Eugenia Casimiro

The altar, inherited

Eugenia Casimiro — Doña Eugenia Pineda Casimiro — is a Mazatec curandera of Huautla de Jiménez and the daughter of the celebrated grandmother Julieta Casimiro. Trained from childhood at her mother’s side — accompanying her through ceremonies and on her travels with the Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers — Eugenia inherited the family’s ceremonial altar upon Julieta’s passing in 2018.

Carrying the tradition forward

Where her mother became a global figure, Eugenia’s role is that of continuity: keeping the velada, the songs, and the work of the niños santos alive in the place they belong, and teaching a wider public about the meaning of the sacred mushrooms on Mazatec terms. Hers is a living practice, not a memory — proof that the tradition documented across this archive continues in named, present-day hands.

The velada she keeps

In the Mazatec night ceremony, the mushrooms are not a drug to be taken but children to be received — eaten in darkness, in prayer, while the healer chants for hours in Mazatec and Spanish, weaving the sick person, the saints, and the land into a single song. Eugenia learned that language of chant and silence at Julieta’s shoulder, and now carries it herself: the chjota chjine, the “one who knows,” speaking on behalf of the holy children. To sit with her is to meet the tradition not as history but as a voice still being raised, night after night, in the mountains above Huautla.