88 JANUARY 2020
roots that evade tangibility. I believe it’s why
our culture lends itself to the fantastical, why
magical realism found its home under our
roof. We inhabit an in-between. This notion,
called nepantla and explored by academics
like queer Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa,
plays out colorfully in our cuisine, where
indigenous traditions live on in everyday
kitchen objects like the comal, a griddle for
tortillas, called comali in the Aztec world,
and the molcajete, a tripod mortar and pestle
from pre-Columbian days.
Beyond the physical objects are the
philosophies, which might have lost their
names over time or been folded into West-
ern precepts but still govern our memories,
the old gods of our childhood kitchens.
They live in our language, in our traditions,
and in our approach to life. The notion that
food and medicine are indistinct is one
example, something our ancestors knew.
Here, at the intersection of culinary tradi-
tions and folk medicine, we find the heal-
ing magic of our abuelas. The more people
I asked, the more stories I got about our
“sick day” foods and rituals: caldo, songs,
tortillas placed in such a way.
A friend directed me to Felicia Cocotzin
Ruiz, a curandera, or traditional healer, who
has become the godmother of the move-
ment to decolonize the kitchen. The aim,
in part, is to do away with the notion that
indigenous foods and traditions belong in
the past and to highlight the benefits of the
cuisine of our ancestors. In doing so, we can
discover more about them and ourselves.
“You may never know what all went into
your abuela’s soup,” she told me over the
phone after correctly guessing that Abuela
would sing while she made it. “The most
important ingredient is the energy.” She
told me some foods are stirred to the left,
for example, while others are stirred to the
right in accordance with the flow of energy
in the cosmic kitchen. “Nuggets,” she called
little practices like these. “Little things our
people have managed to hold on to.”
For Cocotzin Ruiz, as with me and many
others of Mexican descent, it was the desire
for healing that brought her closer to her
traditions. She took her first steps toward
ABUELA
MAGIC
THE REPLENISHING WARMTH OF
THE CHICKEN STEW ASSURED
ME I WAS GOING TO BE FINE.
by JOHN PAUL BRAMMER
snaking down into my belly, assuring me
I was going to be fine.
It’s common for Mexicans to experience
what I call a memory without memory. Our
childhoods are littered with rituals we don’t
understand. A Chicana friend told me that
when she was sick, her abuela would heat
up tortillas and lie them on her stomach
while singing, “Sana, sana, colita de rana.”
My abuelo told me his mother would put
an egg under his bed when he was ill. We
know there’s something ancient about these
practices; they’re ornate and serious like
ancient things are. But the ancestors have
no faces, and the acts themselves are carried
out as matters of clinical necessity, rarely
accompanied by any lore other than “My
mother used to do this when I was sick.”
For those of us who have been assimilated,
Latin American history itself can feel like
this—half-remembered fever dreams of tex-
tures, relics, and traditions with labyrinthine
WE KNOW THERE’S SOMETHING ANCIENT ABOUT
THESE PRACTICES; THEY’RE ORNATE AND SERIOUS
LIKE ANCIENT THINGS ARE.
ABUELA BECAME A DIFFERENT WOMAN WHEN
I got sick. She still looked like the woman
who’d leave me in the casino parking lot
to go play slots, but animated by a gentler
spirit. She’d lie me down on the couch, hike
my legs up on her lap, and sing to me under
her breath while watching her telenove-
las. Or she’d put a cold washcloth on my
forehead and boil some tea. And always she
made me caldo de pollo—chicken legs with
the bones sticking out, broth with an oily
sheen of fat, vegetables sliced into chunks,
and a library of herbs swimming on the
surface. Corn tortillas adorned the sides of
the bowl, perfect for picking at the chicken.
The heat chased the sick from my fingers.
She didn’t call it caldo de pollo. She rarely
called things by their Spanish names in
front of me. But she didn’t call it chicken
soup, either. It wasn’t called anything.
It manifested, nameless and welcome,
whenever I got sick, along with Sprite and
VapoRub, the elixirs of the Chicano world.
I would secretly covet these sick days when
I became well again, when Abuela would
go back to calling me spoiled, go back to
bickering with my mother over money. It’s
hard to remember what being sick feels
like when you’re well, but I remembered
the replenishing warmth of that stew
