In the Midst of Winter

The healer’s eyes glinted below the wrinkled lids as they examined Evelyn’s face for a long couple of minutes. “Close your eyes and tell me what you see,” she instructed the girl. Evelyn did as she was told but could not find a voice to describe the scene at the bridge or the terror she had felt when the tattooed men seized Andres and beat and threw her to the floor. She tried to speak, but the consonants stuck in her throat. With the despairing efforts of someone drowning, she produced a few spluttering vowels. Concepcion interrupted to describe what had happened to her family, but the healer shushed her. She explained that she channeled the universe’s healing energy, that this was a power she had received at birth and cultivated with other shamans throughout her long life. This was why she had traveled great distances in a plane to visit the Seminoles in Florida and the Inuits in Canada, among others, although her greatest knowledge came from the sacred plant of the Amazon, which was the way into the spirit world. She lit some herbs in a clay pot painted with pre-Columbian symbols and blew the smoke in her patient’s face. Then she made her drink some disgusting ayahuasca tea that Evelyn could barely swallow.

The potion soon began to take effect, and Evelyn could no longer stay sitting upright. She toppled onto her side, her head in her grandmother’s lap. Her limbs relaxed, her body dissolved like salt in an opalescent sea, and she saw herself enveloped in fantastic, violently colored whirlwinds: sunflower yellow, obsidian black, emerald green. The nauseating taste of the tea filled her mouth and she retched and vomited into a plastic bowl Felicita placed in front of her. Eventually the nausea subsided, and Evelyn lay back on her grandmother’s skirt, trembling all over. The visions came in rapid succession. In some of them, her mother appeared as she had last seen her; others were scenes from her childhood, bathing in the river with other children, or at age five riding on the shoulders of her elder brother; a jaguar with two cubs emerged, then again her mother with a man, possibly her father. All of a sudden she found herself beside the bridge where her brother was hanging. She cried out in terror. She was alone with Gregorio. The earth giving off a warm mist; the rustling of the banana trees; huge flies; black birds suspended in midflight; violent, carnivorous flowers floating in the rust-colored water of the river; and her brother crucified. Evelyn went on shrieking and shrieking as she tried in vain to run and hide. She could not move a muscle; she had been turned to stone. From afar she heard a voice reciting a litany in Mayan, and felt that she was being rocked and cradled.

After an eternity she slowly became calm and dared to look up. She saw that Gregorio was no longer strung up like a carcass in a slaughterhouse but was standing intact on the bridge, without tattoos, exactly as he had been before he lost his innocence. And beside him was Andres, also intact, calling to her or waving goodbye with his hand. She blew them a kiss in the distance and her brothers smiled, before gradually fading against a purple sky and vanishing altogether. Time became warped, twisted; she no longer knew if it was before or after, or how the minutes and hours were passing. She surrendered completely to the power of the drug and, as she did so, lost all fear. The mother jaguar returned with her cubs, and Evelyn dared to stroke her on the back. The fur was rough, with a swamplike smell. The enormous animal accompanied her as she entered and left other visions, watching her with amber eyes, showing her the way when she got lost in abstract labyrinths, protecting her when any evil being came near.

Hours later, Evelyn emerged from this magic world. She found herself on a mat, covered in blankets, bewildered, and with her body aching all over. She had no idea where she was. When finally she managed to focus, she saw her grandmother sitting beside her, reciting the rosary, with another woman she did not recognize until she said her name: Felicita.

“Tell me what you saw,” the shaman instructed her.

Evelyn made a supreme effort to speak and to pronounce words, but she was very tired and could only stammer “brothers” and “jaguar.”

“Was it female?” asked the healer.

The girl nodded.

“Mine is the feminine power,” Felicita said. “That’s the power of life that the ancients had, both women and men. Now it is asleep in men, which is why there is war, but that power is going to reawaken, and then good will spread over the earth, the Great Spirit will reign, there will be peace, and evil deeds will cease. I am not alone in saying this. It’s prophesied by all the wise ancient women and men among the native peoples I have visited. You also have the feminine power. That’s why the mother jaguar came to you. Remember that. And don’t forget that your brothers are with the spirits and are not suffering.”

Exhausted, Evelyn fell into a deathlike, dreamless sleep. Hours later, she awoke on Felicita’s mat refreshed, aware of all she had been through, and ravenous. She devoured the beans and tortillas offered by the shaman, and her voice when she thanked her came tumbling out, but sonorously. “What you have is not a sickness of the body, but of the soul. It may get better on its own; it may go away for a while and then return, because it is a very stubborn sickness; and it may never be cured. We shall see,” said Felicita. Before saying goodbye to her visitors, she gave Evelyn a card of the Virgin Mary blessed by Pope John Paul during his visit to Guatemala, and a small stone amulet in the fierce shape of Ixchel, the jaguar goddess. “You will know suffering, my girl, but two powers will protect you. One is the sacred mother jaguar of the Maya, the other is the sacred mother of all Christians. Call on them and they will come to your aid.”



THE REGION OF GUATEMALA CLOSE to the Mexican border was a center for contraband and trafficking. Thousands of men, women, and children tried to eke out a living on the margins of the law, but it was hard to find a coyote who could be trusted. There were some who after receiving half their payment left their charges abandoned anywhere in Mexico, or transported them under inhuman conditions. Occasionally the smell would give away the presence of a container bearing the bodies of dozens of migrants who had died of suffocation or had been broiled in the relentless heat. Girls faced greater danger, as they could be raped or sold to pimps and brothels. Once again it was Nuria Castell who gave Father Benito a helping hand and recommended a discreet agency with a good reputation among the evangelicals.