Continuing Indigenous Influence
William L. "Lindy" Eakin, a scholar of the Spanish Borderlands and Indigenous history, in his chapter “Continuity, Change, and Removal: Native Women and the Texas Revolution” in the edited volume Women and the Texas Revolution, describes how, in most Indigenous cities in Texas, women were the primary actors of the transmission of culture to the next generation, and during the transitional period of the early 19th century, which saw transitions from Spanish to Mexican and then to Texan and later U.S. power, Indigenous women continued to be key to cultural transmission. Eakin also elaborates on how gender has typically been ignored in the study of Indigenous history in North America; additionally, Ganilh’s ethnography in Ambrosio de Letinez offers a narrative from that tumultuous period that emphasizes precisely the issue of gender, Indigenity, and religion, and how, despite their lack of depiction in dominant narratives, they played a pivotal role in Borderlands culture.
Ganilh introduces, early in the work, a fictionalized character named Tia Rachela, a partera (midwife) who is also trusted by doctors to treat illness, especially in the most serious cases. Additionally, she is described as a “priestess of Lucina,” and she is even called upon by a priest when a woman is on the brink of death. Interestingly, Ganilh depicts Tia Rachela as assisting the dying woman “in her own way” alongside the priest administering extreme unction. Ganilh describes the function that women like Tia Rachela performed as so important that, if it were not performed, it would endanger the woman's welfare. In these descriptions, Tia Rachela serves as an ethnographic archetype to depict the role of a curandera, a traditional folk healer who incorporates Indigenous religion and medicine to treat patients. The description of her as a “priestess of Lucina” can be seen as a form of classicalization of an Indigenous deity or deities, as she is identified with the epithet given to either Juno or Diana, under their patronage of protecting women during childbirth, aligning with her description as a partera. The presence of curanderos/as in the Borderlands is a well studied religious practices, with one of the most famous being Don Pedrito Jaramillo whos shrine is in Falfurrias, Texas, however, Ganilh’s description is especially of interest as it depicts a woman in this role of curandera, who is depicted as being respected by not only her community in the Borderlands, but also respected by the instiutional Catholic clergy of the town, an example of successful resistance of Spanosh religious assimilation.