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Don Patricio’s Dream
from a neighboring community who had received four years of med-
ical training in a faraway city before returning to the Sierra to prac-
tice among his own people, and who wanted to take part in my re-
search there in order to learn more himself about the shamans whom
his patients also consulted for their health complaints. People often
asked what he was getting in return for allowing me to live with him
in his home. With a shrug and a smile, he would always humbly an-
swernada, “nothing.” This was true. He would not accept any rent
or other payment from me, although I was able to provide food for
our table from the local shopkeepers. But when the time came for him
to marry, I seized upon the chance to be the couple’s padrino del toro,
“godfather of the bull,” the one who would procure the large animal
to be sacrificed in preparation for the ceremony and then butchered
to make ready caldo de res soup to feed all the company. In this way,
I was able to return a gift to my friend while not inciting the envy of
others, since they all shared in it: more than half the community was
present, and there was enough meat and broth to feed more than two
hundred people for two days.
Reciprocity with Don Patricio was of a different order, made neither
in public nor in kind, but in regular installments of Mexican pesos, in
exchange for his time and help. Prior to this point in my fieldwork, my
experience and working alliances with other shamans had been much
less formal, but out of my growing concern to be even more straight-
forward and easier to understand in my dealings with ritual special-
ists, I decided to try proposing a more “professional” arrangement
from the outset; in short, it was my idea, and Don Patricio was well
pleased with it. And yet he was unsure of just what his contribution
was to be or why I wanted it, despite my repeated attempts at expla-
nation, and surely it was even harder to comprehend for others who
were not directly involved in our negotiations and who could only
imagine what it was all about. Certainly, for a shaman to be compen-
sated for anything other than divinations and healing was as anoma-
lous as it was novel. But our odd relationship was soon brought within
the orbit of more familiar, traditional forms of Mazatec association.
We became friends, exchanging gifts and unpaid visits to one another,
and not long afterward, he became my protector in the aftermath of
