The Witch of Guadalupe

Among the poor Mexicans and Yaqui Indians of the Southwest, witches still flourish as hardily as desert cactus, and fear of their dark power is as real as the daily struggle for a living. For years there has been no more powerful bruja on either side of the border than sly, dark-haired Maria Concepcion Estrella Miranda, leading practitioner of the occult in dusty Guadalupe, Ariz. (pop. 850). Few in Guadalupe did not believe that she could cause sickness or death simply by sticking bobby-pins with little doughball heads into any of the 200-odd photographs she kept secreted in her middle room.

Rancher Joe S. Chavez was above such superstitions and the poor Mexicans who believed in them. Joe was big, tough, and handsome. After he married beautiful Josefina Puebla back in 1929, she inherited a ranch near the Superstition Mountains. Joe raised white-faced cattle. Joe leased section after section of Government grazing land. Joe prospered. But ten years ago a dreadful thing happened to his wife. She began going blind, suffering from trancelike spells, and complaining that her head was swelling up like a balloon.

Three Drops. Joe 'took her to the best doctors. They found nothing wrong. He got her into St. Joseph's Hospital at Phoenix, but after a month she was almost totally blind. Not until then did a cautious Yaqui Indian sidle up and tell Joe what had really happened: "She's had a curse put on her by a powerful witch." Joe snorted. But when the Yaqui recommended that he see a Puerto Rican bruja about a cure. Joe went. The witch knew all about Josefina's case, and offered to save one of her eyes for $100. Joe paid.

He slipped back into the hospital with a secret potion, put three drops of it into a glass of water and gave it to his wife. He did the same the next day. Her sight began to return.

Then one day Maria Miranda--for it was Maria herself, as it turned out, who had cursed Josefina--sneaked into Chavez' house, shrieked at Josefina: "You will never see again!" and fled. Next morning Joe's wife was blind again. Fruitlessly, Joe took her to witches in Tucson, in Nogales, in Pitiquito, in Sonora and Cavorca, Mexico. Finally Joe went humbly to Maria herself; in her flyblown parlor, with its green altar and its saints' pictures (some laid face down with coins placed against their lips to protect Maria's clients from gossip), Joe begged for a cure.

Five Shots. Maria laughed. She would perhaps accept his $8,000 house, she said. But when he went back in two weeks, she wanted his ranch too. He refused. Maria tittered again. Why, she asked, didn't he get the law? He did not dare. Numbly Joe went back to consulting other witches. All failed him.

Finally one morning last fall, after four sleepless nights of watching over his wife, Joe got out his six-gun, strode into Maria's kitchen, "shot her, one--two--three--four--five--." Last week, on trial for murder, Joe pleaded that he did not go to Guadalupe to kill Maria but to get back a photograph of his wife. He fired only after she refused him and reached for her shotgun. But his defense was based in large part on the implication that he too was a victim of a belief in witchcraft.

The defense tried hard to make Joe's belief in Maria's power seem reasonable: "We can't see God but we believe in Him." When Prosecutor William P. Mahoney Jr. called all this "compounding nonsense out of nonsense" and asked that Joe be sent to the gas chamber, Mexicans in the audience shivered. "Wait," whispered one, "until he feels a curse!" In the end, the jury rejected both the defense's plea of temporary insanity and self-defense, and the prosecution's demand for the death penalty, found Joe guilty of second-degree murder.

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