus both my great-grandparents and Old Eeky were wrong to assume it had to be either one or the other.
