EMMA PEREZ de ESTRADA Gallup’s Partera - Curandera In honor of National Hispanic Month, Margaret Estrada shares this story about her mother Emma Perez de Estrada.
By Margaret Estrada Whenever I see a newborn baby, I think of my mother. Her name was Emma Perez de Estrada, and she was a partera midwife, a woman who helps other women in childbirth. But to write the story about her, I must begin by telling you about the mysterious tan metal suitcase my siblings and I called her “baby bag” (a regulation bag with equipment issued to her by the State of New Mexico) which she carried to deliveries. One of my earliest 24
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memories is of her telling me that the stork would deliver the babies to her, and she would put them in the tan suitcase and deliver them to the mothers when their time had come. I remember being curious about it and wanting to open it. However, she kept the suitcase in the closet located in her bedroom and told me never to touch it. It was March 25, 1961, and I was nine years old. My mother woke my two brothers and me very early. She told us we were going next door to my Grandfather Manuel’s house. She reached into her closet and pulled out the tan, metal suitcase (which is now housed at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque). I remember we spent the whole day there. Occasionally, my mother would come out of my grandmother Catalina’s room, and I would ask her, “Is the baby here yet?” Finally, about 5:00pm, she came out of the room and announced that my uncle Jimmy had finally
arrived. He was the last of my grandmother’s thirteen children to be born. This was the first time I had been closely associated with the actual work of a partera. It was about a week after my uncle was born that I boldly opened the tan bag. Much to my surprise, I did not find a baby. What I found was the gauze used to rap the severed umbilical cord, measuring tape, rubber gloves, a small hand scale, a bar of soap, scissors, large white linen napkins that were used to catch the baby as it was being born, a small metal container that held capsules of silver nitrate which the partera put in a baby’s eyes, a funnel and rubber tube, boiled and dried cotton balls, a scarf used to cover the head, and a gown which my mother would wear. There were a few other indispensable objects contained in the suitcase. A small cross made from blessed palm which was held together with a piece of red embroidery thread which brought good luck and kept the evil spirits away, plus
some needles, and a skein of red embroidery thread which my mother used to pierce the ears of newborn females. It was a chilly February morning in the year 1933 when my mother Emma was born in the small central New Mexico town of Bernalillo, first settled in 1698. Most of the people who lived in this community were the descendants of Spanish Colonists. Her great-great-grandfather, Jose Maria Perez, and his brothers and sisters were born in Spain and came via Mexico to Bernalillo in the 1700s. Emma was a small woman of medium built, her complexion was very fair, and she had auburn-hair and hazel eyes. She was strong-willed and bossy. She did not have much formal education. In fact, she had very little schooling. Her life was sad in some respects; but she was blessed with a special gift. She not only was a midwife but also a Curandera, a folk practitioner (healer), who relied upon her faith, experience, and knowledge of the use of traditional medicines made from plants to cure her patients. Like many people before her, Emma was influenced by the customs and beliefs of family members of past generations who were dominated by religion, tradition, and superstition. To my mother and her family, Catholicism and its traditionally prescribed set of rituals and practices were passed down from one generation to another. Everything was entrusted to God, with sincere faith. Therefore, when she prescribed a remedy or delivered a baby, she would make the sign of the cross first, then utter the words “en el nombre del padre, del hijo, y del espirito santo,” (in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit) or “que sea la voluntad de Dios,” (may God’s will be done) followed by either a un Padre Nuestro (an Our Father) or un Ave Maria, (a Hail Mary). Faith and prayer being the most important elements in respect to the patients healing or the effectiveness of a remedy.
