Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 Page: 296
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296 THE FOLK: WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE'VE DONE
Pedrito, a faith healer, and his tombstone honored him as The
Benefactor of Humanity. He was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco,
M6xico, and he died in Paisano, Starr County, Texas, July 3, 1907.
Since Don Pedrito was already in his "early nineties, in 1893," he
lived at least to be 100 years old.
The article on Don Pedrito was actually a translation of Dod-
son's original 1934 Spanish version, published by Casa Editorial
Lozana in San Antonio, Texas. The Library of the College of Physi-
cians in Philadelphia, "the oldest medical school in the United
States," requested a copy of the Spanish version.14 The request rep-
resents a shift from a long-standing attitude by scientific-based
medical institutions to discredit the faith healers. Dodson alludes to
this point when she writes how Dr. J. S. Stricldand, who worked in
the same country and covered the same territory as Don Pedrito,
responded to a request to prohibit the curandero from doing his
work. The doctor replied: "No, how do I know that Don Pedrito's
prayers don't do more good than my pills?"s15
Don Pedrito discovered his don (gift) through a personal mis-
fortune. While living in Mexico, "he suffered an affliction of the
nose." Dodson writes how one night, he was "suffering so much
that he went out into the woods to a pool of water. He lay down
and buried his face in the mud at the edge. This relieved him. He
stayed there treating himself with mud. At the end of three days he
was well. . . . He returned to his house and lay down and slept.
After a while a voice awakened him and told him that he had
received from God the gift of healing."l16 According to Chivez
Leyva, the idea of a healer suffering a personal misfortune is often
what helps healers become compassionate towards others' suffer-
ings. She says that sometimes the best healers are those who have
gone through significant personal losses, mistakes, and/or trau-
mas, because these experiences help healers to not be judgmental.
Perhaps Don Pedrito's level of compassion was initially put to
the test when he received his first call as a healer. His "master," who
compensated Don Pedrito's labor with "only a bushel of corn and
the equivalent of five dollars a month," got sick and it became Don
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Texas Folklore Society. Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009, book, December 15, 2009; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc271470/m1/309/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.