Community practitioner
Julieta Casimiro
Mazatec curandera · Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers · 1936–2018
The revered Mazatec curandera of Huautla de Jiménez — 'Doña Julia' — who carried the tradition of the niños santos into the wider world as one of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, and whose family keeps the altar to this day.
Doña Julia of Huautla
Julieta Casimiro — known with affection as Doña Julia — was one of the great Mazatec healers of her generation, born in 1936 in Huautla de Jiménez, the mountain town in Oaxaca that gave the sacred mushroom to the wider world. Introduced as a young woman to the niños santos (“the holy children”) by her mother-in-law, herself a healer, she spent a lifetime working with the mushrooms in prayer, song, and ceremony — for healing, for guidance, and for the deepening of her relationship with the divine.
A grandmother to the world
In her later years Casimiro became a founding member of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, carrying Mazatec wisdom to gatherings around the globe while remaining rooted in Huautla.1 Often described as an heir to the legacy of María Sabina, she represented something the outside world had too often overlooked: that this is a living tradition, held and renewed by named people in a real place.
A living lineage
Julieta Casimiro passed away on 23 July 2018, at 82. But the altar did not go quiet. Her daughter Eugenia Casimiro inherited the family’s ceremonial practice, and a younger generation — including Jazmín Casimiro — continues to guide the velada in Huautla. The Casimiro family stands as one of the most important living lineages of Mazatec mushroom healing.
Footnotes
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International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, profile of Grandmother Julieta Casimiro (2013). ↩
The record
Sources & editorial record
Sources & further reading
International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers (2013). Grandmother Julieta Casimiro (Mazatec, Mexico) — profile. International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.
Biographical profile of the Mazatec curandera Julieta Casimiro, a founding member of the global grandmothers’ council.
Jesuita Natalia Pineda & Julieta Casimiro (2007). Doña Julia (Julieta Casimiro) — interview. BOMB Magazine.
A first-person interview with Julieta Casimiro on her healing practice and the sacred mushrooms of Huautla.
Benjamin Feinberg (2018). María Sabina, tourism, and the mushroom trade in Huautla de Jiménez. Ethnographic / cultural-tourism scholarship.
Context for what mushroom tourism did to Huautla and the Mazatec after 1957 — the cautionary backdrop to Western retreat and ceremony culture.
Editorial record
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