The Practice + Theory series is sponsored in part by the Frances Dittmer Family Foundation.

 

Grandmother Julieta, in her tradition huipil (embroidered female Oaxaca dress), doing a cleansing prayer on Julia, Grandmother Maria Alice’s daughter.

The following is a version of an interview I held over several days in September 2006 with my mother, Doña Julia Julieta Casimiro, one of the most distinguished representatives of the traditions of the thousand-year-old Mazatec culture, which is centered in the northern mountains of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Doña Julia Julieta is a member of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, formed in New York in May 2004, which represents a global alliance of prayer, education, and healing for our Mother Earth, all her inhabitants, and all the children, for the next seven generations. The formation of the council arose from the need to declare a solidarity among first-nation people around the world. The council is deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. They believe the teachings of their ancestors will light a way through an uncertain future.

The council meets every six months, hosted by one of the Thirteen Grandmothers. The hosting grandmother can share her culture, her way of life, and her way of healing. If the wisdom of the grandmothers were combined, humanity could be re-educated to perceive each human being in a new way, within his or her context, with respect to both physical and spiritual health. In May of 2006, the Grandmothers visited Mazatec grandmother Julia Julieta in Oaxaca.

This interview brings us closer to the essence of Doña Julia Julieta’s personality, and allows us to see who she is, the process of her growth as a wise woman, a chota chine, “the one who knows.” She talks to us about the spiritual world as a guide, a curandera, a shaman, and describes what she has done over the course of her life, that is, the part she has dedicated to working in ceremony with the niños santos, or sacred mushrooms. She speaks of her experiences and those of some of her patients, in other words, the importance of her work for humanity.

In my opinion, this interview has great value for these times, when we have become desensitized to human pain, when we have lost inner values such as love, peace, self-respect, and respect for all living things, when it is so necessary and urgent to become aware of our responsibility as human beings toward our planet.

Doña Julia Julieta Casimiro was born in the city of Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, in the neighborhood of Agua Abundante, on April 2, 1936, the daughter of María Petra Estrada and Maclovio Casimiro. Her eight brothers and sisters are Herlinda, Genario, Federico, Pablo, Teodora, Concepción Guadalupe, Angélica Juliana, and Angelina Cutberta. At an early age Julia Julieta began primary school where she learned how to read and write. Later on she left school to start working, helping her mother with kitchen duties. This is how her first years passed by. At the age of 15 she met the man who would be her husband.

After a courtship of two years, she was married to Lucio Isaías Pineda Carrera on December 31, 1954. They had 10 children: Jorge Adalberto, Lourdes, Jacinto Librado, Jesuita Natalia, María de los Ángeles, Magdalena, David Lucio, Eugenia, Jazmín, and Omar.

This is one part of the story of Doña Julia Julieta Casimiro (now a widow), a woman whose students have spread her fame as a great spiritual guide around the world. She is regarded as such by all those who have received an answer to their inquiries. She cures both physical and emotional diseases, utilizing niños santos to those ends.

There are many in the society who shape a vision of the cosmos; to grow and develop as a wise woman it is important to count on the support of all family members in order to assume a position of authority in such practices. She started on the path to becoming a wise woman with her marriage to Don Lucio Isaías Pineda Carrera. He was her biggest support, and it is through him that she obtains her wisdom, because Don Lucio’s family on his maternal side, for many generations, have been wise men and women. Genealogically and culturally they have been powerful shamans, guides, curanderos, and prophets, known throughout the entire Mazatec region. Don Lucio was the son of Doña Regina Carrera Calvo and Professor Librado Pineda Quiroga. They had eight children: Victor, Joaquín, Alejandro, Eleazar, Gonzala, Lucío Isaías, Celia Julieta, and Joel.

Mama Julia Julieta tells us that after observing all the official rites and traditions of marriage she joined this family, who gave her much of the knowledge that she would later contribute to the world.

 

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