becoming a curandera, she told me, when
her brother contracted HIV in 1991. She
tended to him, rubbing his feet to help him
relax. Just before he passed, he told her she
should go to massage school, which she did.
She began studying curanderismo, in-corporating her love of food into her prac-
tice. I couldn’t help but think of my abuela,
about how after she died my aunt made an
ofrenda, a traditional altar with flowers,
candles, and food, for her on the Day of
the Dead. It was an act of healing, a way
for us, as a family, to make peace
with loss. I thought about how
the acid taste of pain and death
and sickness draws the ancient
things out of us.
The ingredients of caldo de pollo are
simple: chunks of meat, vegetable stubs,
other scraps. It’s ideal for any family with
an already-busy kitchen, a sick kid on their
hands, and a botanical arsenal at their dis-
posal in their gardens. Abuela had one like
that. She’d give us mint leaves to chew on
when we had bellyaches. She’d break off
pieces of aloe vera when we were sunburnt,
and she would give us chile peppers to
clear our sinuses—living remedies, smug-
gled through seeds and songs and sopas.
I tried to make it for myself
once when I came down with
a bad cold. I threw all the right
materials into the pot, and it
came out tasting about the same,but it didn’t have the same profound effect.
I think a crucial ingredient is the presence
of someone else, someone who sings and
stirs the broth, someone who places the
bowl in front of you, someone who wants
to see you get better.
Maybe Abuela’s caldo de pollo never
broke any of my fevers. Maybe there’s some
science to it. There probably is. But that
doesn’t really matter to me. These things
are more a technology of the spirit than
anything else, items of ritual healing. They
tell us, “You are cared for. You are loved.
You will be well again.” We reach for them,
as if by animal instinct, when we feel ill.
As we wait for fever to break, our bodies
remember who we are.Caldo de Pollo
(recipe p. 103) from
writer and activist
John Paul Brammer