By Francesco Gervasi, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila El objetivo y la justificación de la investigación …
El Niño Fidencio – Mexico’s Greatest Curandero & Folk-Saint
José Fidencio Sintora Constantino November 13, 1898–October 19, 1938
By Antonio Noé Zavaleta, Ph.D.
El Niño Fidencio: The Strong Dream Man - “El Pequeño Clarividente”
El Niño Fidencio, arguably Mexico’s greatest curandero, or spirit doctor, believed he was spiritually anointed by God to serve man by leading a solitary and humble life in a Christ-like fashion. He was not a traveler or wonderer encountering the ill and infirm along his journey like Tatita Santo, famous healer of the 19 century. On the other hand, people came to Fidencio in Espinazo, Nuevo Leon requesting miracles and giving thanks for miracles received. The faithful made the journey to Fidencio in Espinazo, Nuevo León, called La Nueva Jerusalén/the New Jerusalem. It was along its Avenue of Pain or Avenida Sagrario that their penance was painfully acted out. The simple act of penance is foundational; not only of the Niño’s healing ministry, but also for the religious cult that followed him through life and after death (Garza Quiroz, 1991). Penance is an act of thanks for a miracle received, and also a way of paying off a spiritual debt or manda.
Curandera/o is Spanish for healer, a practice that proceeds the term medical doctor. Every town and village in Mexico has a curandera/o, and the tradition can be traced back to ancient times. The practices of the curandera/o is called curanderia, and modern social sciences have coined the term curanderismo to describe the practice. Curanderas/os are knowledgeable in the use of medicinal plants for healing minor illnesses such as upset stomach, high blood pressure, and sore muscles. They also treat common folk illnesses such as the evil eye or mal de ojo and fright sickness called susto. The vast majority of curanderas/os practice at this most basic material level. That is they utilize the items available in herb stores called yerberías or botanicas. This includes spiritual waters, oils, herbs, candles, saints, incense and many other basic items. These items are utilized both by curanderas/os and on peoples home altars. The simple use of these common items is known and used by most in Latin American cultures.
A more advanced level or practice of curanderia is the mental level where the healer concentrates on a physical object like a crystal ball or more commonly a vessel of water or a clear liquid, in order to divine the patients problem. The curandera/os then receives a healing message mentally. Today the vast number of visits to a curandera/o is for a psychological or personal issue. This is especially true in the cities where doctors, clinics and pharmacies are readily available to most. The healer will ask the patient questions while concentrating on the central object and then respond having discerned the solution to the patients problem mentally, and recommend a solution and a visit to the yerbería.
By far, the most sophisticated practice of curanderismo is spiritual. In this case, the curandera/o enters a trance state and channels the spirit of a religious figure like a Saint, or a doctor or some other illustrious figure who provides the cure or advice for problem solving. This is the case of the Niño Fidencio who is a favored spirit used in healing, and the spirit of revolutionary Pancho Villa whose spirit which is used to solve personal problems and is very popular.
Mexico, has a long history of folk-healers called curanderas, curanderos if male. This is largely due to the numerous Native tribes living in Mexico represented by hundreds of years of healing culture and ritual practice. In Mexico, every tribe and culture has healers called curanderas/os. The Native people depended upon their healers for their knowledge and the use of plants and rituals for healing. Additionally, Mexico’s Native healers often served as tribal shaman adept in attending to people’s supernatural and spiritual needs, especially where Roman Catholicism was not known or available.
Therefore, by the end of nineteenth century, the people of Mexico were well accustomed to curanderas/os and their trusted practices for healing, both in urban and rural areas. In cities, folk-healers operated along-side priests of the Roman Catholic Church and medical doctors. While not accepted by them, the people often preferred the healers they knew. In rural areas, priests were mostly absent and doctors were non-existant. People relied entirely upon the curanderas/os they knew, and didn’t go to doctors they didn’t know or trust. People depended upon curanderas/os for their medical and spiritual needs.
Nineteenth century Mexico saw a continuous stream of holy men and women appear, claiming to have been ordained by God. Thus, curanderas/os were believed to have special powers allowing them to care for the destitute and underserved populations. In Northern Mexico this was especially true. In the nineteenth century, the Northern desert holy man known as Tatita Santo wandered the deserts, preaching and predicting the appearance of a healer who would come after him in the early twentieth century. Tatita Santo’s prediction came to pass as predicted, in the first quarter of the twentieth century with the arrival of El Niño Fidencio in the tiny village of Espinazo in the State of Nuevo Leon.
It is important to note that many of the Niño’s followers considered him the second coming of Jesus Christ; some were convinced that he was an actual reincarnation of Christ. It is clear, though, from his Sagradas Escrituras/Holy Scriptures that the Niño Fidencio was a man like any other. The Niño was born with both physical peculiarities and strange abilities. He was unusual in that he received visions and revelations throughout his life and was a very competent trance medium and clairvoyant beginning in childhood, long before he received his most spectacular spiritual gift of healing.
Shortly before his 20th birthday, Fidencio began a ministry of miraculous healing in Espinazo, Nuevo Leon, where he worked as a simple hacienda kitchen boy. Over the years, a community of followers developed around him producing a full-blown religious cult with a well-defined social organization. Fidencio was a remarkable curandero and miracle worker who performed every manner of marvelous acts including translocation or healing over long distances. Many believed that he raised the dead and restored sight and speech to the deaf and blind, others believed it was all a magical trick.
The Mexican National Institute of the Indigious cultures defines curanderismo as “A system of knowledge, beliefs, and practices that are intent on the prevention and treatment of illnesses. The management of misbalance that is perceived as pathological for the individual or the social group”( INHA, Instituto National de Historia y Anthropologia D.F.).
Anthropologist George Foster introduced us long ago to ancient humoral theory that informs our understanding of the humors as well as the concept of balance and the hot-and-cold theory in health and illness. Additionally, we must understand what curanderismo is, what it does, and why it is important today (Foster, G. 1994 and Brown, H., 2015).
There is no single uniform system or type of curanderismo; there is no right or wrong way to perform curanderismo. Curanderismo is totally eclectic and based on the individual healer and his/her cultural traditions and regional affiliations. The indigenous practices of curanderismo in southern Mexico are different from those in the northern border states, although there are similarities. The practices of curanderismo are still different from those practiced in Texas or in the American Midwest in Mexican American populations. The practice in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila benefits from the fact that they are in Mexico and the ability to purchase medicines at pharmacies such as antibiotics. It is an eclectic healing system in constant flux adding and deleting healing modalities, practices, rituals, beliefs and concepts stylized by each individual practitioner and their beliefs and cultural practices. It adopts newly emerging trends while retaining a cultural core that is based in Latin American Roman Catholic cultures. A good example is the recent appearance and addition of the folk-Saints, La Santa Muerte and Jesus Malverde.
For example, twenty years ago, La Santísima Muerte, the Saint of holy death , was not known on the U.S.-Mexico border but today the skeleton Saint is its most popular folk Saint sold in every hierbería in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Additionally, La Santa Muerte has been adopted by narco sub-culture and has become a major topic of discussion by U.S. federal agents involved in drug interdiction. However, thousands of non-narco believers revere her as their Roman Catholic patroness, surpassing the popularity of La Virgen de Guadalupe, who is seen as not aggressive enough for their needs. (Chestnut, 2011).
The study of curanderas/os and curanderismo is important for many other reasons. Carlos Viesca Treviño describes curanderas/os as, “The sole perpetrators of resistance against the European invasion of 1519.” Curanderas/os and their evil opposites, brujos or witches, continue resistance against assimilation and cultural annihilation. Today, they both metaphorically and practically survive undaunted as a native affront to Church and Saint worship (Treviño, 2001).
Entry level curanderas/os practice with physical material items such as medicinal plants, prayer cards, candles, oils, baths and statues, while more spiritually advanced curanderas/os often work from an advanced trance state where the spirit of an entity such as the Niño Fidencio or Pancho Villa assists in the healing and advising process. Sometimes a curandera/o will be dedicated to a particular Roman Catholic Saint, or revolutionary hero, a gypsy, a deceased doctor, a Native American medicine man, or even small children like Aurorita and Tomasito who are believed to possess miraculous powers. Most modern curanderas/os are not schooled in the use of medicinal plants, but some are very effective learning and observing the use of plants since childhood (Condal, 1977).
In his book, “Exploring Medical Anthropology,” Joralemon quotes from the work of Paul Starr in the examination of the “Social Transformation of American Medicine.” Both documents are significant to our discussion. “Medical anthropologists have shown that in order to be effective, folk-healers or curanderos must simultaneously possess both social and cultural authority. That is, they must be empowered by the community they serve. They must possess some status, quality or claim that compels trust and obedience. Authority, on the other hand, must be based on the willing consent of those who are subject to it” (Joralemon, 2016). Respected medical anthropologist Kleinman states that the sick person depends on and believes in the ability of the curandera/o to heal him/her. This is also true of the family of the sick person who has just as much importance in the spiritual drama of healing as the sick person. In order for curanderismo to be successful, partnerships must be developed between patient, healer and religion (Kleinman, 1980; Joralemon, 2016; and Brown and Barrett, 2010, Starr, 1985).
In the 1970s, the developing concept of “Barefoot Medicine” in China demonstrated that approximately 85 percent of all human ailments may be successfully treated by non-professional primary care technicians, using a village trainee with two months of training and a proverbial medicine bag. Curanderas/os, on the other hand, usually have a lifetime of learning and practice and have apprenticed with a senior curandera/o. So why, then, is modern American medicine so quick to dismiss curanderas/os abilities? (China’s Barefoot Medicine, 1974).
It is not difficult to believe that the treatment by curanderas/os is very efficacious in culture-based societies where people have limited access to doctors and a lifetime faith in the folk-healer. Today, most curandera/oss mix and match indigenous practices with modern medicine in a lifelong learning curve; acting as people’s primary and secondary care providers this is especially true in rural areas. In fact, in many cases, folk-healers are the only providers available. This is exactly the situation, a lack of providers that created the Niño Fidencio and similar phenomena. Post-revolutionary northern Mexico was devoid of medical services and Catholic sacraments outside of the major urban areas such as Monterrey and Saltillo and border towns such as Reynosa and Matamoros.
Historically for the people, “A belief that ‘flies in the face of accepted Roman Catholic traditions, often regarded curanderas/os as folk-Saints.” In his doctoral dissertation, José María Villarreal quotes from Monterrey Nuevo León, anthropologist Breen Murray, “Traditional Christian (Roman Catholic) Saints focus attention precisely on the attributes of sainthood and the significance of official rejection.” Murray argues, from the Church’s perspective, a more suitable term for El Niño Fidencio would perhaps be an anti-Saint. Folk or popular Saints attain sainthood via their understanding and approval among the devoted followers and not from the Roman Catholic Church. Over a forty-year period, Murray has never been sympathetic toward the Niño Fidencio or his Fidencista movement always favoring the Roman Catholic Church, and denouncing the actions of El Niño Fidencio (Villarreal, 2015 and Murray, 2005).
Villarreal informs us that drawing from a model describing the therapeutic success of a curandera/o, a combination of socio-cultural, physical factors and spiritual believes may be assessed by: 1) understanding that many illnesses are self-limiting and cures are attributed to the healer; 2) patients use a different set of cultural criteria to determine if they have been healed; 3) an illness may have both social and physical symptoms and both must be addressed in order to determine if a cure was received; and 4) chronic conditions may continue through life and so there is no clear point at which treatment ends. Finally, patients must be religiously connected to a belief system, usually Roman Catholicism. Curanderismo often maintains and sustains the patient through life very much like modern medicine treats diabetics for a lifetime (Villarreal, 2015 and Barnes and Sered, 2005).
Discovering Fidencio - The Bracero Camp 1956:
It was at my grandmother’s, Mamá Conchita’s cotton farm/ranch in Northern Mexico and amidst the throngs of braceros that I heard the Niño Fidencio’s name for the first time. In 1958, Fidencio had only been dead twenty years. His memory was fresh in the minds of many who had firsthand experiences with his miraculous powers. Fidencio had treated many braceros as children or young adults during the years, 1925 to 1938.
El Niño Fidencio, as well as curanderismo and brujería/witchcraft were often topics of conversation in the migrant field camps during the cotton-picking season. The camps were located out in the fields and a couple of miles away from my grandmother’s ranch house where she operated a simple store providing essential provisions such as cigarettes, flour and sugar as well as soft drinks. In the field-camps, braceros placed their mats on the ground around the campfires; there was no need for tents during the summer months. The older women remained in camp, no longer able to do back breaking fieldwork such as cotton picking. Their task was to prepare two meals of the day, morning and evening. During the summer months, the cotton harvest under the hot Texas-Mexico sun proceeded from dawn until dusk almost 10 o’clock at night and then they were up at four a.m. the next day ready to do it again. Their product for the day was paid by my Grandfather in silver.
It was in the evening around the bracero campfire that I first heard stories of the mysterious Niño Fidencio; his miraculous cures and surgeries performed with broken bottle glass. His medicines were made from the medicinal plants of the desert; it was said that he never used store bought medicines. My Grandmother’s cotton fields and her braceros taught me about El Niño Fidencio, the thaumaturge/miracle worker of Espinazo, and I never forgot those stories (Ortiz, 1973).
The Niño healed many, but many also died and the dead were buried beneath the sands of the Coahuiltecan desert in the ever-enlarging Espinazo cemeteries. The braceros especially spoke of the mystery and spirituality of the place and how the Niño was a living Saint, who talked to God and whose trans-androgynous countenance transformed him back and forth from a male to female form alternating between the Virgen de Guadalupe and the Sagrado Corazón/Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In the 1950s, 20 or so years after his death, Espinazo developed into the folk-Saint’s holy pilgrimage site, his Santuario, requiring honorable pilgrimage and visitation to the site. Like all Saints, the miracles did not end with his death in 1938 and many followers believe they continue to this day.
By the 1950s, a quasi-religious healing cult had grown up around the memory of Fidencio with the faithful and other pilgrims making the arduous trip to the fiesta in Espinazo every March and October The March fiesta celebrates Fidencio’s Saint’s day, Saint Joseph. The October fiesta commemorates both the Niño’s birth and death dates in the month of October. (Morinis, 1985).
Viewing El Niño Fidencio Film - The University of Texas: 1966
It was in Dr Americo Paredes’ cultural anthropology class that we were required to pick an ethnographic film to view and report on. We could choose from one of three ethnographic films for an out of class assignment (Paredes, 1993).
I picked the Olson’s film, “We Believe in El Niño Fidencio,” about the Niño Fidencio miracle worker of Espinazo, Nuevo Leon. It seemed vaguely familiar at first but would bring back the memories of the braceros’ stories flooding back to mind. My Niño Fidencio paper was the first anthropology paper that I wrote, grabbing my professor’s attention because I had firsthand knowledge of the bracero fields of northern Mexico: “Who was this Valley kid”, my professors asked. I described how I had heard stories about the El Niño Fidencio in the bracero camps on my grandparent’s farm, writing both of the camp and the stories I heard from the original Fidencistas. It brought positive attention to me as an anthropology undergraduate student at a time when there were very few Mexican American students at the University of Texas at Austin and none in Anthropology. Famed UT anthropologist and Brownsville native Américo Paredes and his colleague Dr. Robert Malina, physical anthropologist, took interest in me and I worked and studied under them from 1971-1976. Paredes grew up in Brownsville, down the street from where my grandparents, and all my uncles lived. Dr Paredes knew my father and uncles. We shared a love of history and folklore (Paredes, 1993).
For the next eight years, I was away from the border, in undergraduate and then, graduate school. I often thought about Espinazo and that the Niño called to me spiritually. Although it was a long eight-hour drive from Austin to Espinazo, travel there was out of my reach financially. I heard other graduate students talk about their trips to the fiesta in Espinazo, still only a dream for me. In those years as a married graduate student with children, it was impossible for me to afford the trip to Espinazo. However, my time would come.
Magical Mexico: Millenarianism and the Mexican Messiah - “Siglo de Leyenda, Donde Encontrar Alivio y Curaciones”
Waddy Tompson in his Recollections of Mexico, remarks, “There is something very striking in the pomp and pageantry of the Roman Catholic ritual as it exists in Mexico, and I must say something equally revolting in its disgusting mummeries and impostors, which degrade the Christian religion into an absurd, ridiculous, venal superstition. If such things are not practiced in other Catholic countries, why? Then the priests of Mexico are alone responsible; but if these things are not confined to Mexico, the sooner and more generally they are exposed the better.” (Waddy Thompson 1846).
Anthropologist William Madsen, in his book, “Christo-Paganism: A Study of Mexican Religious Syncretism,” states that, “Sixteenth-century Catholic and Aztec religions differed in doctrine but displayed a number of resemblances in their forms of worship.” Madsen describes how the Indians readily adopted Roman Catholic forms of worship because they found them to be useful in the similarity and continuation of their own Native American cosmology. This allowed for the continuation of Native American beliefs and practices within the context of New World Roman Catholicism through a process called religious syncretism (Madsen, 1967).
Both the Roman Catholic and the Native populations of Mexico believed in the Saints they worshiped as demi-gods, as well as the celebration of their feast days and the Catholic mega ritual: the Holy Mass. What’s more, both Roman Catholics and Native Americans believed in healers called curanderas/os facilitating the conversion of the Indians to Catholicism and sustainable as long as the Indians were placated and allowed to continue the practice of their religious beliefs uninterrupted by the superimposition of Roman Catholicism.
Over time, many Indian religious beliefs were absorbed into and associated with Mexican Roman Catholicism, both symbolically and pragmatically. Additionally, many Native American practices and rituals were allowed to be practice on Church grounds. In time, the Roman Catholic Church in the Mexican hinterlands lost much of its resemblance to the traditional European Roman Catholic Church. This ultimately opened the door for the assimilation of many Native beliefs and their ritual practice in and concurrence with Mexican Roman Catholicism. While not allowed to practice their Native rituals in the church building, they were allowed to dance and perform other rituals outside in front of the church. Syncretic assimilation occurs when one culture blends with another while losing the distinguishing traits of both, in the process and taking on others.
The result is the creation of a new folk-religion similar to its progenitors that operate side by side with Roman Catholicism. Looking just below the surface of Mexican Roman Catholicism it is clear that it is a variant of Roman Catholicism but not the same, it represents the creation of a new folk-religion. Beliefs common to both Roman Catholicism and folk Catholicism include the virgin birth, the incarnation of God as man, his life and teachings while on Earth, his death, the resurrection with a promise of return and a promised land and the many and varied Roman Catholic Saints and folk-Saints.
The return of the deity promised the establishment of a utopian society or New Jerusalem on earth. The Spanish Roman Catholic priests believed that the discovery of the new world foretold of a new religion led by the return of Christ and that this would occur in Mexico. In fact, many Roman Catholic priests were convinced that Native Mexicans were the chosen people of God. In addition, the belief in a Virgin goddess is essential to both systems, as is the belief in the existence of a pantheon of lesser gods we call Saints. The Saints and the various manifestations of the Virgin Maria were believed to physically oversee and affect the lives of mortals on earth.
The earthly beings would pray to their patron Saints for favors and there was a plan incorporated for the propitiation of Saints including pilgrimage to their sacred sites, such as Saint Francis at Real de Qatorce in San Luis Potosi. Espinazo was destined to become a sacred pilgrimage site for El Niño Fidencio and others. Folk-Catholicism is also called Popular-Catholicism and is seen as an unofficial belief system existing in stark contrast to the official belief system referred to as Roman Catholicism and Protestant Evangelism.
In Latin America and Mexico, popular religion operates side by side with Roman Catholicism and other mainstream religions. Roman Catholic theologian Orlando Espin has spent many years attempting to have Catholics understand the reality and importance of Mexican popular or folk-religion. He states: “I insist that the people’s faith be taken seriously as a true locus theologicus and not solely or mainly as a pastoral, catechetical problem. Hispanic popular religion is not a curious, exotic, theologically backward, or even inferior oddity of an eccentric, voiceless, monolithic people. Rather, Latino popular religion is a shorthand way to refer to a vibrant, creative, and fundamental theological and cultural motherlode of diverse groups of peoples. Latino people voice and act out their own theological and spiritual understandings of the Divine, themselves, and the world” (Espin, 1997).
Millenarian and Messianic Figures
Therefore, it was in the early part of the 20th century that thousands of Mexican followers of El Niño Fidencio, the first messianic figure of 20th century Mexico, transmigrated northward across the border and into the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and to the United States in general. They spread their diaspora and many esoteric teachings of the Niño Fidencio and Fidencistas throughout the United States, especially in Texas and the Midwest.
During the 20th century, there were many emergent cults in Mexico, many of which were Christian offshoots, the northern movement of Fidencismo in the early days was largely unknown outside of northern Mexico and south Texas. Simultaneous with the Niño in Espinazo numerous cults and messianic leaders were at work throughout Mexico, all claiming to work miracles and promise happiness in the afterlife.
Spiritism
In the 1920s, author Anita Brenner described supernatural Mexico in her book, Idols Behind Altars, as a land of magic and spirits. There is a certain predisposition to belief in spirits in Mexico promulgated by the survival of the animistic beliefs of the indigenous populations and the mixing with medieval Roman Catholicism beliefs brought to Mexico by 16th century priests (Brenner, 1929).
By the middle of the 19th century and throughout the reign of President Porfirio Díaz, new versions of spiritism creeped into Mexico and with great popularity. In her book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, C.M. Mayo, describes the origins of Mexican spiritism as a blend of European and North American practices (Mayo, 2013).
While the Roman Catholic Church condemned spiritism, by the beginning of the 20th century and in the run up to the Mexican Revolution, elite groups of political and social thinkers in Mexico were routinely participating in spiritist séances and turning against Roman Catholicism. Spiritual transmission of ideas was one of the only ways to have new ideas introduced to Mexican society. Mexican Indian cultures practiced their versions of spirit channeling throughout the period from colonial to modern time but without attracting the attention of the ruling classes (Mayo, 2013, Quirk, 1973).
The young and upcoming sociopolitical thinkers in Mexico such as President Francisco Madero (1873-1913); were active in the spiritist movement. Madero would become the first legitimate president of Mexico after the revolution and he silently brought his spirit guides into the office of the presidency writing a book under his spirit pen name Bhima. Entitled, “Spiritist Manual,” published in 1911, it advocated that, “One does not have to be a Spiritist to champion freedom and democracy.” Unfortunately, Madero was not allowed to realize his dreams for Mexico for he was assassinated in 1913, and his book lay dormant until rediscovered and translated into English by C.M. Mayo (Mayo, 2013, Madero, 1911).
Trance mediumship is also a common characteristic of Mexican native religion practiced before the arrival of Europeans and continuing to the present day. Therefore, the reality that the cult of Fidencio is based upon the channeling of a spirit does not challenge the Mexican imagination as it does in the North American psyche.
Espinazo, Nuevo León, less than one hundred miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, is the pilgrimage site for the cult of the Niño Fidencio. Until recently the followers of Fidencio known as Fidencistas claimed Roman Catholicism as their religion; for them, Fidencio was another Saint. However, with the founding of the Christian Fidencista Church IFC in 1993, church members began to drop their claim to be Roman Catholics.
This is, as we shall see, a major difference between the followers of Fabiola Lopez de la Fuente, the leader of the IFC Church and the followers of Panita Zapata leader of the Independent church who claim to be Roman Catholics. Regardless of which group they belong to, most Fidencistas do not recognize the difference between canonized Saints and folk-Saints. At a different time and place in Christian history, the Niño Fidencio most certainly would have been canonized a Roman Catholic Saint but his actions of delivering Roman Catholic sacraments was intolerable to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Mexican National Catholic Church MNCC founded in 1925, formed by President Calles during the revolution, actually petitioned Rome for the canonization of Fidencio only to have the application rejected. It is not surprising that the major fiestas held in Espinazo attract adepts of many other spirits in addition to the Niño Fidencio.
The two major annual fiestas for Fidencio in Espinazo take place in March and October of every year. These two major fiestas attract the greatest numbers of worshipers and there are numerous Saints and spiritual entities represented at the fiestas in addition to Fidencio. Additionally Fidencistas Celebrate Samana Santa, Easter and Christmas, fiestas Navideñas. While the purists often remark that Espinazo should only be for Fidencio, and the others not allowed, as of yet that belief has not been enforced.
Today, those spirit channelers of entities other than the Niño Fidencio, and there are many, are welcomed at the fiesta because most of the people there believe in them in addition to El Niño Fidencio. There is no spirit exclusivity in Espinazo which is rapidly becoming a land for the celebration of all spirits. (Zabaleta, 1886)
Belief in spirits and spirit worship was not familiar to me on my first visit to Espinazo. At the fiesta of the Niño Fidencio, I did not understand the costumes or the representations of spirits that did not represent Fidencio. For example, it is not unusual to see people dressed as gypsies, Indians, Revolutionaries and Saints. Additionally, there are spirits of children, such as Aurorita Prado Quintanilla and Tomasito Herrera, two of the most popular and dutifully represented by their spirit mediums, and a pantheon of others, both Christian healers and pagan witches.
The multi-spirit nature of the Niño’s fiesta makes it one of the most popular in Mexico where all spirits are welcomed and have a constituency. This is very different from the fiesta of La Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico City on December 11-12 where all celebrate only Guadalupe and her Indian form Tonantzin and her revealer, Saint Juan Diego Cuahtlaoatzin and no others are allowed (Serrano, 1998).
The religious movement that developed in Espinazo in the 1920s and 1930s has continued without intervention from government or religion. It is a quasi-religious, spiritist cult, not a Roman Catholic, and not spiritist. It is based upon the Santo Evangélico or Sagradas Escrituras of the Niño Fidencio. In his Holy Scriptures, the Niño Fidencio warned his followers to stay separate from the spiritist movement that was popular in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s (Zavaleta, 2013).
At the same time that the various Mexican spiritist associations distanced themselves and denounced Roman Catholicism, the Fidencistas claimed no relationship to the spiritist associations claiming to be Roman Catholic producing an interesting if not confusing triangulation.
In the beginning, the celebrations of the Niño Fidencio were styled after the ritual and catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. As the Christian Church of Fidencio IFC emerged, it developed its own catechism, rituals, and procedures; holding a retreat for its membership in Espinazo each August. In August 2025, it completed its 57th annual spiritual retreat/retiro espiritual and is developing rituals and liturgy apart from Roman Catholicism.
Anthropologist Breen Murray who is critical of Fidencismo, suggests that the Fidencista movement and the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana IFC are clearly mimicking Roman Catholicism and while this may have been true early on, it is not so today as the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana (IFC) continues to develop(Murray, 2005).
The early 20th century in Mexico was a period marked by continuous political and religious strife. The Roman Catholic Church had dominated the social and power structure in Mexico since colonial times. In the period between 1850 and 1900, this singular religious power came under fire from liberal idealists and newly imported European social thinking that was directed toward the Roman Catholic Church by the unique and powerful authority of the Mexican State. (Quirk, 1973)
While the socioeconomic power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church maintained its position in Mexican society, for the first time it was seriously challenged. At first the Church, a seemingly unchangeable social institution, regarded emerging external and foreign influences as little more than curiosities. This would quickly end in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Mexico is primarily a Roman Catholic country and during the 19th century, a confused and desperate Mexican populace, unable to avail itself of sanctuary in the Church, longed for a sign from God. Roman Catholicism was seriously attacked in Mexico after the war of independence and the revolution that followed it one hundred years later. It was in this sociopolitical environment that the miracle workers, Tatita Santo and El Niño Fidencio, appeared in the deserts of the north near the border with Texas.
El Niño Fidencio: Idols Behind Altars - “Nunca dejó de ser un Niño”
In her book, Idols Behind Altars, Anita Brenner succinctly describes Mexico’s passion and longing for a Messiah a savior: “Mexico has a messiah who dies, yet always lives; who has so many names and forms that he is never graspable in one; who has humility and strength, who kills and heals, blasts and kindles, suffers and rejoices. He is the image of his people. He is a dark master of himself, and prodigal to the rest of the world. The prophecy that bears him is a prophecy that needs no future, but is constantly fulfilled; that needs no faith but vision. It is the brown hand, color of the earth, shaping a round bowl color of the hand” (Brenner, 1929).
Fernando Ramírez de Aguilar, the well-known Mexican journalist whose pen name was Jacobo Dalevuelta Mexico’s most famous journalist of the 1920s, described Fidencio: “Su aspecto es el de un sencillo muchacho el de un pastor de chivas, de aquellos que no conocen el buen ni el mal que han vivido bajo el sol y bajo la luna.” (Dalevuelta, 1928)
“He looks like a simple boy one of those shepherd boys who does not know good or evil who simply lives below the sun and the moon. Some say that this childlike boy has feminine characteristics but that is not accurate.” (Dalevuelta, 1928)
In the post-revolutionary era of the 1920s, Mexico lacked basic services and this was especially true in remote rural areas of the north. Food was scarce, there was little, or no work and people were without basic healthcare or Roman Catholic sacraments. Rural Mexicans had always relied upon folk healers or curanderas/os for primary healthcare but even curanderas/os were difficult to access. As a Roman Catholic nation, desperate people looked to God for assistance. However, the Roman Catholic infrastructure was mostly destroyed after the revolution and priests were expelled from the country and many were executed (Fogerty, 1977).
The phenomenon of the El Niño Fidencio arose out of these conditions; he was himself a peasant and socio economically marginalized. He could read and write at a second-grade level, had received no medical or healthcare training and he had certainly not studied medicinal properties of plants.
Fidencio Constantino appeared on the scene in Mexico at a time that would fulfill Mexico’s need for a people’s Messiah early in the 20th century in the midst of revolution and chaos. As stated so appropriately, Anita Brenner reminds us that the “Mexican people longed for their own native savior, brown the color of the earth, a man who arose from maguey and jacal, the most unlikely to receive a calling from God yet the worthiest of such a gift, humble of the Earth, and anointed by God. El Niño Fidencio was believed to be that man.”
During the five hundred years after the appearance of the Virgin de Guadalupe and before Fidencio appeared, Mexico found its faith tested by the appearance of one false prophet after another. In 1900, as the millennium drew to a close and with the Roman Catholic Church in shambles, Mexicans were once again hopeful that the savior from the north, El Niño Fidencio, would fulfill their dreams of redemption guiding them to the Promised Land and establishing the New Jerusalem on Earth. The revolution was a time of both hope and hopelessness for the disenfranchised. Without a priest or doctor, the Niño Fidencio, a miracle worker who delivered the Catholic sacraments, provided hope for the hopeless.
Fidencio: The Early Years: 1898-1915 - “El Nombre de Fidencio se Popularizó”
His followers called him Niño, “the child.” He was a peasant, as poor as the people who sought deliverance by his hand. He claimed that his power was derived from God through the soil and native plants of the desert. His spiritual gift/don had been granted to him through a direct revelation from Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit beneath the sacred pirul tree/California pepper tree, that grew in the center of Espinazo, a small village in northern Mexico where Tatita Santo, a desert holy man of the 19th century, had once predicted the appearance of the Niño Fidencio on the desert.
On November 18, 1898, Socorro Constantino appeared at the county courthouse, cabecera de municipio de Iramuco, to record the birth of his son Fidencio. The birth certificate filed that day indicates the birth of a boy named Fidencio Constantino (not José de Jesús); he was born on November 13, 1898 in the Valley of Caves/Valle de las Cuevas near Iramuco, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico.
Fidencio’s birth certificate identifies his parents, his grandparents, and their compadres/witnesses. His father Socorro Constantino, 40 years old, was not classified as an Indian/Indio. This was an important distinction for Fidencio since birthright is so critical in Mexico’s rigid class system. The child was of mixed blood, a mestizo of European and Native-American blood like most Mexicans. The great Mexican educator and philosopher, José Vasconcelos, would describe the mestizo population as La Raza Cósmica, the cosmic, or magical race (Vasconcelos, 1922),
Socorro worked as a farm laborer and was originally from the Rancho Monte de las Juárez in the jurisdiction of Yuriria where the Rancho de las Cuevas is located. This is another important piece of information in understanding Mexico. In Mexico’s official census, Socorro was counted as belonging to a ranch almost like property while he was not an indentured servant and since there was no such thing as a home address.
Fidencio’s mother was María Tránsito Síntora, a 31-year-old mestiza of mixed blood from Yuriria. The couple was married by both church and state, making Fidencio a legitimate citizen, an important point in his civil status. Fidencio had all of the bonafides needed to claim his place in Mexican society and rights in early 20th century Mexico.
Fidencio’s paternal grandparents, Rafael Constantino and María Andrea Jiménez, were both deceased. His mother’s father, 70-year-old Ignacio Sintora, was living at the time of his birth but his maternal grandmother, Petra Ramírez, was deceased. Tomasa Delgado, a widow, witnessed Fidencio’s official birth certificate along with Luis López, who was single, both were of legal age and could officially testify to his birth. By their signature, they became compadres or ritual kin of the family and Fidencio became their godchild/ahijado.
It is important to note that Fidencio was the only name registered on his birth certificate while the Christian name José was added at the time of his baptism as required by the Roman Catholic Church, and it appears on his baptismal certificate, José Fidencio.
Fidencio’s name is mentioned numerous ways throughout the literature including most notably, José de Jesús Fidencio. Jesús is a popular add-on by the faithful, and its religious significance grew over the years especially with his frequent comparison to Christ but it is not an official part of his name.
While the date and location of Fidencio’s birth and his parents’ names are certain, the certainty of his childhood remains sketchy. For example, it is commonly reported in the popular Mexican literature and news media that Fidencio was the fourteenth of 25 children. But the claim this is not substantiated by the municipal records. Mexican authors, Castro and Cadena, suggest that he had five brothers and sisters: Buenaventura, Socorro, Joaquín, Fulgencia, and Antonia, this number is much more credible (Castro and Cadena, 2013).
It is also certain that his younger brother, Joaquín, spent most of his life at Fidencio’s side. Joaquín both documented and fabricated so-called facts about Fidencio’s life as it benefited him and the perpetuation of Fidencio’s myth especially after Fidencio’s death.
Fidencio attended elementary school in the municipio/county of Yuriria and his family claimed that he was “not well suited to education.” His literacy was marginal leaving school before the age of 10 in 1908. He never wrote more than a few lines in a note or letter but spent considerable time thumbing through an illustrated Holy Bible concentrating on the images and not the words. Much of Fidencio’s life would be based on imagery and not the written word. Fidencio like to look at pictures in books and fabricate rhymes and stories. As a very young child he liked to divine or guess future events adivinar.
In 1912, his childhood friend Enrique’s family moved to Morelia and Fidencio went with them as kitchen boy while in in 1913, Enrique signed up as a combatant in the revolution. The many stories about Fidencio’s life suggest that Fidencio and his brother, Joaquín contracted to work in the henequen/maguey fields of Yucatán around 1909. Fidencio would have been 11 years old. These are considered Fidencio’s missing years and there are many legends about his whereabouts, mostly not verifiable but a significant comparison with the Christ child at a similar age.
Don Enrique López de la Fuente, Fidencio’s lifelong friend however, says that he and Fidencio moved with Enrique’s family to Morelia in Michoacán and that he met Fidencio in 1904 when Fidencio was 6 and Enrique was 9 years old. His whereabouts during these early childhood years are uncertain. We are certain however, of a significant migration of Mexicans from Guanajuato to the fields of Yucatán during this time but not that the migration included Fidencio and Joaquín.
A world away from the traditional village life of early 20th century Guanajuato, the harsh existence of Yucatán would have been a traumatic experience for the young boys. Fidencio and Joaquín re-appeared in Iramuco and Yuriria Guanajuato approximately two years later in 1911. This would have been about the time that Enrique joined the División del Norte commanded by famed General Pancho Villa. It would make sense that Fidencio would return home as his friend Enrique left to fight in the Revolution.
Personal interviews with Fidencio’s cousins, in Yuriria, place the young Fidencio there in 1913, at the age of 15. A private conversation and interview was conducted at his cousin’s home in Iramuco in 1993. They described their famous relative’s disdain for school and that at this early age he showed numerous examples of unexplainable psychic ability that frightened many of his classmates, including the ability to divine future events, such as predicting an injury or death.
Direct testimony from his living relatives indicates that Fidencio never really learned to read and write, and he did not leave any significant writing in his own hand and nothing that would explain the origin of his mystical powers developed as an adult. His humble nature remained childlike throughout his life. Fidencio loved to ponder the color plates in his Bible interpreting the stories he would then relate his version of the Bible story to his school mates.
For example, in one playground game, the children would blindfold Fidencio who would entertain them by divining the answers to their questions and by locating spots on the schoolyard where items were hidden. This frightened many children. While Fidencio complied with their entertainment wishes, he felt uncomfortable doing so, feeling that his special gift had a higher purpose than a schoolyard magic show.
His cousins explained that Fidencio was an unusual child with a special and unexplainable gift but with certain physical defects that the other children could not understand. Fidencio had a cleft palate that made it difficult for him to speak clearly so most of the time he did not speak at all suggesting that he was mentally retarded. His silences made him seem intellectually slow but there is no evidence that he was mentally deficient. His timidity was due to his physical defects and special gift that kept him quiet. Even as an adult, Fidencio would cast his gaze to the ground and only very occasionally looked up. Of the hundreds of photographs taken of Fidencio in Espinazo in the 1920s and 1930s, he only rarely looks into the camera and probably only by accident being caught off-guard. Don Enrique describes Fidencio as having a light skin color not moreno/dark brown, with eyes of an unusual brownish color, and approximately five feet, 10 inches tall.
At adolescence, Fidencio did not develop secondary sexual characteristics like the other boys. His voice never deepened and he did not develop facial, axillary, or pubic hair. Lacking secondary sexual characteristics and because of his demure and humble personality and his soft-spoken nature he was nicknamed, “Niño/child” hence, El Niño Fidencio. It is often reported that this moniker was applied to him in Espinazo but that is not true. By the time he arrived in Espinazo, he was already nicknamed Niño. “Fidencio tenia un aspecto de hombre bueno. Su mirada es de infinita bondad y de dulzura.” Fidencio had the personality of a good and gentle man. His gaze was one of infinite goodness and sweetness. (Dalevuelta, 1928).
Fidencio was drawn to religious beliefs and faith early in his life and was frequently seen at the parish church in Iramuco. We know that he assisted the local priest, serving as an altar boy/Monaguillo and working around the church for a time. From an early age, Fidencio showed great fascination for religion and had a profound faith in and love for Roman Catholicism throughout his life.
Like Tatita Santo who came before him in the middle 19th century, the person and demeanor of El Niño Fidencio fulfilled the Mexican image of a redeemer. As if the archetypal messiah Anita Brenner describes, Tatita Santo, Fidencio along with La Virgin de Guadalupe were perfect images of faith for the humble superstitious people of Mexico. In Tatita and Fidencio, Mexico’s Messiah was always represented as a peasant and as poor as the people who sought deliverance at his hand.
Both Tatita Santo and Fidencio claimed power derived from God, through the soil and the native plants of the desert, and in both cases, their spiritual gift or don was said to have been granted to them by a direct revelation from Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The young Fidencio showed an early gift for healing when at the age of eight he performed his first known cure by setting his mother’s broken arm. He used small sticks and the healing root of the sacasil/night blooming cereus cactus, to set the bone and she recovered quickly. His mother asked, “Fidencio, where did you learn how to do this?” and he is said to have simply shrugged his shoulders indicating he did not know.
This would be the pattern of his gift throughout his life. Fidencio always knew exactly how to treat the malady that was before him, and he knew instinctively what to do in complex cases but never could explain how he knew. This could be because he was often described as being in a trance while healing and it is well known that trance mediums do not remember what happens while they are in the trance state.
At about age 13, and upon his supposed two-year sojourn in Yucatán, Fidencio worked as a kitchen boy in the household of the López de la Fuente family in Guanajuato, not far from Yuriria. Fidencio attended school with Enrique López de la Fuente and their association and friendship would last a lifetime. Enrique was approximately two years older than Fidencio.
It was appropriate that Fidencio did not have much of an inkling toward book learning because a boy of his social class, from a family of the earth, he was required to work to help support his family. It was uncommon in the early part of that century for a peasant boy to attend school beyond elementary/primaria. This is true today as well. Very few peasant children continue school by attending tele-secondarias in the rural areas of Mexico.
Fidencio was the son of a family of meager means and with many siblings; at a very early age he was adopted-out as a kitchen boy to the López de la Fuente family. The permanent care of a child in exchange for work in the household is a very common practice in Mexico and there were two examples of this practice in the Zavaleta family. Both the families of my parental grandparents had adopted children serving as lifelong servants and who stayed with them throughout life and were ostensibly members of the family raising my aunts and uncles as well as my father.
When Enrique moved northward to the deserts of Coahuila as a soldier, Fidencio is said to have already been in the North living with Antonia his sister and working as a miner. In fact, when the La Reforma mine caved in, Fidencio was credited with saving dozens of lives by predicting the disaster. Additionally, there was an accident at the American Smelting mine, San Juan de Baján in which Fidencio is also credited with saving many lives. As a result, the ASARCO Company asked him to stay on and serve as their “doctor.” Over the decades, Enrique and Fidencio enjoyed a relationship that is said to have both suffered and benefited from Fidencio’s physical peculiarities and unusual psychic gifts.
Espinazo, Nuevo Leon: 1915-1935 - “Hace Milagros El Niño Fidencio”
Fidencio moved northward into the state of Coahuila to work near his sister Antonia who lived with Lucio López de la Fuente on the Loma Sola ranch near Espinazo. Initially he worked on a ranch near Sabinas Hidalgo; once again, this is the same area in which Tatita Santo preformed miracle cures and predicted Fidencio’s appearance in the area some 75 years earlier (Spielberg and Zavaleta, 1997)
During his early days in the north, Fidencio worked briefly in the San Rafael mine near Espinazo, located on the main Mexican national railroad line that runs from the northern border with the U.S., down the middle of the country toward Saltillo, and continuing southward to San Luis Potosí, and eventually to Mexico City.
One legend claimed that at 15 years of age, Fidencio was enrolled in school in the municipio de Mina, Nuevo León, near Espinazo but this is highly unlikely. The tale continues that Fidencio was a very reserved young man not interested in ballgames like his classmates but always interested in religion. This story, most likely invented by brother Joaquín, was an attempt to upgrade his status in the eyes of those who came to see him in the 1920s and 1930s. Many people and especially journalists wanted to know how he knew what he did; where he acquired his knowledge refusing to accept that it could have been granted spiritually.
Fidencio was present in Espinazo in 1915 at age 17, and is believed to have never left there for the next 23 years until his death in 1938. At the time of his death, he was just weeks shy of his 40th birthday. Fidencio began to heal behind Enrique’s back since his job on the hacienda was to work in the kitchen. This is when Enrique first rejected and then realized Fidencio’s fantastic talents.
At the end of the revolution, and in the early years and decades of civil war that followed, Enrique López de la Fuente was severely wounded at the battle of Paredón and was moved the short distance to Espinazo to recuperate. Paredón is a railroad repair station just west of Espinazo on the main rail line.
A surviving veteran of the revolution, stories about Enrique López de la Fuente often cite that Fidencio accompanied his childhood friend to the north; however, Fidencio was most probably already in the north when Enrique arrived in Espinazo to convalesce. This story could have easily been an artifact of his well-known clairvoyance. That is to say that Fidencio “knew” that his lifelong friend would be arriving in Espinazo having been hired to supervise the hacienda.
Recovering from his wound and completing his service, Enrique was offered a position as foreman on the hacienda of Teodoro Von Wernich, a wealthy German living in Nuevo León and Coahuila. Von Wernich was well known in the north and was a personal friend of the Madero family and of Francisco Madero who would become Mexico’s first post-revolutionary president. The initial stage of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 lasted only a few years but continued in the form of continued civil strife for an additional 20 years.
During his initial years in Espinazo, Fidencio, who loved the desert, would wander off in to the desert on the outskirts of Espinazo examining the native plants of the countryside. It is said the he observed how the wild animals utilized certain plants and then replicated their use on the ranch. He knew how to stop bleeding, heal cuts and scrapes and ultimately treat internal aliments as well as assist with breached births of farm animals. Once again, this story is more than likely invented by his brother, but we don’t know for sure. However, Fidencio was known to spend a lot of time wandering on the desert where he also befriended the Native people.
Fidencio’s time on the Von Wernich hacienda at Espinazo began simply enough. Arriving at the hacienda, Fidencio attended to the kitchen, household chores, and the barnyard animals on the property. Fidencio’s healing ministry began slowly but when it was clear that Fidencio was spending more time healing than working at his assigned chores This became a thorny issue with Enrique who ran the hacienda like a military unit. In addition, since Enrique did not understand Fidencio’s gift of healing he was opposed to it as nonsense in the early days.
Espinazo, Nuevo León is located on the main railroad line, running north and south, through Mexico and begins at the Texas border. In the 1920s, it was geographically isolated due to its route through the largely impassable Coahuiltecan desert. However, the railroad line had been built along the ancient Indian trails and Spanish Camino Real winding through the mountain passes along the desert floor. There were no modern amenities and obviously, no medical doctors or organized religion in the region. Human populations also sparsely dotted the intermittent rancheria’s and their ailments were either not treated or were administered to by local folk-healers known as curanderas/os.
Fidencio was approximately 30 years of age when he gained national recognition as a healer in 1928. He worked as a miraculous curandero from 1920 to 1938, dying a few days before his 40th birthday. Humbly employed on the ranch as a goat herder and kitchen worker, Fidencio under normal circumstances, would have lived out his years, as a simple, nondescript peasant, but that was not his destiny. Shortly after Fidencio arrived in Espinazo he began to heal behind Enrique’s back and in 1926 his fantastic talents were finally realized. Fidencio did not believe in Spiritism, and he laughed at the mediums and spiritual centers.
While it is believed that Fidencio never left Espinazo; an American entry visa was granted to a person named Fidencio Constantino in the early 1920s, who traveled to San Antonio, Texas where he spent time briefly at a sanatorium and possibly visiting the members of the spiritist center of San Antonio. A U.S. Immigration visa exists and more than likely, he would have accompanied Teodoro Von Wernich who was well known in San Antonio, Texas. Quite possibly Fidencio’s abilities as a healer were being validated by the large spiritist community in San Antonio. It is simply impossible that the accomplished spiritist Von Wernich would not have taken great interest in Fidencio’s gifts. He would have wanted to display him at spiritist centers in San Antonio as well as in Mexico City. However, it is not believed that Fidencio ever visited Mexico City. The period between 1921 and 1926 is significant because it was during this five-year period that Fidencio’s healing gift began to manifest with greater frequency. At first, Fidencio’s healing activities were hardly noticed. A local woman faced with a breached delivery ,and most die with no assistance, called for Fidencio who stepped in; the baby was delivered normally, with both the life of the mother, and the newborn saved. In the local desert culture where there were no doctors, and his action was considered a miracle/milagro.
Another early story is told about the Zapata family from nearby Estación Luna. A fetus died in utero and the life of the mother was in great jeopardy when Fidencio was called to save her. Fidencio asked that a bottle be broken and that the sharpest piece of glass be selected. With the mother’s health fading fast, Fidencio performed a Caesarian section, extracting the dead fetus and saving the mother’s life. This amazing procedure was performed by a 20-year-old Fidencio before his public notoriety and was again considered a miracle. People remarked, “How did he know how to do these things?”
In the early days, Fidencio’s humble healing ability was challenged by a local curandera whose husband was also the local judge. After some wrangling with the authorities and accusations of practicing medicine without a license, Fidencio won the case and was left alone to treat all types of illnesses on the desert. Since he used no pre-packaged medicine/medicina patente, he could not be charged with practicing medicine without a license. The judge dismissed the case against Fidencio asking how a curandera could bring charges against someone for practicing medicine without a license when she was doing the same thing.
Eyewitness accounts during his life in Espinazo attest to the fact that Fidencio’s voice never deepened, retaining the soft but high-pitched voice of a prepubescent boy. Fidencio never developed any of the secondary sexual characteristics typical for his age. He had a droopy face; in Spanish, he was called a baboso/drooler with an ever-present open mouth, making him appear to be simpleminded. There is no evidence to suggest that Fidencio was not mentally sharp.
He was simply mild mannered and embarrassed by his cleft palate and mouthful of large teeth. Many commented about his distant stare and inability to focus on a person but we know that when he did this he was often in a full or semi-trance state communicating with his spirit benefactor while healing or determining a person’s ailment. He never revealed the name of his spirit benefactor and may not have known it himself.
In an interview with Cipriana “Panita” Zapata, leader of the independent Panistas, one of the two major factions of Fidencistas, she stated that Fidencio’s sexual immaturity is affirmed by her eyewitness confirmation that his male genitalia were childlike; he never experienced an adolescent growth spurt of his reproductive organs. (Panita Zapata, 1988).
He also had a cleft palate that impaired his speech and he would affix molded wax in the form of a cross in order to close the cleft and to speak more clearly. Therefore, it is not clear which version is true; however, Panita had high credibility. There were numerous other witnesses, both men and women who attended who bathed Fidencio.
Anthropologist June Macklin, who was the first American anthropologist to study El Niño Fidencio in the 1960s, suggests that his symptoms implied that he was a Klinefelter syndrome male, with an extra sex chromosome in the XXY configuration. This is a very plausible theory and while I was told about the existence of a lock of his hair that could be analyzed genetically, to date I have not been able to access it for analysis (Macklin, 1974).
Witnesses have never described Fidencio as a hermaphrodite, there is little doubt that he fits in the Native American category of a berdache or two-spirit person, a man-woman. Many Native American berdaches also served as the tribal medicine men/women or shaman. Fidencio could be easily classified as a shaman. There is a photograph of Fidencio being visited by a delegation of southwestern Native Americans. Southwestern Native Americans are known to honor the berdache or two-spirit persons as shaman and as having supernatural abilities including healing. It makes sense that a group would make the short trip from Arizona or New Mexico to visit him in that Nuevo Leon is a border State. Additionally, there are numerous photographs of Fidencio in poses which speak to aspects of his feminine/masculine nature. While this has to my knowledge, not been proposed before in any literature, I do it now. In my opinion, El Niño Fidencio was a two-spirit shaman healer, and his status was further complicated by the fact that he was most probably a Klinefelter syndrome XXY male.
During the course of his life, Fidencio had many acquaintances but very few friends and as one would expect there were many curiosity seekers, including numerous female socialites who offered proposals of marriage. Fidencio was never known to have had any romantic interest in women or men, for that matter.
He is best portrayed as asexual. The common assumption that Fidencio was homosexual is simply not substantiated by interviews with those who knew him or by photographs. As he grew into adolescence, he became more and more androgynous and fully dedicated to his healing mission. As is common with berdache males, he frequently wore loose-fitting clothing which could be interpreted as women’s clothing but we have no proof of that and it was never mentioned to me by those who knew him best. His common tunic was a representation of a Roman Catholic Saint. This is especially true in his representation in the female form of the Virgin de Guadalupe and in the male form of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
His adult appearance grew increasingly as a man-woman as described by numerous Native American tribes. As an adult, his inclination was toward the life of an ascetic, a religious life of prayer and contemplation, barefooted like Saint Francis of Assisi with his humble flowing tunic. He identified with the spiritual and not with gender (Dossey, 1993).
Further evidence of his simple nature can be seen from the fact that he always considered his friend Enrique to be his benefactor and call him father/papá. In Spanish, use of the loving terms mamá and papá are terms of respect and endearment more than actually references to a parent. Many who do not understand this word’s subtle meaning have misinterpreted the relationship that Fidencio and Enrique had.
As Fidencio developed notoriety and his fame spread throughout Mexico, some reported that his relationship with Enrique was seriously strained while the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana IFC, leadership and Enrique’s direct descendants say otherwise. They report that Fidencio enjoyed a positive relationship with Enrique throughout his life. Interestingly, almost all stories of Fidencio have at least two versions.
Enrique’s attitude toward Fidencio’s healing ministry might have changed as Enrique began to realize the economic boon that Fidencio represented. Enrique no longer viewed him simply as a kitchen boy. Fidencio was himself a valuable industry.
During the early 1920s, Fidencio was never very far from Enrique. The Niño’s initial fame was restricted to the rancherias around Espinazo, Nuevo León, and Espinazo, Coahuila. The State line runs right through the middle of Espinazo cutting it in half, one-half in each State.
Early in his career, Fidencio lived in the home of Herculana de Rosales and began to work openly, as a curandero/folk healer. One of his patients was Teodoro von Wernich, owner of the hacienda at Espinazo. Teodoro had an open sore, called a fistula, on his leg that refused to heal, a clear sign that Teodoro was diabetic.
Calling upon his supernaturally attained knowledge of the local medicinal flora/plantas medicinales, Fidencio prepared a plaster made from local native plants that quickly healed the chronic wound. Teodoro Von Wernich had consulted doctors throughout Mexico and the United States to no avail only to have his wound healed by his own kitchen boy with plants from his own hacienda.
After Fidencio treated him with his famous homemade pomada, the wound healed completely. The incredulous Von Wernich, who was a well-known spiritist in northern Mexico and Texas, suspected that spirit healers were being channeled through Fidencio. In fact, Fidencio, who was often in a trance when he healed, would only remark that God healed through him.
The publication or announcement of a miracle received is related to both ex-votos and milagros in Mexican Roman Catholicism and continues to be a common practice today. Rather than commission a small painting or ex-voto as is common among Roman Catholics, Von Wernich placed an advertisement in Mexico City’s most prestigious newspapers which appeared on February 22, 1928. His ad proclaimed the miraculous cure by El Niño Fidencio. The ad both announced the spirit healer and served to declare the arrival of a miraculous spirit medium on the desert and quite possibly the arrival of the Messiah in time for the new millennium. It was an invitation to all of Mexico and they responded, descending upon Espinazo by the thousands.
Throughout colonial Mexico, churches usually maintained special rooms for the recognition of miracles. A folk-artist sits outside of the major shrines in Mexico, off to the side, with a stack of blank tin sheets approximately eight inches square. Customers seeking the recognition of their miracle describe the scenario of their miracle such as a little girl who was run over by a car. The particular Saint who was asked for and responsible for her miraculous miracle is honored with the ex-voto for interceding with the deity on the girl’s behalf. The artist, usually an accomplished folk-artist, then faithfully recreates the scene on a tin plate. Some of these plates are highly prized and collectable works of art called ex-votos. The person who commissions the painting takes the completed work into the miracle room and deposits it there closing the circle and manda requiring a pilgrimage promise or promesa be performed. What I call miracle rooms are some of the most spectacular rooms in colonial Mexican churches such as the original Basílica de Guadalupe in Mexico City; the miracle room is behind the original church and has been converted into a religious art museum. It is in Roman Catholic Churches miracle rooms that Mexican religious faith is the most tangible, an on-going work in progress, never ending from one generation to the next. One other spectacular miracle room is in the cathedral of San Francisco at Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí (Spence, 1994).
A common and less expensive alternative to ex-votos are milagros, small tin or silver representations of people and things such as arms and legs, houses and cars, farm animals and much more. On a lower scale of affordability, the milagros are stamped out of tin or are plated and sometimes are pure silver. Milagros are purchased outside the shrine and then taken inside to be pinned to the garment of the saint whose intercession produced the miracle. In this way, the saint is propitiated, that is to say “repaid,” and pleased with his or her followers for their recognition. It was the Niño’s notoriety outside of Espinazo that, over the next decade, drew tens of thousands of needy and suffering people to the miracle worker on the desert. Fidencio had his own miracle room in his house in Espinazo; a smaller version remains there to this day.
For a notable period of nine years, 1920-1929, El Niño Fidencio became a household name in Mexico. Mexico’s top journalists and photographers arrived from Mexico City, Monterrey and Saltillo as well as from the United States to document the phenomenon. Newsreel reporters from Hollywood made the trek to Espinazo. The New York Times reported his miracles and from there the Niño’s story caught fire worldwide (New York Times, 1928).
By the mid-1920s, Mexico’s underclass had endured over four centuries of hardship. The country was rocked to the core by revolution, civil war, death, and destruction. At the same time, President Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928), influenced by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, brutally attempted to rid Mexico of the Roman Catholic Church. President Calles, in turn, endorsed the creation of the Mexican National Catholic Church MNCC, independent from the Roman Catholic Church and headquartered in Guanajuato. This is reminiscent of Henry the Eighth’s creation of the Church of England. The MNCC exists to this day with its headquarters in Guanajuato (Schneider, 1995).
It was during his early transition from kitchen boy to fabled spiritual healer that Fidencio is believed to have experienced ongoing consternation from his friend and ranch supervisor, Enrique López de la Fuente.
Fidencio’s notoriety spread among the people of this desolate region and he was frequently called upon for assistance. Fidencio’s healing and benevolent acts would become the initial division between Fidencio and Enrique who saw Fidencio as spending less and less time at his position on the hacienda as kitchen boy. Many times, Enrique demanded that Fidencio not practice his strange art and because of his disobedience, is said to have treated Fidencio with cruelty. This story is probably embellished by Joaquin.
Interestingly, Enrique’s descendants and now the leadership of the Church IFC claim otherwise, that there were never any issues between Enrique and Fidencio; however, many eyewitnesses claim that their relationship could be tense at times. While this is not known for sure there are eyewitness accounts making this claim. Nevertheless, at some point both Enrique and Teodoro realized the economic value they had in Fidencio. There has been no attempt to calculate the value of cash donations left for Fidencio but it clearly would be in the millions of contemporary dollars.
Today, the Espinazo rail line is a primary route linking the major industrial cities of the American Midwest with the Mexican heartland but it no longer serves as a passenger train service which was halted in the mid-1990s. Except for its pilgrimage location, Espinazo remains an insignificant outpost in the mountainous deserts of northern Mexico, but still part of a vital cargo rail-route that sees diesel powered trains pass through Espinazo several times a day, every day. There are no longer steam engines with a need for water. Passengers can no longer depend on the train for passage to Espinazo.
This semi-abandoned whistle-top springs to life several times each year, in March and October, for the celebration of the Niño’s fiestas intended to recall the peak of the Niño’s popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to the two primary fiestas, there are two other major fiestas, held during Semana Santa/Holy Week/Easter and during the Christmas season, las fiestas Navideñas.
During the years 1921 to 1925 (23-27 years of age), one of Fidencio’s principal jobs was to care for Enrique’s son, Ulises by a previous marriage. By combining house and kitchen work and caring for little Ulíses, Fidencio had a full-time job on the hacienda. There are many photographs of the young Ulíses, usually in Fidencio’s arms, on his lap, or by his side.
During the course of his lifetime, El Niño Fidencio had several supernatural experiences in the form of revelations from God the Father, Jesus Christ, as well as other celestial beings. On September 21, 1925, Fidencio had a life-changing religious experience, including a vision and spiritual message that would influence the rest of his short life. While meditating under the centrally located pirul tree (California pepper tree) in Espinazo, Fidencio had a vision of an old man with a flowing white beard, ostensibly God the Father, who announced his gift of healing and asked that he prepare for a life of suffering, hardship, but most importantly, service to humanity through healing and the working of miracles.
Fidencio was loathe to talk about his vision and healing gift, as he was continuously ridiculed and disbelieved. In the period 1925-1930, Fidencio built his reputation as thousands including the hacienda owner and spiritist Teodoro Von Wernich witnessed his healing ability and spirituality. The needy began to flood into Espinazo seeking cures for their assorted aliments many of which were fatal, that is, they arrived but never left, dying in Espinazo.
A second and very significant supernatural visitation occurred on August 15, 1927; Fidencio related the story to his followers: “At three o’clock in the morning at the sacred little tree, I was praying to the celestial father contemplating the bitterness and suffering that my life had been and all that I had suffered for the love of God and concern that his love reach humanity. On this holy day, my Celestial Father ordered me to begin the preparations for a revelation at the Cerro de la Campana on March 19, 1928 ( Saint Joseph’s Day) because the Divine Providence prepared me to have a large gathering to see if in this multitude of hearts could understand that the author of peace has been born that day, March 19, 1928. The Divine Providence gathered the hearts of man but no one understood that the son of justice had arrived in the form of a divine spirit in the body of Fidencio Constantino” (Fidencio’s, Sagrada Escrituras, 2013).
This mystical event played a significant role in the life of Fidencio since it licensed him to share his gift of healing with the masses of needy and to begin his Earthly mission that was the beginning of a religious commune called La Nueva Jerusalén (long before the cult by a similar name was formed in Michoacán). From this time forward, Fidencio adopted the persona of a desert holy man living the life of an ascetic.
The Niño began to develop an elaborate system of rituals that were communicated to him while he was in trance and to deliver Roman Catholic sacraments. He would heal with water left outside overnight, in which gold and assorted jewels had been submerged. The jewels were believed to enhance the water’s curative powers not unlike today’s New Age beliefs. He would make special soaps and salves/pomadas, with lard, and he used a variety of fruits like bananas, lemons, tomatoes, and apples.
José María Villarreal in his study of the Niño Fidencio encountered long time Fidencista Dón Roberto of Pearsall, Texas, who listed the specific instructions and ingredients of the Niño’s famous pomada/salve that reportedly healed President Calles. The following medicinal plants were mixed by Fidencio to créate his famous pomada. Rromero, ruda, pata de Vaca, yerba de la cruz, pirul, gobernadora, cenizo, and ocalito. Then polvo de la vibora was added along with, jabón blanco (Ivory soap™) jabón sote and jabón color de rosa, agua mineral, aceites de mineral, manteca, jugo de limon, and a little bit of mud/soquete. Villarreal provides us with a rare glimpse at the ingredients in the Niño’s pomada (Villarreal, 2015).
Fidencio rarely varied from his humble appearance and deeds. However, there are photographs of Fidencio wearing suits, neckties, watches, rings and elaborate fur coats but it is believed that these unusual photographs were all posed by Enrique for the media. He rejected money and all material things that were offered to him. He never allowed witchcraft/brujería to be practiced in Espinazo, and he always declared that he healed in the name of God. The Niño did, however enjoy his personally produced fiestas and allegorical plays in which he and his corps of performers would don costumes representing biblical characters. For example, they reenacted the then popular Hollywood film, “The Wizard of Oz,” (Baum, 1939).
Fidencio would punish unruly persons by locking them inside a pen with his pet mountain lion, Concha. Drinking was not allowed in Espinazo. The lion never harmed anyone because it was toothless and clawless. However, it scared the mute into speaking. Misbehaving children were disciplined in this manner as well.
Fidencio had a corps of trusted male and female followers who were his principal helpers, or guardias. They served as his assistants when he was healing and throughout all of his operations and prepared meals for many who attended as well as those assisting with the mentally ill and lepers.
“Fidencio Guardó en Secréto el Padecimiento de Calles”
By all accounts, Fidencio arrived in Espinazo, Nuevo León in 1915 and the people who knew him lived to the 1980s some 50 years after his death confirmed the facts related here.
The six or eight people living in the 1980s provided differing accounts of his physical appearance and demeanor. Some say that Fidencio was tall and slender becoming heavier in his late thirties, this accounts for the variations in descriptions people have. In fact, in the early days we know from his photographs that he had a slight stature and was thin in the early years. Don Enrique who would know exactly was quoted in a Mexican newspaper saying that Fidencio was 1.8 meters or 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighed a slender 140 pounds in his early years.
The life-size crucified Christ on the Cross in the tomb room in Espinazo is said to have been modeled exactly after his actual bodily dimensions. It reflects a man of approximately five-feet, ten inches tall, and approximately 170 pounds. The Niño gained weight in his last decade of life so it is probable that people would describe him in different ways, the young Fidencio and the middle-aged Fidencio.
Interestingly credible eyewitnesses describe the color of his eyes as ranging from dark to light. In all probability, those who describe his eye color as light brown to green are correct. There is no evidence that he had lighter eye color such as blue. It should be noted that wishful thinking would have Fidencio represented as Eurocentric, light complected with light eyes reflecting a European typology, sort of like the common representation of Jesus as blue-eyed with blonde hair and definitely not Semitic looking or native American.
In describing the Niño Fidencio to me in an interview, Madre Ciprianita, “Panita” said that normally his skin color was a light brown but certainly not light skinned or güero. Panita said that one of the unusual characteristics of the Niño was that he was able to change his facial characteristics including his skin and eye color at will. At a minimum, his skin color was considered unique from the perspective of the local people of Espinazo (Cipriana, Zapata, 1989).
The Niño’s smile revealed a mouthful of large teeth and he is known to have had a cleft palate, making it difficult for him close his mouth or to speak without strange pronunciation. He attempted to correct this congenital condition by placing a plug of wax in the shape of a cross on his palate. Whatever condition the Niño had, did not allow his body to produce secondary sexual characteristics hence the affectionate moniker Niño stayed with him throughout his life.
He did not have facial hair, his voice never deepened and his genitalia were childlike. The condition also never allowed the fontanelle on the top of his head to mature or close much like an adult. He also had hearing problems saying that with his left ear he could only hear noise and conversations that were nearby while he could hear at a distance with his right ear.
His physical afflictions bothered him to the point where he would often be found in tears during moments of isolation saying that he wanted to die. Numerous accounts of people who worked closely with him describe the Niño as suffering from depression, as a moody person and rarely happy. This is second hand information, not confirmed by my 50 years of investigation; however, anthropologist June Macklin suggests that the Niño Fidencio suffered from depression and a sense of helplessness, while not medically diagnosed.
He did have several additional characteristics which point to a trance-induced spirit possession similar to many other well-known psychic healers. When in trance he could speak in tongues, believed to be a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit or some other spirit. Finally, he never studied music, yet he is reported to have been able to play the piano and the organ.
A half century after his death in the 1980s, there were several persons still living in Espinazo who were interviewed both by me as well as by filmmaker Juan Farré. They included, Fabiola López de la Fuente; Ciprianita Zapata de Robles; Gumercindo Juárez and her husband; Alejandro Carrera; Rosita Niño; Natalia Hernández and Natalia Ramos who cared for the Niño’s songbirds. The Niño presided at Natalia’s marriage. There were neither civil nor religious authorities available in Espinazo. Her father brought Natalia to Espinazo as a very young girl. The Niño told him to “leave her here and return to your home because tomorrow you will die” and it happened as the Niño predicted. When interviewed, Natalia, a very elderly woman, proudly displayed her photograph of the Niño Fidencio presiding at her wedding.
Fidencio’s Healing Years: 1925-1935 - “Los Consultorios Médicos de Saltillo Estuvieron a un Paso de Quiebra”
The period between 1925 and 1935 is significant in that it was during this period that Fidencio’s healing gift manifested with the greatest frequency, reaching his peak in popularity and then waning. His life changed from the frenetic to a more organized settled life of meditation, prayer and solace of a holy man.
As Fidencio approached his 27th birthday in 1925, hundreds and then thousands of people who came to Espinazo loved to cry out, “milagro, milagro” when they saw anything that looked like an improbable cure such as helping the mute speak. In reality, the loss of speech is often a psychological condition that can be cured by fright and so his toothless mountain lion Concha and his swing/el columpio were effectively used for this purpose.
There were many people with severe cases of leprosy as well as the insane who came to Espinazo and the Niño prepared a location to house them several hundred yards away from his home called La Dicha de la Santa Cruz. This location would become an important gathering place for Panita’s followers during fiestas in the years after his death. It is said that the buzzards would sit patiently on the side of La Dicha waiting for people to die, which was a daily occurrence.
The Niño also had a yegua, or female horse named Maravilla, she was his favorite animal, and several photographs were taken of him astride his mare. Lore says that the horse was poisoned which so upset the Niño that he cooked her and served her to the people to eat. The Niño’s horse would go from door to door in Espinazo collecting alms for the purchase and preparation of food. Every day hundreds of people would be fed with food prepared by the Niño’s workers. The Niño also had a favorite dog he named Kaiser.
There are a number of curious stories that are told about the relationship between the Niño and his benefactor, Enrique. Stories told by Fabiola and her group state that the relationship between the Niño and Enrique was positive and supportive, while Panita’s followers talk about how Enrique physically punished the Niño.
One day it is said that Enrique drew his pistol in a rage declaring that he was going to shoot the Niño but his arm froze and he could not lower it until the Niño removed the pistol from his hand allowing him to lower his arm. However, Fabiolistas say that in fact, the accurate story was of an assassin who came to murder Enrique and the Niño, who were saved by magically freezing the assassin’s arm with his gun raised.
During his primary healing years, 1925-1935, there were hundreds of photographs taken of the Niño; he loved to be photographed. He constantly referred to people in a friendly if not loving manner calling them madrinita or padrinito, terms of ritual kinship and compadrazgo and of love. There was always an air of the religious in Espinazo with the Niño Fidencio as the primary charismatic figure.
The Niño constantly had people preparing food, day and night and he loved to send people, especially recent arrivals to Espinazo, who had been on the road for days, to go the kitchen to get something to eat. The Niño himself rarely ate and when he did, he ate eggs with beans or something equally simple. Since the Niño rarely slept working around the clock, his assistants would typically hand him a glass of brandy produced in copious amounts on the hacienda and probably with a very high alcohol content.
From 1925-1930, the balance of power began to shift as the well-known spiritist Teodoro Von Wernich witnessed Fidencio’s healing ability and spirituality, creating a greater gulf between the Niño and Enrique, who were lifelong friends. At this same time, the needy began to flood into Espinazo seeking cures for their assorted aliments. As the crush of people increased in Espinazo, a tremendous amount of money was received as well. Since there was never any system of accounting, it is hard to say how the money was used or where the great riches went.
At the peak of activity in the late 1920s, there was a large, complicated, and expensive construction of the Niños house and adjacent buildings taking place in Espinazo. The construction of the Niño’s Casa Grande cost a huge amounts of pesos. Some sort of organizational management system had to have been implemented in Espinazo although only the obvious is known. Meals were prepared and the hospital was cleaned and maintained daily. Nevertheless, no accounting system is known to have existed for the upkeep of these facilities. The Niño himself never paid attention to the great wealth he had amassed, and huge quantities of gold coins were distributed to the poor in Espinazo. Simple but important questions like these cannot be answered since no records were kept and there are no survivors today who might have witnessed the construction.
The people’s fascination with Fidencio attracted many thousands of pesos and dollars to the curious onlookers to the small community. Fidencio never showed any interest in the vast wealth accumulated there. During the peak years, tens of thousands of gold coins and other currency were received but not accounted for. Major sums of money were invested in the development of infrastructure and some money was distributed by Fidencio himself to the crowds; comprised mostly of desperate and destitute people.
First hundreds and then thousands of people waited to see Fidencio who was known to work days and nights on end without sleep, rest, or food. Sometimes he was so overwhelmed with work he would wander off into the desert around Espinazo to rest and meditate, often receiving spiritual communications.
Legend says that he had no handbooks or guides to desert plants but he was a keen observer of mammals, birds, and reptiles of the desert, watching, learning, and experimenting with what they ate. He then replicated their use on the ranch with his patients, but we do not know that for sure, but it is probably true. He knew how to abate bleeding and heal cuts and scrapes and finally to cure internal aliments and to assist in the difficult births of the people and household animals. Most certainly, he must have learned from the many followers who were natives of the area. Every native family has its own remedios caseros or home remedies and many have been proven very effective (Zavaleta, 2012).
The Mexican thaumaturgo, or miracle worker, was attributed all manner of miraculous cures and he came to be considered the El Cristo de Espinazo/The Christ of Espinazo. It is documented that restoring sight to the blind and speech to the mute were commonplace for him. He dealt with all manner of psychological and emotional problems and for Fidencio cure of the insane was said to have been child’s play.
The modes of transportation to Espinazo were flooded with people from Mexico and the United States; bringing their sick loved ones to Espinazo in hope of a cure. By 1928, so many people arrived in Espinazo that a makeshift village of jacales, thatched huts, sprang up to house people who sometimes waited for months to be seen. Many were so ill that they never left Espinazo and are buried there. Espinazo had no developed infrastructure, no roads, no drainage, no sanitary sewer, and no water and no electricity. Espinazo had neither lodging nor restaurants. The small ejido might have been able to accommodate a few hundred but certainly not thousands of people. Fidencio adhered to a simple credo: “Those who suffer have the Grace of God. By suffering, health is reached, and it is necessary that this should be so because those who desire to be well should be strengthened by sorrows and pain” (Fidencio, 1928).
Oblivious to his celebrity, and like Tatita before him, Fidencio quickly became a living folk-Saint. After 1935, as the media interest in Fidencio began to wane, he showed no more interest in his lack of media attention than he had in the novelty of celebrity of the early years. Fidencio, after all, often repeated that his mission on earth was not to be famous or rich, but simply to ease the pain and the suffering of others (Zavaleta, 1998).
Although Fidencio never charged for his cures, thousands of gifts were left for him in Espinazo including enormous amounts of cash. Early on he distributed all of the gifts and money he received to the needy but as a management system was put in place the funds were redirected for important and costly construction projects and to offset the operating costs of his hospital facility. As far as we know, he never set aside money for himself.
As the decades of the 20s and the 30s, wore on and as more and more people burdened Fidencio, it became impossible for him to attend to them individually. This resulted in huge throngs of seriously sick and often, contagious people in Espinazo and around him at all times. It is said that he began to heal lepers, persons sickened with tuberculosis and the insane, simply by glaring at them.
Due to his inability to write, Fidencio did not keep notes on his caseload nor did he leave writing in his own hand that would explain his unique powers or religious beliefs. His inner circle of followers, however, would record in writing many of his spiritual messages spoken while in trance. Today, that collection of spiritual messages is known as the Niño’s Sagradas Escrituras/the Niño’s Holy Scriptures and is a treasure trove explaining the basis for his cult following at Espinazo now called New Jerusalem/La Nueva Jersusalén (Zavaleta, 2013). It was only at the peak of his celebrity that Enrique began to accept Fidencio’s talent and allowed him to heal full-time, and it was at this time that Enrique and Teodoro became Fidencio’s quasi-business managers.
As the Mexican Revolution protracted into many years of civil war in a quest for power, Mexico became more and more socialistic and the successive presidents flirted with full-blown socialism and even communism (Quirk, 1973)..
The apex of his fame came in the years 1925 to 1932. El Niño Fidencio became a de-facto business with a single asset: Fidencio himself. With so many thousands of people waiting to see him, his time had to be managed; he needed dozens of volunteer helpers to assist in every aspect of the operation/business.
At the time of his death in 1938, he had a large number of permanent workers, advisers and confidants as well as a physical infrastructure; a formidable building called La Casa Grande, in place to this day, and controlled by the heirs of Enrique López de la Fuente. By 1928, Espinazo’s population had ballooned to approximately 25,000 semi-permanent residents.
The medical community continued to cautiously spy on his work but did not bring charges against him in the early days. Later in his ministry, Fidencio’s most powerful foe was the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterrey, which detested him, for what they felt was the desecration of the Holy Sacraments. The Roman Catholic began to plot against him.
Fidencio would always say that he was the intermediary to God. It got to the point where there were so many people waiting to be seen, that he could not see them on a one-to-one basis and that is when he began to heal in large groups, in mass healing events.
For example, he prayed and cured at the Cerro de la Campana and conducted mass healings for 20,000 people: “Las personas se ponían sábanas encima y él caminaba y los pisaba y los curaba porque eran muchos o bien, les aventaba naranjas y lo que tenía a la mano y quedaban sanados.” “The people would place bed sheets over them and he would walk and roll over them, he would throw oranges at the crowd and anything that was in his hand would heal” (America Lopez de la Fuente, 1993).
With time, and as word-of-mouth accounts drifted into the regional newspapers, Espinazo began to fill with people seeking help with every sort of health problems. Very often, their ailments were life threatening, so many never left Espinazo. Thus, the cemetery slowly but surely filled with the dead and a second cemetery was needed.
First Newspaper Accounts: 1928 - “Observaciones de Jacobo Dalevuelta Sobre el Famoso Niño Taumaturgo”
Throughout 1928 and 1929, weekly articles, supported by dozens of eyewitness testimonies, touted Fidencio’s healing abilities. News of El Niño Fidencio spread rapidly; soon his fame extended throughout Mexico, the United States and the world. El Universal, one of the foremost Mexican newspapers and among the first to confer national exposure on the phenomenon in Espinazo, sent its top reporter Jacobo Dalevuelta and ace photographer Augustín Casasola for a firsthand look in February 1928. The paper reported that: “The demented, the paralyzed, and the leprous, a thousand strong, now formed a community of makeshift huts and tents near the home of Fidencio and that more than a hundred small wooden huts had been rapidly erected to rent to the growing crowd of miracle seekers.” (El Universal, 1928). According to articles in El Universal, El Niño Fidencio worked near a sacred tree, and the ill gathered around him for public-healing sessions that lasted day and night for several days at a time. This scene eventually became a familiar trademark known as the Healing Circle/El Círculo de Curación.
El Universal described Fidencio as a “young man of few words, muscular with a sort of yellowish color and very simply dressed” (El Universal, 1928). According to these and subsequent reports, day after day and year after year, the thousands of people who formed the Niño’s healing circle witnessed him barefooted and dressed in a simple tunic.
His room in the Casa Grande consisted simply of a crude wooden bed, a table, and a chair. According to reports, he used these infrequently, preferring to sit or sleep on the floor or on the ground. He did not eat or drink with regularity and consumed mostly liquids. In spite of these abstemious routines, the Niño worked for days and nights without interruption, seemingly unaffected by fatigue or hunger.
Significantly, from the earliest days of his fame as a healer, El Niño Fidencio was a very public figure. He performed his cures in open air in the midst of thousands of onlookers, and always allowed photographs but he did not like to give interviews so they are rare.
During one of the public-healing sessions described above, the Niño turned to the reporter Dalevuelta stating: “Open your eyes, go wherever you want, tell the people what you have seen, and be sure to tell the truth.” To the photographer, Casasola, the Niño quipped: “Take pictures of whatever you like, but be sure to give me copies, because if you don’t, none of them will come out.” Because of this openness, hundreds of photographs exist today, documenting his life and work between 1925 until his death in 1938. Many of his followers routinely post photographs of Fidencio and occasionally one that had been unknown will appear in the media. (Casasola, 1928).
With the Mexican national press focused on El Niño Fidencio, a massive response was predictable. In the early months of 1928, the needy, the sickly, the terminally ill, people from every walk of life and social class began converging on the little desert town of Espinazo, a place characterized both then and now by its remoteness and harsh environs. The precious little water that existed in Espinazo could never support more than a few extended families in eking out a subsistence living.
For the majority of the year, the town baked in an unrelenting heat; when there was not a killing heat, a desert chill descended upon the landscape and its inhabitants. Today, in the early 21st century, comfort in Espinazo is difficult and survival requires careful preparation, modern equipment, and only brief visits.
As hundreds and subsequently thousands of sickly and dying people arrived in Espinazo this desolate and unforgiving spot became known as the Camp of Pain/El Campo del Dolor, where the hopeful and desperate created their own accommodations by forming impromptu shacks; made by stacking the brush of thorny desert plants into the shapes of huts and lean-tos.
The people in the crowds suffered from every type of malady both physical and mental including: insanity, paralysis, cancer, leprosy, tuberculosis (consumption) and syphilis. There were so many people seeking the Niño’s assistance that the sick had to wait for weeks, or in some cases months, to be seen and thus, became semi-permanent residents of Espinazo.
Fidencio reached his greatest years of fame and activity between 1927 and 1935. During this time, Espinazo was converted from a tiny desert village to the Mecca de Dolor/Mecca of Pain and this was when the greatest number of people came to see him. We can only imagine what the massive infrastructure needed to maintain the place must have been like. However poor, there was always the din of music in the background. Bands of musicians strolled through the dusty streets of Espinazo singing, “Fidencio, the day that you were born, the nightingales sang, because you were chosen by God. You are a doctor among doctors.”
Even the story of his election by God and the revelation of his gift were recorded in song and converted into popular corridos. The Excelsior reported the popular lyric that was sung throughout Mexico. It said that one day at high noon, the Niño Fidencio knelt beneath the pirul tree crying until his heart ached and that is when he heard the voice of God. The voice said, “Fidencio don’t cry because very soon you will receive the gift that the Heavenly Father has given you, and you will become the doctor of doctors; and all of the illnesses that befall man. You will cure with plants from the countryside that you like to prepare and that will be the medicine for all the ailments of man” (Excelsior, 1928).
Throughout 1928, and for several years afterward, the little desert train-stop of Espinazo became the single most important railroad destination in Mexico. During this time, more people bought train tickets to Espinazo than to any other destination in Mexico. This tiny desert village, which previously had no need for mail service, was forced to establish a post office processing approximately 25 to 30 thousand letters during a two year period arriving for the thousands of persons who had come to Espinazo in search of a cure.
Similarly, Telégrafos Nacionales was forced to establish an office in Espinazo; Fidencio himself was the first person to utilize the telegraph services, sending a thank you note to the national office. During 1928, newspapers reported that shipments of the Niño’s herbal medicine were sent to Europe, and that several wealthy and famous Americans invited the Niño to visit Hollywood and New York as their guest. The Niño often stated that he would never leave Espinazo and as far as we know, he never did. Although he may have made one trip to San Antonio, Texas. He did not accept money or gifts, stating that his mission on Earth was to “serve mankind and not to become wealthy.”
Fidencio’s fame continued to grow throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. Never before had one of Mexico’s hundreds of curanderos reached this level of popularity. Day after day, the press followed the story printing headlines.
A French physician in Mexico spoke in favor of the Niño Fidencio in the Mexico City press, stating that it would be medical folly to “negate in the name of science the cures of the spiritual forces of the world.” He stated that, “Because all of life is based upon illusion or suggestion, we doctors have not tried to completely understand the nature of our successes. Many things that happen in medicine are completely unexplainable. If the truth be known, many have died because of our autosuggestion and inability to treat an illness.”(El Universal, 1928)
“The peasant poets of Espinazo sang of Fidencio, and trumpeted the headlines.” In retrospect, it is obvious what was happening; all of the essential elements for the establishment of folk-Sainthood status and a fully operating quasi-religious cult began to take shape in Espinazo.
Lyrics of hope in search of relief and tales of the Niño’s philanthropy became mythical as stories about cures and miracles performed were constantly told and retold. The tales of miraculous cures and healings were transformed into folk-songs/corridos and religious Hymns/Alabanza were sung by the faithful. Many of those were converted into the alabanzas that are still sung by Fidencista groups today.
These popular songs sung by common people became the voice of the Niño’s successes and the way in which the faithful expressed they’re thanks to the Niño and to God for their cures. Newspaper accounts contained many case histories of Fidencio’s miraculous cures. One famous case, retold many times, involved a young blind boy, the son of a Spanish immigrant. The boy, age twelve, had suffered a firecracker accident that caused his sight to diminish until he was completely blind. The doctors in his hometown had given him no hope of recovery, and after the tales of the miraculous Niño filtered throughout Mexico, the child’s parents decided to take him to Espinazo, an arduous journey that took them a week to complete. The family lived in a brush shack constructed by using their clothing to cover the many openings. Weeks passed as they patiently waited to see the Niño.
When the day finally came for Fidencio to see their son, the Niño did not allow the mother to explain the cause of the boy’s blindness, “It is not necessary that you explain it to me,” he said, a technique very reminiscent of famous Texas curandero, Don Pedrito Jaramillo. Asking them to be patient, the Niño placed his fingers on the boy’s eyes, massaging them for a few minutes. Then after several more minutes, Fidencio lifted his eyes to the heavens in an ecstatic trance state as if he were having a vision. When some time had passed, the Niño lowered his head, continued to massage the boy’s eyes, said finally: “Ya estás curado. You’re healed; bring me a handkerchief to cover his eyes and be sure not to remove it until the early morning light.” The family returned to their shack. Early the next morning, as the day was breaking and as the mother carefully removed her son’s bandage, the boy exclaimed, “Ya veo/I can see.”
This documented case of restored sight was later judged to be an extreme case of autosuggestion, which it may very well have been. What was more important, that the boy see or the Niño’s fame. While the naysayers were busy trying to find explanations for the Niño’s cures, the fact is that the people he cured or healed would have been left unattended if not for his service. This famous case and many others like it accounted for the Niño’s rapidly growing fame, popularity, and ensuing frenzy among his followers.
Despite his skepticism, a medical doctor attended a Fidencista fiesta because he had heard his patients speak of Fidencio’s curative powers: “I personally went to see what I have heard. When I came here there was coherence in what I heard with what I saw, the doctor described.” The surgeon specialized in alternative therapies and after two years of study became a faithful Fidencista, who later said: “He is supported in interventions with my patients. Fidencio supports me as a doctor, and his energy is present and helps me by his aura when I am treating my patients.”
Another interesting case typified the cures for which El Niño Fidencio was renowned. A woman reported that her husband, who suffered from chronic dyspepsia, had consulted many doctors and had eventually undergone surgery, which was not successful. His condition was so extreme, even the mere smell of food made him sick and he was expected to die. With no hope left, the couple decided to go to Espinazo. The Niño came into their tent and without asking any questions about the man’s illness immediately began to massage his stomach.
Fidencio frequently prescribed fruit as a medicine, and as he departed, he left a large bunch of bananas for the patient to eat. The wife remarked that her husband could not eat them because he was allergic to all fruit. However, feeling a little better, the patient asked for a small piece of banana and to his wife’s great surprise asked for more. After two hours, he had eaten four bananas and vomited violently. Fidencio returned the next day and continued to massage the patient’s stomach with a medicinal pomada/medicinal paste made from fruit, soap, and medicinal plants. By the second day, the man had improved remarkably, and by the fourth, was able to walk for the first time in many months.
Among the early curiosity seekers was a medical doctor from Torreón, who arrived in Espinazo, with paralysis. Fidencio cured him after only one week of treatments; but while in Espinazo, the doctor witnessed many cures, which he later reported, including a notable cure of a young man from Monterrey who had reportedly gone insane. The doctors declared the boy’s insanity incurable, so his father brought him to El Niño, who immediately began to extract the young man’s teeth. Following this procedure, the youth rapidly regained his sanity. The doctors from Torreón believed the young man to be insane due to an infection in his teeth that had penetrated his brain.
The young man, ever indebted for the cure, stayed in Espinazo to work on the Niño’s staff. This was a familiar pattern for the healed to volunteer their services to Fidencio’s work in Espinazo. Some stayed there for the rest of their lives and I was able to interview several of them in the 1980s, some 50 years after the death of the Niño.
The newspaper reports that emanated from Espinazo in the early months of 1928 carried the reputation of El Niño Fidencio beyond Mexico and into the world at large. The Spanish-language newspaper, La Prensa, in San Antonio, Texas, as well as the premier North-American daily The New York Times, reprinted stories that eventually were published in other Spanish speaking countries including in Central and South America, Cuba and Spain. In a remarkably short time, El Niño Fidencio had become the talk of the world and the incurable from around the world travelled to Espinazo to see him(The New York Times, 1928).
From an early age, a woman suffered from chronic body pain, but that all ended when her husband took her to see one of the Niño’s cajitas/trance mediums; her ailments vanished and for 44 years, she has believed in Fidencio. While there is no exact date of when this supposedly occurred, this is clearly one of the earliest examples of a materia other than the Niño channeling the spirit of the Niño while he was living. An act common today, the channeler is called a little spirit box or cajita or more commonly a materia. “Fidencio is the one who healed me and I said to the Niño, ‘I am willing to be a servant of God and of your spirit and to heal all the people that you place before me.’”
Many critically ill people were unexplainably and miraculously healed in Espinazo during the time of the Niño Fidencio. There are many testimonies of people who were healed, as well as descriptions showing dozens of photos and gratitude displayed by ex-votos on the walls of the Niño’s tomb. The Mexico City press reported, “The festive songs were sung of the curandero in Espinazo and across the country and in all of the little towns and public places.”
Day and night, in the face of adversity, Fidencio continued to console the suffering; working tirelessly. It was his mission. From all over Mexico thousands came to Espinazo, accepted his medicine, and listened to his gentle words of spiritual healing, thousands returned to their homes without the Niño ever knowing their names.
The journalists remarked that thousands had been healed by simply looking upon the face of El Niño Fidencio. If the press played a role in spreading the news of the enigmatic Niño’s cures, it may have played an even larger role in perpetuating his myth.
El Niño Fidencio possessed special powers since his childhood, particularly clairvoyance. But even more interesting was the fact that he was reportedly consubstantial, in that, he had the ability to appear in multiple places simultaneously while healing. There have been many other reports of the Niño’s ability of bilocation that is to be present in more than one place at a time, a consubstantial ability similar to Christ. Being at more than place at a time is popularly called the doppelganger effect. The Niño Fidencio was well known for his ability to appear in more than one place simultaneously.
According to reports, when a terminally ill person approached, Fidencio would remark to the crowd, “A person is coming that is wasting his time; tell him to go off and prepare for his death; I can’t help him except to pray for him.” This interesting psychic technique was utilized by the famous Texas curandero Don Pedrito Jaramillo in the decade before Fidencio. The Niño treated many people with nervous disorders. Fidencio would work 30-40 hours straight and then sleep. Next to his bedroom Fidencio had up to 40 birdcages with songbirds. It is said that popular songs and songbirds were his weakness (Hudson, 1951). There was usually someone around to play guitar and sing but when no one was around Fidencio himself would sing “la hija del penal.”
The newspapers reported the story of a young landowner from San Luis, Jorge Meade Elorduy, who had seen all the best doctors for his debilitating pain. Desperate for relief Jorge decided to go to Espinazo. He had trouble reaching Fidencio because the crowd was enormous, but when he finally did, Fidencio said, “I have to take all of your infected teeth out. Jorge replied, do as you will.” One by one, Fidencio extracted his teeth with a pair of common mechanic’s pliers/pinsas. One of the molars had an exceptionally long root and one assistant held his head while another covered his eyes and without an anesthetic, the Fidencio began to extract his teeth.
The unbelievable truth, the newspaper reports, is that by his side Fidencio had a complete modern set of dental equipment that had been gifted to him but he preferred the pliers, “Unas burdas y mohosas pinzas de automovil.” The patient felt no pain and there was little bleeding. On the first try he removed 12 teeth and the patient felt great relief and then several days later Fidencio removed the remaining teeth. Meade is said to have had rheumatism and kidney problems caused by the infection in his teeth that were abated. Fidencio would not accept payment or even a gift from Meade who was completely cured.
In another case, a rich American had a bone stuck in his throat that American doctors were not able to remove, and Fidencio easily removed it without surgery. The American was so grateful that he left his very expensive automobile in Espinazo for Fidencio who would not accept it saying he had no use for it and to please remove it from Espinazo.
In another story, a merchant, appreciative for his cure, took Fidencio a dozen fine linen shirts from his store in Mexico City but Fidencio promptly gave them away. When the merchant asked him why he had done that he simply said, “I gave them to people who had no shirt. And besides if you truly gave them to me then I have the right to do whatever I want with them.” The merchant responded positively.
Antonio Biar, a conductor for the San Luis Ferrocarriles Nacionales, one day watched Fidencio prepare his pomada in a boiling cauldron which had been cooking all night. Fidencio approached the cauldron and with his hands and arms uncovered submerged them in the boiling liquid. Fidencio calmly mixed the preparation with his hands and when he was satisfied with its consistency, he removed his hands and arms without a burn or injury. Then the railroad man witnessed Fidencio order one of his helpers to continue to mix the concoction with his hands and he was not burned either. The disbelieving railroad man carefully submerged one of his fingers and pulled out quickly yelling he had a major burn. No one could understand how Fidencio had developed or received his powers and how he could transfer his miraculous ability to others.
In Mexico, hypnotism and psychotherapy were very popular and emerging medical techniques in the early 20th century. Drs. Guillermo Para and Maximus Neumayer assured the medical community in Mexico City that Fidencio’s cures were not miracles at all and could be attributed to the new science of hypnotism and psychotherapy. The doctors said that this was obvious since all of the people Fidencio treated had serious nervous or psychological problems. The investigating doctors declared that Fidencio was practicing the new European import of psychotherapy but could not explain where or how he learned it. In numerous cases of psychic healing throughout the world, healers are known to have channeled deceased medical doctors and shaman. “Could this have been the case with Fidencio? The doctors claimed.” “Son casos de autosugestión, subrayaron, y la propia Fe del enfermo es el principal factor que entra en juego cuando el paciente es sugestionable y su mal se origina en problemas nerviosos.” These are cases of autosuggestion underlined by the faith of the afflicted. This is the principal factor when the patient is suggestable and his illness has a nervous origin. Dr. Parra claimed that there was nothing miraculous about Fidencio’s cures; they were simple examples of autosuggestion and hypnotism.
Continuing with stories of healing and the miraculous, the El Universal journalist Jacobo Dalevuelta, in 1928, reported that a well-known Mexican Brigadier General arrived in Espinazo with an incurable illness and that the Niño simply told him to stay if he liked, but that he could not help him (El Universal, 1928). The Niño told him to make peace with God because “your sufferings are going to take you on an eternal adventure.” According to the report, the general died before the end of that day.
Followers and observers alike described the Niño’s trance-like state while healing. Fidencio denied being part of the Alan Kardec spiritist movement that was common in Mexico and Europe in the early part of the 19 century and in fact, while in trance, he spoke against it warning his followers not to associate with the spiritist movement after his death. Additionally, while in trance, the Niño was reported to speak in tongues but never revealed the identity of his spirit guide (Kardec, 1853).
As an ultra-religious person, Fidencio simply asserted that he was communicating with the Heavenly Father who healed through him. He seldom referred directly to the supernatural. The Niño would make simple comments like the one he made to the photographer Casasola about the photographs not developing if he were not given a copy; implying a supernatural ability. His comments were passed on by word of mouth and then by the press, greatly adding to and enhancing the myth and lore of the Niño as having the psychic ability to affect the outcome of events. Not all the reports of notoriety, of course, were glowing. The burgeoning accounts of miraculous cures enraged the medical community whose patients were dwindling, and claims of fraud and deception grew.
In Mexico City, a Brazilian doctor and professor at the national medical school gave a public demonstration on the types of psychic cures performed by El Niño Fidencio. The doctor claimed that psychic healing could effectively treat any illness, especially those involving paralysis or with neurological or mental origins suggesting that, they were psychosomatic. The doctor claimed that Mexico was fertile ground for these types of healings and predicted that the Niño’s ability would soon wane. The media reported that miraculous cures in Espinazo reached a fever pitch in the early months of 1930 and then began to wane. Didn’t the Brazilian doctor miss the point? The fact that Fidencio helped many people is what was important and not autosuggestion. If what the Brazilian doctor said was true why were the Mexican physicians not helping their people?
Fidencio cured persons daily and could diagnose and heal simply by looking at a person; he would fix his gaze on them, divining their ailment and cure them with herbs and teas he prepared or simply with his touch. The little village of Espinazo quickly began to receive thousands of persons who arrived by train, on horseback, in trucks and on foot, all seeking a healing miracle. Newspaper reports claimed that the Niño Fidencio operated on cataracts, cut out cancerous tumors, and removed gall stones without a scalpel.
He is said to have had a protocol that was reminiscent of a well-educated medical doctor; preferring to perform surgeries with broken bottle glass on the ground. His assistants said that he would say, “Bring me a piece of bottle glass, break it and bring me the sharpest pieces.”
Additionally, Fidencio was an exceptionally religious person frequently talking to his followers about Christianity. He spent hours studying the color plates in his illustrated Bible and then interpreting the scenes to the uneducated peasants of the desert.
A wealthy family from Torreón, Coahuila purchased medical equipment and a surgical table for Fidencio, but he rarely used these devices. He did establish a maternity ward and a hospital for the recuperation of more serious ailments requiring convalescence. There were 30 beds in his maternity clinic that was always full. Fidencio had a group of peasant women who served as his untrained nurses. He liked to carry out his healing by touching the soil and usually on the exact same spot each time. He would heal with water that was left outdoors overnight touched by the evening dew/sereno.
In the late 1930s, Fidencio predicted his death many months ahead of time; always stating that it was time for him to leave. He said that after his death, there would appear many who would claim to be him, reminding everyone that there was only one Fidencio and to be careful not to accept charlatans.
Fidencio was illiterate and was never known to write more than a simple letter with his crude signature. Additionally, he did not read books and had no training in medicine or medicinal plants. This is significant because later in his life, he is said to have had great knowledge of both medicine and healing plants, indicating that he established a learned body of knowledge from his healing treatments. However, that knowledge came to him through spiritual means and was passed through him to the patient without his knowledge. Generally, while in a trance state mediums do not remember their actions but it is believed that Fidencio was different in that he did learn from his actions.
In the early days of 1928, Mexico was in the throes of the Cristero Rebellion (1926-1929) and the post-revolutionary government persecution of the Roman Catholic Church was substantial. The headlines in the Mexican press announced the confiscation of church property and the expulsion, imprisonment and execution of the Roman Catholic clergy. During these troubling days, Mexico turned her eyes to the northern desert as the initial reports of miracles began to flow into the major Mexico City newspapers.
In the early twentieth century, Mexico did not have laws prohibiting the practice of folk-healing or curanderia. The ones that they did have were rarely enforced. The earliest news coverage of the strange young curandero, Fidencio Constantino, did not compare his strange methods with medicine, and even today more than 100 years after Fidencio, curanderia is common throughout Mexico. Fidencio never claimed to be a doctor. He never prescribed any of the popular patented or pre-prepared, store bought medicines (Peters, 1999). Talk of the young healer had previously been confined to northern Mexico, but in 1928, virtually all the major dailies in Mexico City carried articles about the miraculous cures in the Northern pueblito of Espinazo, Nuevo Leon.
“El Cirujano Milagroso” - Surgery with Broken Bottle Glass
The Niño Fidencio performed both psychic and actual physical surgeries. The Niño could diagnose a condition or illness with the patient both standing in front of him or at a distance. Fidencio would frequently enter a trance-like state to heal but would not change his voice, character, or facial features. Therefore, it was not possible to determine if he was channeling a deceased doctor or some other spirit as numerous psychic surgeons claim to do. When asked, Fidencio would respond that he healed with the power of the Holy Spirit and none other. Fidencio preferred to work barefooted with his feet in contact with the Earth. He would lay his patients on the ground and ask his assistants to bring him a freshly produced shard of broken-bottle glass. The surgery would commence with the sharpest piece while the Niño was usually in a deep trance state.
Invariably, there were always throngs of curious people just waiting to experience a miracle. The people would relate their experiences in Espinazo back in their home towns, thus expanding the Niños notoriety where there were no newspapers. The huge crowds never seemed to bother the Niño, who was said to be in perpetual good humor. People gathered around him in a círculo de curación/healing circle. He would perform surgeries of all sorts, superficial incisions as well as cutting deep into the body to remove tumors.
By all reports, the Niño’s surgeries never produced infections and were successful with his patients rapidly restored to health. In some cases, the patient would die and when asked why, the Niño would very calmly reply that it was the will of God. He remarked that he was the simple instrument of God. The Niño claimed not to conduct the procedures himself but that the knowledge needed to perform the surgery came from God and that the Holy Spirit directed his hand. There are numerous photographs of the Niño’s surgeries and to this day, bottles with extracted tumors are displayed in his tomb room of the Casa Grande in Espinazo.
There are many versions of the stories and myths about the Niño Fidencio. There are so many that it is often difficult to tell if they are true or fabrications. However, in this study, accuracy is not as important as documenting the variations of the stories that are told and retold by his Fidencista helpers. All stories recounted here were verified by Panita. This is a critical concept taught to his folklore students by Dr. Américo Paredes, professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. Paredes documented through the corrido of Gregorio Cortez that multiple variations in folk stories are important and should not be seen as correct or incorrect, every variation has its cultural value. (Paredes, 1958).
Ariel González and his brothers grew up as part of the royal family of Espinazo, the direct descendants of Enrique López de la Fuente. Ariel’s mother Fabiola was the first-born daughter of Enrique and Consuelo Lopez de la Fuente. Spending much of their young lives in Espinazo, Ariel and his two brothers were well acquainted with their grandfather Papá Enrique, learning many of Fidencio’s stories from him.
Enrique’s version of Fidencio’s stories is generally considered accurate although as a Church IFC official it is in his interest to embellish the memory of El Niño Fidencio. This research study has examined as many of the stories about the miraculous feats of Fidencio as possible, cross-referencing them with Panita’s versions. In most cases, Ariel’s versions are thought to be credible and not significantly different from Panita’s version.
In 2009, Ariel González published a brief pamphlet/booklet of 100 pages purporting to tell the “True story” of the Niño Fidencio. I transcribed several of those stories from Spanish and reproduced an edited version of some of the more important information and stories of the Niño’s healing techniques. Ariel documents that from a very young age, Fidencio and Enrique López de la Fuente were close friends who played and attended elementary school together. Enrique was two years older than Fidencio who was frequently at Enrique’s home. When the time came for Fidencio to work, when he was about 8 years of age, the López de la Fuente family took him in as a kitchen boy, thus assisting the desperately poor Constantino family. This is a common agreement in Mexico in which the receiving family agrees to feed, clothe and take care of the health and spiritual needs of the child in their care very much like compadres are expected to do when they receive an orphaned ahijado/godchild in their home.
Ariel’s version suggests that Enrique and his childhood friend Fidencio were invited to work on the Von Wernich hacienda but this differs from other versions. An alternate version suggests that Fidencio was already located a short distance from Espinazo having joined his sister Antonia on a northern ranch. This is when Fidencio worked for a short time as a miner. He traveled north from Guanajuato to Nuevo Leon to live with his sister, Antonia, and when he learned (or divined psychically) that his friend Enrique was only a short distance away, he relocated to Espinazo. Fidencio accepted the position of kitchen boy at the hacienda in Espinazo, the same position he had held in the López de la Fuente household in Guanajuato. The revolution years saw thousands of peasant workers killed and work opportunities were plentiful especially in the North.
Enrique would frequently say that he had adopted Fidencio as his son. Fidencio always deferred to Enrique calling him Papá. It is doubtful that this was a legal adoption; in all probability, it was an arrangement of folk-compadrazgo in order to protect Fidencio’s wealth that had been accumulated by donations.
With the growth of Enrique’s family and Fidencio’s fame, the building known as the Niño’s Casa Grande was constructed. In addition to its domestic quarters, it provided Fidencio with a healing room, a hospital, and a large meeting room called the Foro/el foro. Fidencio was convinced that suffering was a necessary part of poverty as he humbly began his service to the poor. This is where the famous epitaph: “No son pobres los pobres, ni ricos los ricos, tan solo son pobres los que sufren por un dolor,” comes from. “The poor are not poor and the rich are not rich; the only poor are those who suffer a pain,” this is El Niño Fidencio’s most famous quote (Fidencio, 1928).
Ariel recounts a number of famous healings especially since several of the people healed were so thankful that they decided to stay on after their recuperation and assist the Niño in his healing mission. This is significant in that these true believers formed the basis of the original group of the Niño’s permanent followers and the beginning of the group that would become the cult of Fidencismo.
For example, Señor Manuel García of Espinazo is believed to have suffered a cerebral stroke and he was taken to the shade of the holy pirul tree. He was thought to be dead showing no signs of life when Fidencio was called to his side. The Niño immediately began praying over him, asking for God’s intervention while sweeping/barriendo him with pirul leaves. Manuel shortly regained consciousness, arose, and walked to his home seemingly in perfect health and never again showed any indication of having had a stroke. From that point on, the pirul tree was considered a sacred miraculous site in Espinazo. Fidencio claimed to have received one of his major revelations at the pirul tree and he was often found there. Today, the pirul is the starting point for arrival and departure and all processions and penances as well as a preferred location for healing by the many materias who visit Espinazo with their followers.
Fidencio Heals Hacendado: Von Wernich: 1928 - “El Sufrimiento Como Medio de Curación”
Panita tells the most detailed story of the Von Wernich healing. As the story goes, the hacendado was walking in his tomato patch that had recently been fumigated with a powerful insecticide. He received a nasty gash on his leg that became infected refusing to heal. Teodoro sought medical attention in San Antonio and in Mexico City to no avail. Meanwhile, his wound worsened and became gangrenous. His mayordomo Enrique remarked, “You are looking for a treatment far away when the answer is right here in Espinazo.”
Fidencio was called to examine Teodoro’s gangrenous leg and immediately began to treat it with his homemade pomada, a medicinal paste he made of fruit, vegetables, and herbs of the field. The infected and festering wound immediately began to heal and was eventually completely healed, averting the threat of amputation.
Teodoro queried Fidencio, “Did you believe that you had the power to cure me?” Fidencio responded, “If God permits it, yes. I am just an instrument in his hands to assist you.” Therefore, Teodoro’s gangrenous leg that was thought to be incurable was completely healed by Fidencio (Galvez, 2005).
Fidencio claimed to receive a spiritual revelation on October 17, 1926. While seated in the Foro, he entered a trance state and, in that condition, God spoke to him, “He had chosen Fidencio to be his instrument on earth to perform great miracles.” However, he would have to comply with three conditions
1) That all he does is in the name of God and that he maintains his humility and
2) That he never charges for his healing services and that he never personally
Accepts money; and,
3) That he lives a humble life, a life of celibacy and service to others (Las Escrituras, 2013).
When Fidencio awoke from this revelatory trance, he asked that he be bathed with yellow flowers. It was the tradition in Espinazo for his helpers to bathe him with herbs and flowers. They said that he was childlike without a sense of modesty and was not at all embarrassed by his nudity.
October 17, 1926 is the date that is given for Fidencio’s spiritual awakening; it is said that he was born spiritually that day. He led a very humble life rejecting the mattress on his bed; he only slept on a sheepskin on the floor. He slept very little and ate even less, accepting a simple bean soup along with jeréz/brandy produced on the hacienda, he did not eat meat.
As indicated by the aforementioned third revelatory requirement he received on October 17, 1926, he was to live a life of celibacy, absent of the carnal knowledge of women or men and reproduction, a practice common today for most materias who only bear children early in life. Fidencio understood that his life was to be dedicated to the service of the poor and he was given 12 years in that status before his Padre Celestial/Celestial Father called him home, in 1938.
Fidencio treated a wide range of physical and mental aliments including cancers, tumors, tuberculosis, leprosy, measles, typhoid fever, insanity, blindness, deaf and dumb affliction, paralysis, hydrocephaly, cataracts and much more. He used few if any modern medical instruments and used no medicine, preferring to collect medicinal plants from the field. There has never been any evidence that he studied botany or had formal knowledge of medicinal plants or the practice of medicine.
He claimed that an old grey-haired man came to him in a trance state revealing which plants had specific medicinal properties. His patients felt no pain during surgery, there was never any bleeding, and he never used any kind of anesthesia. This was true during the most invasive operations that never resulted in infections. It is important to point out that these characteristics are consistent with many other spiritual healers who have appeared in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Niño operated on Vicenta Herrera who arrived in Espinazo extremely ill and unable to eat. She told the Niño: “I have something very wrong with my stomach, and it’s killing me.” “Fidencio is said to have taken one look at her and declared, “There is nothing wrong with your stomach, it is your teeth, and they all have to be removed.”
He called for a common pair of mechanic’s pliers/pinsas and began to extract her rotten teeth until all were removed. Vicenta replied, “You know what you are doing Niño I have complete faith in you and I’m ready for anything.” She felt no pain and there was no bleeding. When the procedure was completed, she gargled an herbal mixture and the Niño pronounced her cured. Even though she had no teeth, she immediately wanted to eat something. She was so grateful that she decided to stay in Espinazo and assist the Niño in whatever way she could. Espinazo became her home and she stayed there even after the Niño’s death. This was a common pattern since many of his patients were also attracted by the religious nature of Espinazo and the Niño’s religiosity. They became “true believers.” There are numerous examples of children and adults who made Espinazo their life’s work; One report says that they were called the Niño’s helpers, while others refer to them as his disciples. Shortly after his death, the true cult of the Niño Fidencio began to take form. This is when the peregrinations to Espinazo and the reenactments of his life began. Many of his followers believed that he would be resurrected or reincarnated.
In another case, Francisca Rodríguez came to Espinazo in a wheelchair unable to walk. Her husband was a railroad man who rode the rails between Cd. Juárez and Saltillo and passed through Espinazo frequently. He saw and heard about Fidencio’s miraculous cures and decided to bring his invalid wife to him for evaluation. Fidencio said, “I can make you walk again but you will have to stay here with us.” He ordered his helpers to cover her legs with baby ducklings and she began to feel tingling in her legs followed by movement. Before long, her legs were functioning and she began to walk. As requested, she stayed in Espinazo becoming a valued member of Fidencio’s family of helpers. After the Niño’s death, letters were sent to her family asking them to come for her but they never did. She died in Espinazo in 1967, twenty nine years after Fidencio’s death.
On numerous occasions, Fidencio demonstrated his ability to divine people’s intentions both good and bad, as well as their needs. He was a powerful clairvoyant, and on more than one occasion, Fidencio was documented to be in at least two places simultaneously, showing his ability to bi-locate or consubstantiate. Additionally, there are numerous testimonies that Fidencio was able to alter his skin color and his facial features and frequently appeared to people in Espinazo in an unknown or disguised form. He said it was a test for the people.
One time there was a very sick boy in Eagle Pass, Texas and his mother took him to see the Niño Fidencio in Espinazo but the crowd was so large that they were forced to return home without seeing him. Returning to their home in Eagle Pass the family was seated on their patio when the Niño Fidencio materialized before their eyes on their patio, saying: “I’ve come to heal your son because you were not able to see me in Espinazo.” He asked the family to dig a hole at a certain place in their yard declaring that they will find healing water with the power to heal their son and many others. The water was found exactly where the Niño said it would be and the boy was completely healed. After giving his directions, the Niño vaporized, and disappeared. His followers in Espinazo swore that he was asleep during this time, and that his physical body never left Espinazo. For years afterward, the family from Eagle Pass would take the Niño’s healing water to Espinazo to be shared with others.
One time the Niño was resting when he jumped up proclaiming, “A drowning sailor is calling out to me for help. I must go to him.” Indeed, a sailor, Juan Rojas, had called out to the Niño to save him. The Niño responded: “I’m already here to help you.” Adding that, in one month the sailor would appear in Espinazo completing a pilgrimage of thanks and leaving his uniform behind as an ex-voto. It happened just as the Niño predicted, Juan Rojas arrived in Espinazo one month later to thank the Niño for saving his life, leaving his uniform behind in Espinazo as testimony of the miracle received.
In the patio behind the Niño’s house, there was a large swing/columpio that the Niño utilized for healing the mute and paralyzed. The swing would frighten people into screaming just as he used his mountain lion to scare people to regain speech. In addition to his healing swing, Fidencio would frequently heal large crowds simultaneously, or a curación en general/a general or mass healing. The Niño would climb to a spot above the crowd and throw fruit down at them that would serve as a cure upon striking them. He could diagnose illness from a distance and in some cases did not need to see the person; he divine the illness at a distance through trance or a dream.
During his main healing years, 1926-1935, the Niño worked around the clock with little food or rest. He would perform surgery and go directly to a Caesarian delivery and then on to another healing or surgery nonstop day and night.
In his younger and most active years, Fidencio loved to produce allegorical plays often with biblical or moral themes. He maintained a company of performers in Espinazo whom he trained and who could deliver a religious play on short notice and especially during holidays.
Fidencio never learned to play a musical instrument but would accompany performances on the piano and organ. Both civic and religious holidays were festive for the thousands of suffering people waiting their turn to be healed. The Niño’s plays were their only distraction. Many thousands were healed in Espinazo but many hundreds died waiting their turn to see him. The Niño commented very matter of factly, “Death is the will of God.” “Very frequently, I am asked why.” The Niño answered this common question, “Death is the will of God,” and cannot be avoided.
Fidencio said: “My infinite faith in God sustains me to serve and heal the sick. God asked me to take on this service to mitigate the physical and spiritual ills of my brethren. All who come to me in search of a cure have suffered greatly and that is how they will obtain their health. I petition God on their behalf and he answers, it is their faith that heals them, the oranges, and apples and pomadas only serve as props. Finally, it is the hand of God that cures them” (Fidencio, 1928). With the assistance of God, he was able to heal thousands of physical and mental ailments; including depression, insanity, hysteria and nervousness as well as spiritual illness as brought on by witchcraft. The casting out of demons or exorcisms were commonplace in Espinazo.
Fidencio becomes a Worldwide Sensation - “La Leyenda de Espinazo Causa Sensaciones Extraordinarias”
In 1928 Espinazo had become a village of 25,000 people and the latest story of Fidencio was demanded in every media, the radio, and in daily newspapers. In Mexico City, actress Jetta Goudal starred in “La Mujer Prohibida” and played as a double feature along with a sensational film entitled “El Campo del Dolor” which claimed to be the only authentic film authorized by the Niño and filmed in Espinazo that shows the scenes of miracles of faith, actual scenes that produce tears when the thaumaturge performed his miracle cures, making the blind see and the paralyzed walk on film.
At the same time, the premier Mexican movie producer Jorge Stahl presented the only three-part film claiming the true stories of the Niño Fidencio in “La Vida y Milagros del Niño Fidencio.” The Niño Fidencio was the most talked-about person in Mexico, a true superstar. With his surprising cures, processions arrived from all over the world. The main movie theater in Mexico City featured a comedy, “El Espinazo de Fidencio,” which parodied and burlesqued the Niño, even he was not immune from ridicule.
The growth of Espinazo produced restaurants, barber shops, hardware and clothing stores, and even furniture stores where someone could buy a bed or a chair to reduce the pain of inconvenience in the desert. Meanwhile, in Monterrey, the government decided to collect taxes from all of the various vendors. Even the Municipio of Mina in which Espinazo is located began collecting sales taxes.
The newspapers rarely mentioned President Calles’ visit to Espinazo because it was thought not to be politically expedient and physically dangerous. During the Niño’s tenure in Espinazo copycats, so called miraculous healers sprang up all over the nation all failing, and none approaching the status of Fidencio.
In the face of his fame, the Niño Fidencio was silent, imprisoned in his persona. He rarely spoke and did not give interviews. He said all I do is: “distribute the medicine that God shows me how to make, God heals he uses my hands, I am nothing but an instrument.”
The Niño said, “The people who come to see me have suffered enough and it is because of their suffering and faith that they are healed, I ask God to heal with whatever I have and that is why I heal with oranges and bananas.”
He often spoke of his ignorance and lack of education but his mysterious powers attracted scientists from the United States and Europe. They came to study him, and since they could not study the circle of Curación, they wanted to study specific cases from start to finish, but it was impossible. Several doctors stated that the Niño was a faker like those in India. Other doctors claimed that hypnotism and the power of autosuggestion were the primary forces at work not miracles. Another suggested that the thousands of people all focusing their energies on healing actually caused collective cures. An Italian doctor stated that all those thousands of people are thinking of only one thing: a cure and that is what produces the healing; it is all in their collective heads.
Toward the end of his life, Fidencio predicted his departure from this Earth months before October 19, 1938 when he was pronounced dead. With Fidencio’s death the cult of Fidencio, Fidencismo was born. Fidencio passed the keys to his faith to Enrique, who in turn, passed them on to Fabiola upon Enrique’s death in 1974.
Interestingly, Ariel does not discuss the controversial stories surrounding the Niño’s mysterious death. Nor does Ariel’s version of the life of Fidencio mention the contribution of Víctor Zapata, Damiana Martínez, or Panita. This selective oversight is of course due to the competition between the two competing Fidencista groups, each promoting its own legacy. Their stories are not inaccurate but they omit a lot and are simply self-serving.
Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles Visits Espinazo: 1928 - “El Presidente Calles Tenía Fe en que el Niño lo Sanaría”
On February 8, 1928, Mexican Presidente Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928) visited Espinazo ostensibly seeking a cure for a serious chronic skin infection that caused him great suffering. Some say that he had leprosy but that has never been confirmed (Parsons, 1987). The period of the Cristero revolt (1926-1929) in Mexico required the Roman Catholic Church to enter survival mode during those years, in which El Niño Fidencio was the least of their problems. This was especially true when President Calles chose to visit the Niño Fidencio in Espinazo traveling in his presidential train Olivo. There was great anticipation as Olivo pulled into the station at Espinazo. This symbolic event was widely publicized and was a direct affront to the Roman Catholic Church, as it appeared to validate Fidencio’s actions as accepted as those of an ordained Catholic priest to the nation and further indicate that Catholic priests were not necessary (Meyer, 1974).
When the train arrived at Estación Espinazo, President Calles asked, “Where is this Fidencio?” The powerful President was surprised that the humble miracle worker failed to greet the President of Mexico at the train station. Fidencio required President Calles to walk from the train station to Fidencio’s house like every other pilgrim visiting Fidencio that day, a symbolic penance.
Fidencio afforded the most powerful man in Mexico no special treatment, and simply went about his regular routine until the President walked to where he was working. Additionally, while only briefly in Espinazo, President Calles was sequestered with the Niño in total privacy for several hours. This made his attendants extremely nervous but one of them was allowed to enter the room where the Niño was treating President Calles. During their time alone, it is believed that the President was cured of his serious skin ailment. The President’s assistant who was allowed to enter said that the President was covered from head to toe with the Niño’s pomada and royal jelly honey from the beehives kept on the hacienda. There is no transcript or clear documentation of what transpired between the President of Mexico and the humble kitchen boy that day on the desert of Espinazo. What is known is that President Calles suffered from a painful skin disorder, a condition that was somehow improved as a result of his visit.
Absolutely no one present on the day that President Calles visited the Niño talked about their visit or what happened so over the years many rumored versions have circulated. The most common is that President Calles had leprosy and was treated for that skin condition. Many stories claim that President Calles’ daughter also suffered the same ailment but she was not present on the day that President Calles visited Espinazo, on Wednesday, February 8, 1928 arriving at 6 p.m.
The five hours that President Calles was isolated with the Niño Fidencio was seen by many as simply a show of support for Fidencio or a further affront to the Roman Catholic Church. The Cristero revolt was in full speed at the time of the President Calles visit. After President Calles’ visit to Espinazo, the Niño’s traditional enemies, the state, the medical profession and the Roman Catholic Church adopted a friendlier attitude toward Fidencio believing that he was protected by the tremendously powerful and ruthless President Calles.
The Nuevo León Department of Public Health adopted the following position: “Ha recibido todo genero de informes sobre la actuacion de Fidencio S. Constantino. Como el asunto es netamente local, ya se transcriben todos seos informes al Gobierno de NL con la suplica los suyos y proceda en la forma que estime mas conveniente”(Nuevo Leon Department of Public Health).
At that point the attempted intervention by the Roman Catholic Church ended or at least was postponed for a while. An attorney pointed out that the Mexican constitution limits the practice of medicine to those who bear the title of doctor, but does not extend its authority of curanderos to attend to the people who believe in them. Mexico’s greatest reporters then declared: “The Niño Fidencio works for the benefit of humanity, the Niño Fidencio is a miracle worker, and all of his work is in the open.” So why was the official world so afraid of him?
Finally, one investigator said that the Niño Fidencio is not the business of doctors or medicine, “miracles are not well understood and fall under the area of experimental sciences”(Dalevuelta, 1928). Even the Mexican congress took up the matter of Fidencio but could not decide stating that more than just a few members of congress and their families have been to see the Niño and believed in him.
While there were those detractors that did not believe that the Niño had treated President Calles, according to Don Enrique López de la Fuente there is no doubt that the Niño treated the President because he witnessed it. There was no prior notice that Calles planned a visit to Espinazo as he set out for Tamaulipas and Nuevo León on federal business; his stop in Espinazo was not listed in the itinerary.
What is interesting is that on this trip ostensibly to Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Calles took a very small entourage of his most trusted advisers. The newspapers reported that President Calles’ popularity in Mexico increased because of his visit to Espinazo. Even though the President Calles’ visit was at a high point in the Cristero war, President Calles arrived without a military escort. Since this was a trip fraught with tremendous danger, this secret trip was viewed as having the highest significance with President Calles. The President literally risked his life to see Fidencio. Had there been the slightest hint that President Calles was in Nuevo León he would have been attacked and killed.
President Calles was behind closed doors for five hours with Fidencio when the lights went out. This caused an immediate panic among the president’s small group of handlers believing it was an assassination attempt. Max Von Wernich, the son of Teodoro and Don Enrique prepared to defend the President, sabotage they yelled, this is the work of the Cristeros. But it was a simple mechanical failure of a rickety generator and in half an hour the lights returned, the crisis was averted. Everyone returned to the waiting game. At one point, Fidencio left the room leaving the President seated naked in a chair covered with honey, as he went to perform an errand. When the two finally emerged, President Calles was covered from head to toe with pomada and honey and he was quite ecstatic. They are said to have spoken in private for almost five hours. It is not known if the President himself had an illness; rumored as a major skin affliction common in the military.
We do believe that something miraculous happened during that consultation that evoked in the President great joy and gratitude. In fact, President Calles was so happy, he directed his aides to give Fidencio anything he desired. The gift was to be the gift of life: water for the thirsty little desert community.
President Calles had arrived at 6 p.m. and at 11 p.m.; a brief five hours later he was aboard the train and was on his way. However, this short visit had profound implications and results for Fidencio. The President immediately converted to Fidencio’s advocate and protector, sending train cars of used clothes for the people of Espinazo and constructing a water line from the distant mountain spring at La Gavia to Espinazo.
The exceedingly grateful President commanded both the Roman Catholic Church and State to allow Fidencio to continue his healing ministry and practice of folk Roman Catholicism in the desert unhampered. He also ordered that a seven-kilometer water line be constructed from the nearby mountain spring at La Gavia to Espinazo. That gift of water remains the only available water in Espinazo to this day.
After the President Calles visit, the media continued to attack Fidencio but more cautiously. In spite of the numerous indictments against Fidencio, he was never arrested. One time six police officers were ordered to apprehend him but as they entered Espinazo the throngs of believers encircled Fidencio and it was obvious that the people would not let them near him. The people’s love for Fidencio was the religious affection of a Saint. What good were six police officers against thousands? Enrique was forced to travel frequently to Monterrey to reassure the authorities and in several cases, President Calles was forced to personally intervene on the Niño’s behalf.
In 1929, a delegation of 20 professional doctors, scientists and lawyers visited Espinazo and after two hours they left satisfied that there was no public health problem or violation of the law in Espinazo. The Mexican miracle worker was credited with all manner of cures short of raising the dead, which was reserved for God. He is believed to have performed the miracle of raising the dead on at least one occasion. Making the sightless see and the voiceless regain their speech were commonplace occurrences as was his cure of the insane. During 1928, all modes of transportation were flooded with people from Mexico, the United States, and Europe; bringing their sick loved ones to Espinazo in hope of a miraculous cure.
It was commonly believed that El Niño Fidencio had been ordained by God and therefore was fully empowered to deliver the Roman Catholic sacraments, to marry, baptize, anoint the dead and dying and most importantly, to hear confessions, recite the Roman Catholic Mass and distribute Holy Communion. Fidencio’s followers were certain that the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome had sent Fidencio a message authorizing him to serve in the full capacity as a Roman Catholic priest. When asked how they knew that, a follower matter of factly said, “A carrier pigeon bearing the Pope’s letter was sent to Fidencio. The pigeon flew from Rome to Espinazo.” This mythology was commonly believed among Fidencistas although it was never mentioned to me.
These actions brought immediate negative attention from the Roman Catholic Church that sent undercover Catholic priests to Espinazo to witness and to report to the bishops of Monterrey and Saltillo, who in turn, denounced Fidencio as unholy similar to the Tata Santo case seventy years earlier. However forceful the action of the Roman Catholic Church in its indictment of Fidencio, the reality is, the Roman Catholic Church was fighting for its survival and the issue of the healer on the desert was trivial by comparison. The Roman Catholic Church itself was under fire from a Mexican government that sought to eliminate it. The Roman Catholic Church had little power to stop Fidencio or the development of his folk-Catholic religious movement.
During this same period, Fidencista Templos or Misiones were being established outside of Espinazo, in the major Mexican cities in the north and along the Texas-Mexico border. These Fidencista Templos were each led by a medium or materia that channeled the healing spirit of Fidencio.
By the 1930s, Fidencio was regarded as a living folk-Saint/santo popular and a pseudo-religious movement developed around him at Espinazo calling itself La Nueva Jerusalén/the New Jerusalem. All believed that they were laying the groundwork for the return of the Messiah. The development of his cult continued its evolution posthumously and thrives today. It is often said that the religiosity and devotion of Fidencistas is “More Catholic than Catholics.”
The four-year term of President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928) turned considerably anti-clerical as he attempted to eliminate the Roman Catholic Church from Mexico. The Mexican post-revolution Constitution of 1917 was used as an instrument to restrict the power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico.
In the second year of the Calles administration, the President created the Leyes Calles/Calles’ Laws supposedly based upon the constitution and directly against the Roman Catholic Church. The three years that followed, 1926-1929, was a period of bloody assault against the Roman Catholic Church followed by a full uprising of the faithful and their lands were expropriated and clergy either were expelled from Mexico or they were forced into hiding. Many clergy were slain while the riches and lands of the church were confiscated becoming public. The Cristero years stripped the rural north of most of its clergy and made it difficult to deliver or receive the sacraments. It was precisely during these years that Fidencio rose to fill this void.
Fidencio Under Attack: 1925-1930 - “Se Inicia la Campaña de los Médicos Contra el Charlatán”
The frenzy over the Niño Fidencio subsided after a few years but Espinazo never returned to its previous status of lonely desert pueblito. The peak years of 1925 to 1935 produced a cadre of faithful followers referred to as apostles many of whom moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas during the Second World War years and during the Bracero Movement (1941-1964). Additionally, a steady stream of pilgrims including those who claimed to have received miraculous cures regularly returned to Espinazo in March and October of each year for the Niño’s fiestas or whenever they were able creating an actual trend of transnationalism among Fidencistas.
In 1930, the vice-president of the State of Nuevo León’s Committee on Public Health secretly visited Espinazo. The throngs of the waiting and the curious were gone; the spectacle was largely over so he was able to closely examine the operation of the cult of the Niño Fidencio. Approximately 1,500 genuinely sick persons and their families remained in Espinazo; still an enormous number of people compared to the 100 or so permanent residents. Yet, in the 1930s, Espinazo was a place of orderly serenity and peace. In spite of the obvious, the health official attempted to portray the little desert village more as a place inhabited by lunatics and fanatics rather than a place of organized and effective healing. However, he inadvertently provided the first glimpses of Espinazo as an emerging utopian society, La Nueva Jerusalén/New Jerusalem, centered on a messianic cult figure.
Now more than 88 years after his death, a similar messianic cult also called La Nueva Jerusalén emerged in the state of Michoacán and continues today but it lacks a central charismatic figure. The public health official’s report states that each morning, long orderly lines of men, women, and children wait patiently for their drink of hot herbal medicine or coffee. The dirt streets were perfectly laid out, each with a name, with residential sections named after those in Mexico City. Meanwhile, fifty or so children received instruction from a teacher in a small building called the El Escuela del Niño Fidencio/ El Niño Fidencio’s School.
When Fidencio’s popularity reached a maximum point, many doctors solicited the, Department of Health to immediately put an end to this charlatanism since the doctors of Torreon and Saltillo had suffered major reductions in their practices, with their patients preferring to go to Espinazo to treat their illnesses.
The medical and public health associations of Nuevo León and Coahuila stated: “Senalaba el peligro del contagio de enfermedades por la aglomeración de personas con padecimientos infecciosis en barracas inmundas. Eso decia, traera una epidemia que afectara no sólo al campamiento si no a toda la region.” The doctors feared a major contagious epidemic in northern Mexico that was never realized. The public health officials of Monterrey geared-up against Fidencio, and a public health doctor Vela González was contracted to conduct a complete study of Fidencio’s activities. It would be the first of many.
At the same time the major newspapers of Mexico City began to turn against Fidencio calling him the most dangerous charlatan that Mexico had ever seen. The farce of the Niño Fidencio should be ended they cried. A military officer who had spent little time in Espinazo made sensational declarations against the healer: “With the same hands that he sticks down someone’s throat of a person with tuberculosis, he touches the eyes of another patient with the contagion, then he moves on to a leper, I have seen him cut off the fingers of a leper with a pair of scissors, and then amputate a leg with the same instrument. I have seen him open up a campesino and take out his internal organs without bleeding and the people call it a miracle.” ( El Universal, 1928). The hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices in Saltillo were empty; however, the newspapers of Torreon never failed in their support of Fidencio.
Fidencio would climb aboard the train cars sent by President Calles and throw food and other items to the people. Even though he was called a miraculous saint, Fidencio said that he simply puts out his hand and God provides the benefit and does the healing.
Fidencio was a miraculous surgeon who used broken bottle glass to perform surgery and not simply on the surface of the body. Fidencio would regularly open the entire body cavity, a surgical procedure that the most practiced doctors would not dare to perform outside of a surgical hospital. Fidencio performed this massive surgery on the ground, on the dirt streets of Espinazo without any typical sanitary hospital support. Fidencio placed the different treatment venues hundreds of yards apart to prevent contagions.
As Fidencio made his daily trek to see his little sick ones or enfermitos, he was followed by a parade of faithful peregrinos singing religious hymns as they walked barefooted through the dusty streets of Espinazo: they were his permanent entourage (Malca, 2000). Someone remarked proudly, only two years ago there had been hundreds of lepers here; today, there are only 20; implying that the others had been successfully treated, had returned home or died.
Fidencio had a strange ability to read minds and when Dr. González asked Fidencio numerous questions about medicine Fidencio answered all the complicated questions accurately. Dr. González’s final report stated that there was no reason to bring charges against Fidencio and the report was generally positive. In his report the doctor remarked, “Fidencio is an innocent, who is not even aware that he suffers from a mental illness that causes him to believe that he has been appointed by God to heal the sick. Those who are not innocent children are those who encircle him and promote his incredible abilities to the masses of suffering people who do not know any better” (Fidencio, 1938).
During the healing years, numerous attempts were made to call El Niño Fidencio before a tribunal, as he was constantly accused of violations of public health laws. Finally, the doctor reported to the civil and religious authorities in the States of Nuevo León and Coahuila. In August of 1927, the Secretary General of the State of Nuevo León, at the urging of the medical community, brought charges against Fidencio alleging that he was practicing medicine without a license. The charges were presented in the local court of Tomás Olivares. The indictment claimed that Fidencio was a charlatan; a simple curandero who tricked people into thinking he was a doctor. Fidencio responded that he had not cured or healed anybody because he did not use official or patent medicines, only the common herbs of the countryside and the will of God. On August 26, 1927, the municipal president of Mina, Damaso C. Cárdenas, dropped the charges against Fidencio, saying that he did not cure nor did he promise to cure the deaf, the blind, or paralytics. That, as a simple curandero, he simply attends to sicknesses that can be cured with home remedies/remedios caseros.
None of the charges were ever taken seriously and Fidencio was never imprisoned or prevented from performing his healing. Although a serious embarrassment to the State of Nuevo León, Fidencio continued working unhampered until his death in 1938.
The Fear of Epidemic - “Desconcierto de Médicos y Abogados”
The medical associations of the States of Nuevo León and Coahuila clamored for immediate intervention, not based on Fidencio’s practice, but rather based on what was not being done to protect the public health of the community at large. So many critically ill and contagious people had congregated in Espinazo by February of 1928 in a place devoid of any public-health supervision that the fear of an epidemic became an increasingly valid issue. Many believed that the situation posed a serious public health threat to all of northern Mexico (State Archive of Nuevo León).
Of the incurable who journeyed to Espinazo hoping for a miracle, many were reported to have been granted one. However, while those who boasted of miraculous cures added to the Niño’s stature as a healer, others died waiting their turn to see him. Still El Niño Fidencio turned others away because their respective maladies had progressed beyond his ability to help them. There seemed to be a limit to the miraculous.
With thousands of seriously and incurably ill people flocking to the site of miraculous cures, it was inevitable that the death rate in a small village the size of Espinazo would rise proportionately and it did. The alarming number of deaths in Espinazo between 1928 and 1929 concerned the authorities, especially in view of the fact that two new cemeteries had to be constructed. “A new cemetery for the miracles of Fidencio,” reported the Monterrey newspaper.” ‘How could the President of the republic go there and not see the truth of what is happening?’ the press asked. Was some deal made to protect Fidencio?” A Monterrey newspaper exclaimed: “In a small village where normally one death might be recorded every year, 44 persons had died in less than one month!”
It was rumored that there was, in all probability, a deal struck. President Calles clearly used his visit to the Niño Fidencio to indicate to the nation that the Roman Catholic Church was not needed.
The focus of the Mexican press turned from reporting the issue to hosting a debate between the medical and the spiritist communities. With such overwhelming negative publicity, the governments of the northern States of Nuevo León and Coahuila experienced mounting pressure to settle the case of the young thaumaturge by removing him from Espinazo. Nevertheless, he was protected by both the President of the Republic and by his own Red Brigade.
The Niño’s Red Brigade: 1930-1938 - “Veneran a Fidencio como a Santo”
The early newspaper accounts were also among the first to mention the Niño’s cult following that emerged from among the loyal masses of the healed. From 1928 to his death in 1938, a small army of faithful called la Brigada Roja/the Red Brigade, encircled, sheltered, and protected the Niño from the constant attack of the press, the medical community, the government, the Roman Catholic Church and their assassins. This is significant because it is one of the first indications that a religious cult had organized to protect its charismatic leader. In cults, especially those deemed to be anti-social, para-military units form to protect the leader from harm or assassination
This is exactly the way Espinazo operated after 1930, under constant attack from the State and Roman Catholic Church. However, the Niño had many wealthy benefactors from Monterrey and Saltillo who had benefited from his miraculous cures and protected him.
His wealthy supporters were invited to black-tie galas in Espinazo at which they could be counted on for large cash donations. It is said that his patient roster was controlled by a triage system; so, that for every 80 poor patients treated, 20 rich were also seen. Using this strategy, Enrique and Teodoro Von Wernich kept contributions rolling in for the huge expense of maintaining the Niño’s activities and infrastructure in Espinazo.
There was at least one known assassination plot against Fidencio that we know of. The story is told that Fidencio announced to his inner circle that an assassin would arrive on the train that day and not to be afraid. Fidencio himself walked to meet the train and approached a man dressed in a business suit daring him to assassinate him. The man had a terrified look of surprise on his face, turned around and then boarded the train and left. No other attempt was ever made on the life of the Niño. When growing concern arose over the threat to the region caused by the congregation of masses of ill and dying persons, Fidencio’s inner circle of supporters defended the Niño. They had faith that God would intervene and provide protection, a position that never wavered.
During the early months of 1928, the Mexican press varied sharply on its opinions of the Espinazo phenomenon. The major provincial dailies in the northern cities of Monterrey, Saltillo, and Torreón agreed with the need for government control and concurred with the outrage of the medical community: “Monterrey is threatened to be converted from a Mecca of Health into one of Suffering and Death,” blared one headline; claiming that Monterrey and the entire area of northern Mexico was in danger of a major epidemic with its origin in Espinazo.
People continued to flock to Espinazo, believing the Niño to be supernaturally anointed, clamoring for their Saint to deliver the sacraments. It was commonly believed that El Niño Fidencio had been ordained by God, and therefore was fully protected and empowered to marry, baptize, and anoint the dead and dying, but most importantly, to recite the Holy Mass and distribute Holy Communion and this infuriated the Roman Catholic Church.
The religious movement originating in Espinazo in the 1920s and 1930s continued without intervention from government or religion and may be defined as a quasi-religious, spiritist cult. In truth it was neither Roman Catholic nor spiritist, and is roughly based upon the Sagradas Escrituras of the Niño Fidencio. At the same time that the various Mexican spiritist associations distanced themselves and denounced Roman Catholicism, the Fidencistas claimed no relationship to the spiritist associations and continued to claim that the followers of Fidencio were Roman Catholics.
The Niño’s spiritual messages provided information on the developing Fidencista ritual and belief system. Patterned after Roman Catholicism with Fidencio at the center, Fidencismo rapidly became a form of folk-Catholicism operating in a syncretic state along with Roman Catholicism. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Fidencista healing missions were established from Roma to Brownsville and the Niño’s Revisador Víctor Zapata visited them annualy, determining legitimate orthodoxy.
Most Fidencistas, when asked about their religious beliefs, declare that they were Roman Catholics who believe in the folk-Saint El Niño Fidencio. This is exactly how folk Roman Catholicism and curanderismo have merged and been maintained throughout Mexican American communities across the United States (Finkler, 1985).
It did not help matters that a rash of scandalous curanderos and dubious miracle workers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had plagued the region. Headlines read: “A real plague of miracle workers has invaded Coahuila and Nuevo León.” The newspapers warned: “Competition between the saviors of mankind intensifies every day, without the caravan of believers knowing who to visit first, since every one of them claims to have derived power from God.” One young girl claimed to be ordained by God. Other “Niños” included El Niño Marcialito and El Niño Juanito, all from the area of Monterrey, they emerged but never gained the popularity of Fidencio.
On the other hand, the Mexico City press largely supported Fidencio, if only in a cynical manner. The news generated in the north was an appreciated diversion from the serious problems plaguing a country in the midst of civil war and chaos.
The Mexican National Catholic Church (MNCC) - “El Taumaturgo Decía ser Instrumento del Creador”
Faced with both a popular rebellion and a resilient Roman Catholic Church, President Plutarco Elías Calles sought to establish a Mexican National Catholic Church that would meld native Mexican devotional fervor with nationalistic sentiment. The Mexican National Catholic Church would be free from Vatican and other foreign influences, would celebrate its liturgy in Spanish, and would support the secular government’s wishes in all affairs temporal and spiritual.
With the support of both Calles and the Mexican government, newly named Bishop Pérez established the Iglesia Orthodox Católica Apostólica Mexicana. Known in English as the Mexican National Catholic Church, the new body featured Pérez as primate and patriarch, while López Sierra became his Coadjutor and López Valdes assumed the bishopric of Zaragoza. Pérez also consecrated four additional bishops to oversee the Church in Hidalgo, Veracruz, Puebla and elsewhere reaching into Texas and California.
With the Roman Church forced underground, countless thousands of Mexican Catholics turned to the National Mexican Catholic Church to receive the sacraments and accept spiritual guidance. However, there was no real unity among the schismatic bishops of the Mexican National Catholic Church and they found themselves at each other’s throats over Church doctrine and practices as well as still fighting the Vatican for dominance in the hearts and minds of their flocks. The Mexican National Catholic Church continues in both Mexico and the United States today ( The Mexican National Catholic Church, Califas Blogspot, 2014,).
Calles hoped that his visit to Espinazo and the Niño Fidencio would be a further embarrassment to the Roman Catholic Church. The Calles visit was seen as an affirmation of Fidencio and his ability to legitimately administer six of the seven Catholic sacraments: baptism, confirmation, confession, communion, and marriage for the thousands of displaced Roman Catholics on the northern frontier.
El Niño Fidencio: The Folk Saint of Espinazo: 1929-1938 - “Invoca a Fidencio Como a un Santo”
After the Niño’s death, Espinazo slowly developed as a pilgrimage site and as such, generated permanent employment opportunities by drawing many from the surrounding communities. Additionally, many literally gave up their mundane lives for a monastic existence in Espinazo; these were the devoted true believers.
Numerous individuals from the surrounding countryside were believed capable of spirit mediumship and would regularly claim to channel the Niño Fidencio. Because the majority of these messages were not verifiable, the position of Revisador was created to test the veracity of mediums as true Fidencistas and to eliminate frauds and charlatans.
It is noteworthy that Messiahs usually appear during periods of oppression or economic catastrophe in order to fulfill people’s longing to end their suffering. Such a situation produces structural strain. Strain occurs when individuals’ needs are not met through existing social structures. Such strain can produce a number of different types of social movements that are categorized as collective behavior, some of which are Messiah-driven.
Toward the end of the 19th century, Mexico was a difficult place to live as once again it was faced with revolution. Eighty years earlier the war of independence ended three hundred years of Spanish rule. Now, after almost 100 years of successive dictatorships, native Mexicans especially those of mixed blood, continued to suffer the cruelties of class status. Mexicans living in the cities had slightly more opportunity than those who led lives of solidarity on the countryside.
Beginning in the 1830s, successive wars, first with Texas and then with the United States carved away approximately half of the Mexican land mass and with-it untold wealth. The French Intervention (1864-1867) followed by fifty years of the Díaz dictatorship (1876-1911) did little to improve conditions in the countryside.
Throughout the 1930s, the Niño Fidencio regularly entered into trance states to receive spiritual messages. Trusted followers who transferred the message via longhand recorded more than 60 of those sessions. This never-before-known treasure trove of Sagradas Escrituras/Scriptures was known to only the innermost circle of Fidencistas. The first Escrituras were handwritten, transcribing Fidencio’s words while sitting alongside the Niño in a trance state before his death. Almost immediately after his death, the spirit of El Niño continued his communication, via trance, with his two leaders, la Directora and el Revisador. Today, some 200 pages of handwritten material known as The Holy Scriptures/Sagradas Escrituras of El Niño Fidencio serve as the basis of the Fidencista version of folk-Roman Catholicism.
The culto/cult of the Niño Fidencio developed a core of followers and an even larger group of casual believers. What was unexpected was that the faith in Fidencio would become transmittable with the migration of thousands of Mexican agricultural workers to the U.S.-Mexico border and the United States after his death in 1938. Many of the original braceros were in fact Fidencistas who immigrated to the United States via the Bracero Program carrying their belief in Fidencio with them (Samora, 1971).
This primary phase of the transmigration of Fidencismo took place between 1940 and 1965. In the years just before his premature death, Fidencio predicted to his followers that he was soon to be home to take his place with the Heavenly Father/Padre Celestial. He also announced that he would return often to continue his healing ministry through spirit mediumship with his primary followers. In the year before his death, Fidencio claimed continual communication with the three entities of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Hence, the cult of Fidencio became a northern Mexican, cross-border Christian folk-religion. (Ganster and Lorey, 2008, 2016).
Fidencio predicted that the number of mediums channeling his spirit would increase and that most would be false. Therefore, the primary mission of his Revisador was to venture to wherever there was an individual claiming to be a materia of El Niño Fidencio and to ensure that this materia was in fact truly channeling Fidencio. Víctor Zapata, el Revisador, traveled to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas visiting with original as well as with new materias.
La Directora y El Revisador - Fidencio’s Primary Staff
By 1932, the multitudes of people camped out in Espinazo were mostly gone. A trickle of sick and suffering continued the journey to Espinazo all through the1930s until the Niño’s death in 1938 and continuing after his death. As is the tradition in Roman Catholicism, Espinazo, rather than the residence of the Saint, became the burial and pilgrimage site of Saint Fidencio.
All through the 1930s, fierce competition for Fidencio’s time declined and a very real social organization arose. A cadre of fanatic believers, many of whom had been in Espinazo for more than 10 years, organized and scheduled activity into ritual around Fidencio’s behavior. There was a greeting committee along with an intake crew that performed a kind of triage determining the order in which the Saint would see people. The seriously ill were assessed and seen first and those who were less ill had to wait. The Niño’s followers organized a kitchen, which prepared food daily for all who were in Espinazo. No one had to worry about what they would eat or go hungry. Amazingly, the organization had a system that daily assessed how many people would eat breakfast and supper. Food preparers were in constant activity. Since there was no natural gas or electricity, cooking was done with wood that was collected daily. The fires never went out; another crew was responsible for cleaning the utensils. The State of Nuevo León’s health department constantly warned against disease and epidemics from filth neither of which was ever realized. The Niño Fidencio operated a hospital that was always full of people and has been converted into both a shrine and a pilgrimage site as the Niño’s tomb room. Those who remained after his death were the followers of his doctrine and committed to messianic and millenarian beliefs that El Niño Fidencio heralded the second coming of Jesus Christ. The New Jerusalem would be established in Espinazo and the Niño would sit at the right hand of Jesus Christ.
Víctor Zapata was the Niño’s closest assistant and designated as his first Revisador. During the decade of the 1930s, Mexican farmworkers began moving northward to the border and into the heartland of America. Many of the original materias relocated from Mexico to the American Southwest and Midwest. The role of the Revisador was to examine the rituals and cults of these materias and misiones abroad determining their validity. Víctor Zapata faithfully conducted this important task of the standardization of the cult of the Niño until his death in the 1970s. He singlehandedly kept the cult of the Niño Fidencio alive during World War II and into the 1960s.
The first 25 years after the death of the Niño were the most critical in maintaining this nascent cult alive and functioning. The war years, 1941-1945, put everything on hold and Fidencismo started up again around 1950. Víctor Zapata traveled throughout the United States and Mexico reviewing practicing materias claiming to channel the spirit of El Niño. As predicted by the Niño, many were frauds and not trance mediums and they were denounced. People living in the area of the fraud were advised that a certain trance medium was not channeling the Niño Fidencio.
In the early years, Fidencio was surrounded and protected by a handful of faithful believers from nearby villages and towns. One of those, Damiana Martínez was chosen to be the original Directora of the Niño’s cult; unfortunately, she died prematurely run over by the train. A hierarchy of authority developed from two primary offices, la Directora/director and el Revisador/reviewer. Both the original Directora, Damiana Martínez, and original Revisador, Víctor Zapata, earned the trust of Fidencio; holding the top two positions. It is important to note that the Niño Fidencio himself appointed Zapata, and he in turn appointed his daughter Panita to continue his work in Espinazo as he aged and declined in health. A direct line of succession continued as the Niño in Panita appointed David Donado to continue her work as Director and materia mayor as he did until the day he died December 2025.
Importantly, it should be noted that both Damiana and Víctor were accomplished materias/mediums as was David, regularly channeling the spirit of the Niño who communicated spiritual messages to them. Both in life and after his death, they channeled the Niño’s spirit in order to receive his directions for the movement and the continued development of his holy scriptures.
After the death of her father, Panita Zapata assumed the position of leadership that she held until her death in 2008. Panita’s authority was never questioned, as she was greatly loved and respected by all Fidencistas including by Fabiola.
Messianic leaders are universally charismatic. People follow them because they have personal characteristics, distinctive appearances, or mannerisms that captivate the audience. Most messiahs are heralded by unusual or unexplainable natural phenomena, such as the Star of Bethlehem signaled the birth of Christ or a comet streaking over Mexico City signaled the return of Tlaloc.
In Mexico, volcanic eruptions and the appearance of a comet in the skies over Mexico City set the stage for the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. These occurrences were thought to foretell the coming of the Messiah. In 1926, the unearthing of a monolith of Tlaloc in the central plaza in Mexico City was believed to prophesy the Aztecs return to power and regain their ancient rights (Harris, 2000).
Native priests who had witnessed the monolith’s burial by the Spanish documented this prophecy 500 years earlier. The priests concluded that after some indeterminable period of penance, the foreign invaders would be expelled and native culture and religion would be restored. What they could not have foretold was that the actual rediscovery of the monolith would coincide perfectly with the appearance of a Mexican Messiah in the desolate deserts of northern Mexico, El Niño Fidencio. Fulfilling the Mexican image of a redeemer, Fidencio Sintora Constantino came to the attention of the Mexican press in 1928, which coincided with President Calle’s persecution of the Roman Catholic Church.
The fact that the Fidencista movement had two leaders is a constant source of tension between members of the two groups, Panita’s group and Fabiola’s group. The relationship between the two powerful women was amicable since they had grown up together and had a profound respect and love for one another. Today, both women have passed. From 1938 to the 1970s, the authority of Víctor Zapata and then Panita was never questioned. It was the expressed role of Víctor Zapata to travel throughout Mexico and the United States at least once a year to every materias location with the expressed purpose of reviewing and teaching the Niño’s scriptures and rituals.
It was not until the Profesor Heliodoro González came on the scene that a formal organization or Centro was formed by Fabiola’s group called the Centro de Estudios Culturales y Espirituales Fidencistas, The Center for the Study of the Cultural and Spiritual Fidencista. Therefore, in the early 1970s some Fidencistas began to gravitate toward the formal organization finding membership in the Centro complete with a membership card to be more satisfying than the independence of Panita’s group. This is simply human nature. Panita’s faith, on the other hand, maintained through the Niño’s scriptures, believed that no formal organization or church was necessary or wanted (Gonzalez, Heliodoro, 1970, Centro de Estudios Fidencio).
La Revista HOY: 1937 - “Todavía hace Milagros El Niño Fidencio”
The final national media glimpse into Espinazo and El Niño Fidencio came in 1937, in the year before his death. The Mexican photographic magazine HOY/Today, Mexico’s equivalent of Life Magazine, offered an analysis of the events at Espinazo, 10 years or so after the media blitz of 1928 (Hoy, 1937).
The fact that Fidencio foretold his death months ahead of time confused many people. He always stated that it was time for him to leave that he was being called home. Fidencio said that after his death, there would appear many who would claim to be him. So, he reminded everyone that there was only one Fidencio and to be aware of frauds and charlatans. He asked that the veracity of all claiming to be him be challenged.
Fidencio came to be regarded as a living folk-Saint during his lifetime. Media interest in his healing power waned after a few years, but Fidencio showed no more concern about the loss of newspaper attention than he had shown interest in his previous celebrity status or in money. He often said that his mission on earth was not to be famous, but to ease humankind’s pain. In the end, numerous attempts to exploit him failed and he died as he had lived, a simple peasant.
In the late 1930s, only a few dozen persons disembarked daily from trains. Gone were the post and telegraph offices of eight years earlier. The desperately ill, stripped of hope by the doctors or, with no doctor at all, continued to journey to Espinazo in search of a personal miracle. Many returned home, disappointed, each day.
“I do not even know how to write, sir,” Fidencio remarked to the Hoy reporter. “I only use the gifts of healing that God has given me to help these suffering people.” A photograph’s caption in HOY reads, “Behind him, the life-size statue of Christ from whom he claims his power; before him, the suffering people who have left with cures that defy medical explanation as well as those who will never leave” (Hoy, 1937).
Some left healed, others left feeling better, some left feeling worse, others never left at all. However, all those who did leave left believing that Fidencio had done for them what no doctor could do. Almost all considered him a holy man somehow anointed and they begged for his blessing as he raised his crucifix to the heads of his followers. The article asked, “What sort of man is this, who could have been one of the wealthiest and most powerful in Mexico? What sort of man gives away more than one million pesos? What sort of man is this who prefers to live a peasant’s life, who shuns even a bed to lie on, and who walks barefoot through the dusty streets of Espinazo to care for the suffering?” (Hoy. 1937)
The paradox that Fidencio’s life presented to the Mexican people further served to support his legitimacy as a beneficiary of supernatural abilities sent to earth by God to heal the sick, to ease the suffering and to spread the word of the New Jerusalem and the return of the Messiah.
The article in HOY did not speculate about Fidencio’s sanctity or whether the government should step in to save the region from epidemic. Now aging and tired, he simply and humbly attributed his success to God and reiterated that he had not asked to be chosen for this life. God, having selected him, required him to fulfill his destiny in the service of the poor and suffering. “I am, in fact, nothing more than a simple peasant following the will of God.” Almost from the outset of his brief media fame, Fidencio had predicted his early departure. He daily emulated and acted out the life of Christ, as he understood it. His protectors actively modeled religious symbolism around him, perpetuating the suggestion that El Niño Fidencio was the Messiah, the return of Christ.
El Niño’s life in Espinazo mirrored that of Christ and his followers expected him to die in 1931, at the age 33, like Christ. That he lived almost until 40 years of age surprised many of his followers. When he did not die at 33, the faithful proclaimed en masse that he was given a divine extension. Word of his death on October 17, 1938 traveled as quickly as the telegraph and railroad lines could convey the news. From beginning to end, El Niño Fidencio had only 10 years to treat the ill of Mexico and serve the poor.
However, before his death, he prepared his followers, informing them that he would return in one form or another. With the hope of his resurrection as a healer, the sick would not allow Enrique to remove the Niño’s body from where it was laid out in the Casa Grande. His followers simply would not allow his body to be removed to the cemetery for burial. Enrique was forced to bury Fidencio inside the Casa Grande in Espinazo and that is where his remains are today. Many of his followers expected the “resurrection” of the Niño, as he entered a trance three days earlier. Little did they know that a new era of Fidencismo was not ending, it was just beginning.
He created what we now know as cajitas/materias or little boxes, called materias and today some are deacons or ministers of the Church IFC. Each year in Espinazo from March 17-19, his saint’s day is celebrated and from October 17-19, his birthday is celebrated with grand fiestas, including fireworks, parades and castillos. Therefore, every year a number of materias possessed by the spirit of Fidencio come together in Espinazo for a communal healing ceremony for those desperately in need of a miracle or those who are giving thanks for a miracle received.
The proliferation of healers channeling an assortment of entities other than Fidencio, encouraged the López de la Fuente González family to take control of the situation that was rapidly spiraling of control. By 1975, the Niño’s fiesta was attracting some of the most bizarre spirit practitioners as well as numerous people practicing witchcraft. Additionally, there were numerous unusual people, men dressed as women and women dressed as men. Transgender as well as other oddities abounded at the Ninos fiesta, all having nothing to do with El Niño Fidencio. While these people could not be forcibly removed from Espinazo, it was critical that the ordinary pilgrim understand that these strange spirits did not represent Fidencio. When the Panita group applied for church status, the Mexican government responded that Mexico did not need another gay church. This is how Fidencio and Fidencismo came to be considered a gay celebration. In the founding of the Centro (precursor of the IFC) it was believed that the precepts of Fidencio could be monitored and enforced, thus protecting the innocent from charlatans but that never happened..
I am proud to report that during my research at the National Mexican Newspaper Archive, Hemeroteca at UNAM in Mexico City, I located an original copy of HOY magazine. It was virtually forgotten and unknown to contemporary by Fidencistas in Espinazo prior to my discovery. Today; HOY contains very significant photographs of the Niño taken approximately one year before his death. These photographs give us a glimpse of Fidencio’s fragile physical condition in the year before his death and are very revealing, documenting his aging and weight gain and even possibly the probable cause of his death, cirrhosis of the liver. This was concluded by his yellowish skin color after a lifetime of drinking the jerez or brandy produced on the hacienda.
Today, the seminal photographs in Hoy of the 40-year-old Fidencio are invaluable and are displayed in most Fidencista households and altar rooms due to my fortuitous discovery and generous reproduction. No doubt a discovery directed by the hand of the Niño Fidencio himself from the spirit world.
Hoy’s significant exposé provides an intimate view of the Niño’s last year of life. This rare photojournalistic account depicts scenes that are familiar even today, since Espinazo has changed little since 1938. The enigmatic paradox that Fidencio’s life presented in Hoy, to the Mexican people further served to support his legitimacy as a beneficiary of supernatural abilities sent to earth by God to heal the sick and to spread the word of the New Jerusalem/Nuevo Jerusalén.
While El Niño Fidencio was growing in fame, the Roman Catholic Church was under a direct assault from the Mexican government. The Roman Catholic Church was viewed as not attending to the basic needs of most Catholics. This was especially true of rural peasants/campesino-Catholics.
The Cult of the Niño Fidencio - “La Increíble Historia que Convirtió a Espinazo en Centro de Atracción Mundial”
As noted previously, cults typically develop around charismatic leaders and by 1935 an organized cult had developed around El Niño Fidencio in Espinazo. A central problem confronting most cults is the continuation of the movement after the death of the leader. Rarely does another leader with equal charisma step in to replace the original leader. Interestingly, the Niño anticipated this negative effect and trained trance mediums who spread out across northern Mexico and Texas and into the Midwestern United States so as to continue his work in the underprivileged Latino communities.
The cult of the Niño Fidencio developed out of the Niño’s religiosity and the routine of everyday life in Espinazo, especially after 1930. The developing cult mimicked Roman Catholic rituals, and declared that the Niño was an instrument of God and that the materias are instruments of the Niño. Fidencistas on both sides of the Fidencista movement (Panita and Fabiola) have unadulterated love and faith in Fidencio to solve health and personal problems.
Modern Fidencismo therefore may be classified into four identifiable groups:
1.) Followers of Fabiola daughter of Enrique and the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana IFC;
2.) Followers of Panita daughter of Víctor Zapata who consider themselves Roman Catholics;
3.) Independent Fidencistas organized around unaffiliated materias; and finally:
4.) Individuals who are Roman Catholics not belonging to any Fidencista group and nevertheless consider Fidencio a folk-saint.
With reference to the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana, IFC, the IFC Church requires people to follow its rules and rituals and become members of an organization that is now formalized. The independents can do whatever they choose; however, people who have registered with the Church must follow Church rules.
Fabiola was named head of the IFC, and today Ariel manages the affairs of the IFC, and his brother Gerardo handles all legal matters. They celebrate Mass, giving communion consisting of bread and wine and point out that the bread and wine are not consecrated or converted into the blood and flesh of Christ as in the Roman Catholic Mass.
Today one of América’s daughters, Magdalena Ibarra López de la Fuente, has taken on the responsibility for the management of the Niño’s Casa Grande and Niño’s Tomb and has lived there permanently for the last 25 years. America was the sister of Fabiola and was a permanent resident of Espinazo.
The Roman Catholic Church does not understand Fidencismo, as they see the world in black and white. Fidencismo is not black or white it is a syncretic version of both. The Niño, they say, was an imitator of Christ and so some say that the IFC mimics the Roman Catholic Church; at the outset, this was largely true, but not today.
David Donado Zapata, who inherited the leadership of Panita’s group in 2008, says that the Niño is the same as any other Roman Catholic Saint; devotion to God comes first followed by devotion to the Niño. Jesus empowers and authorizes the Niño’s power to heal. David who assumed leadership upon the passing of Panita, died in December, 2025 serving as leader from 2008 to 2025.
Ariel González, Fabiola’son, the other hand, declares that the Niño oversees an independent church and would never want to be associated with the Roman Catholic Church: “we have our own rituals, beliefs, laws, etc. Ariel says one thing is to be a Fidencista and quite another to be Roman Catholic.” Others say that the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana IFC is still identical to the Roman Catholic Church. I say that it is a cognate but different. “My God is Catholic but my Saint is Fidencio.” Fidencistas baptize babies both with Fidencio and the Roman Catholic Church covering all angles but the purists of the IFC say that is inherently wrong. The minority of Roman Catholic priests assert Fidencio fools the people and that his leaders manipulate their followers. I have not found the accusation of manipulation to be accurate.
Old school Fidencistas believe that Roman Catholic Pope Pius XI in 1928, validated the Niño by sending a message carried by a messenger pigeon flying from Rome to Espinazo, as improbable as that seems. However, most believe that the Niño could never be canonized a Saint because of the hatred of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. However, wisely, one prominent Roman Catholic Bishop stated: “Fidencismo is not a problem for the church; it is an indicator showing us that we need to evangelize more, accept them all in.” “A person who is well informed in the church does not need to join a cult” say the Roman Catholic leadership. “The church should welcome these people (Fidencistas) into the church not run them off. As long as there is belief and need for magic, Fidencio will exist.” Importantly, the Niño never claimed to practice magic. (Ariel, 1990)
The Niño is miraculous no matter who believes it or not and many alternative lifestyles accept Fidencismo. Fidencismo is finesse-oriented and accepts all who come to him including berdashe, gay, lesbians, and transsexuals. Fidencismo accepts all lifestyles no matter whom or what they are as long as they believe in Fidencio.
Throughout Fidencismo, there are many effeminate and gay materias and members but the two Fidencista organizations are not concerned with their sexuality only that they are followers of Fidencio. The two groups have risen above the discrimination of alternate lifestyles unlike the Roman Catholic Church (Pérez, 2014). Fidencismo will continue to grow as long as people have needs. The Niño does not want us to gain financially from his faith. He is now a legend and a folk-Saint seated next to God the Father. Charisma, by nature, is unstable. It can exist in its pure form only so long as the charismatic leader lives. The challenge for followers is to create a situation in which charisma, in some form, persists after the leader’s death.
In other words, charisma must be routinized and institutionalized in a bureaucratic form. Bureaucracies are, by definition, organizational structures that have specialized positions, lines of authority, positions based on merit, and written policies that regulate the behavior of people in the organization. Vested interests play a major role in preservation of the cult of El Niño Fidencio. Espinazo has become one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in Mexico and remains so today. Legions of faithful, along with those seeking a miracle, journey to Espinazo year after year and it is an economic engine as well. Many in and around the small community earn their living by serving visitors to Espinazo. The Fidencista movement has developed a liturgical calendar similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church, integrating within it the centuries-old, Native American agrarian calendar that is divided into quarters of three-month periods. The Fidencista religious cycle also combines traditional Roman Catholic and Native American practices in celebrating the cult of holy persons and their burial places are revered as sacred sites.
There are numerous Native American influences in Fidencista celebrations. This is dramatically evidenced through Matachine dancers; pounding drums with native bows and arrows in hand, winding up the main penitent path enroute to the El Niño’s tomb. Matachine groups are devoutly religious in favor of a Saint or a parish such as the Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico City, and now El Niño Fidencio.
As El Niño Fidencio became a prominent folk saint, religious objects bearing his likeness began to appear in markets and pilgrimage sites throughout Mexico. Massive emigration of Mexican workers into the United States between 1938 and the present have also spread El Niño’s fame. Today, religious artifacts bearing his likeness can be found in an untold number of home altars in Texas and throughout the Mexican American communities of the American Midwest and Southwest.
The widespread representation of El Niño as a Saint greatly enhanced the popular belief that he was sent to Earth by God to heal the sick and counsel the needy. This has led to his dual characterization as the Divine Doctor/Divino doctor, and as the lawyer of the poor. El Niño’s physical appearance, simple mannerisms, biblically styled tunic, gentle alto voice, and beardless face further enhanced his growing mythic and cult-figure status. It is not surprising that followers sometimes refer to him as the Christ of Espinazo.
Before his death, he had begun to act out scriptural events, emulating the life of Christ and other Bible stories; further supporting his cult status. El Niño had an uncanny ability to anticipate questions and provide accurate answers while delivering spontaneous and profound orations on complicated religious topics. Like Jesus Christ, El Niño chose to deliver his spiritual messages by using a combination of parable and allegory and often staged simple plays to demonstrate his point.
In his book, “The True Believer,” Eric Hoffer explains how people are drawn to cults and what the difference is between a cult and a mass movement. Hoffer states: “There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement. In its revivalist phase, it appeals to that intent on bolstering and advancing the cherished self, to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause. If they join as full converts, they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence, and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements, and prospects of the movement”. This excerpt from True Believer perfectly captures the events that overcame the followers of Fidencio both during his life and especially after his death. The following passage perfectly depicts the events and emotions of the fiesta in Espinazo (Hoffer, 2010, Smith, 1977). “There can be no doubt that in staging its processions, parades, rituals and ceremonies, a movement, (or cult) touches a responsive chord in every heart. There is exhilaration and getting out of one’s skin in both participants and spectators. Thus, the true Fidencista is swallowed by the movement as it moves into the heart of the believer” (Hoffer, 1910). In her book, “A Heart Thrown Open” Dore Gardner says it best, Fidencio captures peoples hearts (Gardner, 1994).
The Niño’s Heals with A Spirit - “Los Creyentes, Llegarán Buscando Alivio a su Dolor”
El Niño Fidencio told his followers specifically that he would communicate with them through spirit mediums after his death. He warned them that many would claim to be he; “Review them very carefully,” he said, “Because only a special few will truly deliver my message.” Immediately after his death, Damiana Martínez and Víctor Zapata, both disciples of El Niño living some distance from Espinazo, began to enter into trances and channel messages from El Niño from beyond the grave. Telepathic messages from El Niño became a defining feature of the Fidencista cult. Roman Catholicism provides the basic tenets underlying Fidencismo and many believed that the Pope in Rome sent the Niño a certificate of authorization for the continuation of the delivery of the Roman Catholic sacraments .
Spirit channeling of Fidencio, however, and the resulting shift in focus away from Jesus Christ are the primary reasons Fidencismo is not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Catholicism strictly forbids the celebration of catholic rituals by any person not officially ordained a priest. Following El Niño’s death, trance events created a complex system of spiritual communication with his followers who were not ordained as Roman Catholic priests but celebrated Roman Catholic rituals. The practice continues to this day, as part of the routinization of charisma.
In the waning months of 1938, the organization for the perpetuation and sustainability of the cult was set in place in anticipation of the death of Fidencio. The Niño’s closest assistants in life became revered as his primary disciples. Damiana was recognized as the principal trance medium/bocina principal of El Niño Fidencio on earth and the overall leader of the movement. She was the first to occupy the position of la Directora/the director. Víctor Zapata was charged with denouncing false voices. His duties evolved into the el Revisador/inspector general in the early years.
Fidencista leadership made a conscious effort to remember and record the messages received from El Niño Fidencio. Since illiteracy was common in rural Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s, El Niño’s spiritual messages or scriptures/Sagradas Escrituras had to be learned by memory and repeated often until an opportunity arose for them to be transcribed, and I have accomplished the difficult task correcting spelling and grammar and organizing them in my book, El Nino Fidencio: Libro de las Sagradas Escrituras (Zavaleta, 2013).
Approximately 75 holy scriptures/Sagradas Escrituras have survived, forming a coherent core for the organization, including the emergent belief system, celebrations and rites and the nature of the interaction between the followers and the spirit of Fidencio. For petty political reasons, the Niño’s holy scriptures have not been embraced by the IFC but they will someday serve to unify Fidencismo.
Missionary Efforts - “Del Pais y el Extranjero la Afluencia en Niño Fidencio”
After the death of the Niño, local neighborhood misiones were established outside of the immediate desert towns and villages in northern Mexico. Major Fidencista strongholds developed in every major Mexican city in the north including Monterrey, Saltillo, Torreón, Gómez Palacio, Reynosa, Matamoros and Guanajuato and especially in the U.S. border towns. In addition, misiones or templos developed in areas where Mexican migratory agricultural workers settled, such as in Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and wherever Braceros settled.
Each local mision was founded around a trance medium called a materia or cajita. The continued success of local misiones was also dependent upon the group’s ability to identify members with a spiritual gift, or don, for the continuous development of new mediums. For this reason, the Fidencista experience has always welcomed and encouraged the participation of children, who are viewed as potential mediums and spirit channelers.
Almost without exception, founding mediums in the 1940s were female heads of large families. They managed the difficult tasks of raising families, which was complicated by the growing demands on their time from increased activity in their rapidly growing misiones. Female materias also served to empower women in the Mexican American community as valid religious ministers something the Roman Catholic Church does not allow.
At the time of his death, Fidencio was entombed in his hospital room; his followers did not allow his remains to be removed to the cemetery. The establishment of this tomb, now a shrine propelled Espinazo’s status as a pilgrimage site to even greater heights.
Miracles are often associated with sacred sites. Today, the needy and the faithful come to Espinazo, seeking and receiving miracle cures in the burial room known as La Tumba/the tomb. Mediums often live great distances from Espinazo but are encouraged to make the trip when they are able. Many make the pilgrimage more than once a year, often at great financial difficulty. Mediums and their followers sometimes acquire property in Espinazo and build adobe compounds that are used to house their followers when they visit. During the fiestas, Espinazo is packed with automobiles and pickup trucks bearing license plates from a dozen U.S. states and an even greater number of Mexican states (Nájera-Ramírez, 1997).
Pilgrimages to Espinazo, now referred to as the Holy Land/Tierra Santa, form the core around which the events of the year revolve. Local misiones are always preparing to go to Espinazo or have just returned with wonderful stories to share with those who could not make the trip.
Local mediums serve both as advisers and as healers, so throughout the year the faithful receive the benefit of healings, concessions, wishes granted, and have their personal problems addressed. The personal receipt of a miracle creates a spiritual debt/manda that is owed to the granting Saint or spirit or by Fidencio himself. It requires that the recipient perform a penance of gratitude and travel to the Holy Land/Espinazo to pay off the spiritual debt and to give proper thanks for their miracle.
Once the recipient has made the promised trip to Espinazo, he or she has fulfilled the obligation, the manda, and performed the penitencia. This process is repeated during the lifetime of a supplicant , needed and guarantees that there will constantly be members of a local mision returning to Espinazo. In addition, those who have received a miracle in their lives serve as a constant marketing tool in the Mexican American community attracting new recruits. Their testimonies draw a steady flow of new and needy persons to the medium’s local healing mision. Fidencistas are often devoted to particular Roman Catholic Saints and stage regular pilgrimages to Roman Catholic shrines throughout Mexico, such as San Juan de los Lagos and the United States as well.
In the 1940s and 1950s, la Directora and el Revisador became the living representatives of El Niño Fidencio on earth as well as the sustaining forces behind continuing the cult. Between 1938 and the early 1970s, the Fidencista movement continued to grow in strength and numbers with an expanding geographic sphere of influence. The liturgical cycle became fully established, including the semiannual fiestas, and a broad network of functioning local missions was developed.
The Fidencista Movement After his Death: 1945-1970s - “Mexicanos y Extranjeros Visitan al Taumaturgo”
The decade of the 1940s and the early years after his death, between 1938 and 1950, was a period of great consequence for the Fidencista movement. A small group of his assistants, left their families, and remained in Espinazo to maintain the Niño’s house and his affairs.
A small but steady stream of believers continued to make the pilgrimage to Espinazo during these early years, not allowing the memory of the healer to fade. The leadership of the nascent cult led by Víctor Zapata and others was continuously in contact with the Niño through spiritual messages, and so therefore, these spiritual messages form the basis of the Niño’s Holy Scriptures. The Niño literally reached out from the spirit world to direct the continuation of his earthly misión.
Simultaneously, many members of the peasant class, which had gathered around the Niño in Espinazo, were recruited to the Bracero Program moving northward across the border and into the American agricultural heartlands. Some of these true believers began to receive spiritual messages themselves; they developed the gift of healing and met with the needy regularly, both to heal and to deliver the Niño’s message. These were the first new materias after the death of Fidencio.
Meanwhile, Víctor Zapata received orders from the Niño to visit these remote communities in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Washington, California, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in order to verify that the local materias or trance mediums were practicing the word of the Niño according to his wishes. Thus, regular songs, prayers, and rituals were established and followed uniformly. Zapata became the Revisador who was responsible for the verification of rituals and the authenticity of all materias, thus the regular fiesta and pilgrimage cycle began.
The development of Niño’s cult was an extremely slow-moving process and continued gradually through the 1960s. Espinazo was mostly desolate. In the decades after World War II, gone were the throngs of needy people hoping for a chance to see the Niño Fidencio. Several of the faithful including Don Enrique and his daughters maintained the Niño’s house in an orderly condition but the local barnyard animals continued to amble through the building, looking for a shady place to rest away from the relentless desert sun.
The Fidencista Movement: 1973-2025 - “Peregrinaciones al Santuario del Niño Fidencio que Sigue Haciendo Milagros Espirituales”
Two very important events shaped the Fidencista movement during the 1970s, saving it from disappearance. First, Enrique López de la Fuente, the Niño’s benefactor, died leaving his eldest daughter Fabiola responsible for the Casa Grande and secondly, the leadership of the cult with the heavy burden of the maintenance of the cult of Fidencio. She accepted this mandate with great humility and faith.
Fabiola married Heliodoro González, an up-and-coming educator in Nuevo Leon who took interest in Espinazo and the Niño. In the early years of their marriage while raising three boys, the family made frequent visits to Espinazo where her sisters still lived. Heliodoro had a vision for Espinazo and the acumen to jumpstart the cult of the Niño Fidencio. It was at this time in 1973, that Heliodoro established the Center/Centro for the study of Fidencio, a registered public association in Mexico (González, 1998).
The other important factor guaranteeing the survival of the cult of the Niño Fidencio, and, the growth of the cult of the Niño. Ciprianita or Panita, daughter of Víctor Zapata; who was also willing to make the life-changing commitment to Fidencio; moved from her home in Coahuila to Espinazo. She replaced her father as Rrevisador in a leadership role after his death in the 1970s. Her unfailing commitment to the Niño Fidencio continued until her death in 2008. Panita will forever be remembered as a loving mother and materia mayor/head medium, leader of the unincorporated Fidencista movement. She was succeeded by David who has now also died.
The mid-70s was a critical juncture for the Fidencista movement. On one hand, madre Panita was revered as the supreme leader of the movement and all roads led to her door. During the ensuing years, including the decades of the 80s and 90s, Panita was the undisputed and beloved leader of the unincorporated Fidencistas. It was during this time after the death of Victor Zapata that the Niño Fidencio continued delivering his spiritual messages which led to and the creation of his Sagradas Escrituras speaking spiritually through Panita.
However, like any religion in its early years, the storm clouds of schism formed. After the death of Víctor Zapata, Fabiola claimed authority through descent; ostensibly, that the Niño Fidencio was her adopted brother legitimizing her claim as head of the cult. Years ago, Enrique had announced to the world that he had adopted the Niño Fidencio. While no malice was intended or ever discovered, this undocumented claim allowed Enrique to have control over the legal and economic matters of the Niño, as a father would have over any minor child, but the Niño Fidencio was not a minor child.
The personal relationship between Panita and Fabiola remained cordial and warm over the years with Fabiola showing a profound respect for Panita. After all, Fabiola is not a trance medium, while Panita was. Therefore, Panita can and did before her death, receive messages directly from the Niño while Fabiola did not. The second tier of leadership that surrounds them has not fostered any consternation that could have existed between these two powerful women.
On Fabiola’s side, Heliodoro and his sons aspired to leadership and administrative roles in the cult, while on Panita’s side, the small circle of second-tier leaders and organizers supported her and planned to succeed her. This is not any different from the College of Cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church. Most Cardinals have no interest in being Pope but it simply takes two who do to make it viable and interesting. Panita was a humble leader of her flock who was not interested in being the supreme leader. In fact, she did not believe that there should be a leader on earth, the leader was Fidencio.
Fabiola, the Profesor and their sons on the other hand were moving toward the creation of a formal church, a religion with the combination of faith and bureaucracy. In 1993, their dream came true when Mexico once again legalized religion and allowed them to file their application establishing Mexico’s first wholly Mexican religion, the Iglesia Cristiana Fidencista IFC. What was formerly the Centro de Estudios Culturales y Espirituales Fidencistas under the direction of the Profesor and Fabiola, quickly moved toward the formation of a religion with all of the aspects of an organized church with Fabiola as the patriarch.
The Fidencista Movement: 1989-2026 - “La Fuerza de sus Materias”
The official Fidencista Christian Church IFC was founded in 1993 and since that time has progressed in the development of a liturgy, a membership, and church hierarchy. While the Panita Fidencistas maintain a large market share of all Fidencistas and materias under her leadership both in Mexico as well as in the United States.
During the 88 plus years since the death of El Niño, skeptics have insisted that his memory would fade in time and eventually disappear completely. In fact, the opposite has happened. Today, Fidencio enjoys an unrivaled popularity as a healer and counselor in the pantheon of Mexican and Mexican American folk-Saints and Catholic Saints. In the United States, the continued popularity of El Niño Fidencio is due to the fact that the largest group in the Mexican American community trace their origins to southern Texas and northern Mexico, the land of Fidencio.
Thousands of believers today are loosely organized into socio-religious communities based on healing temples or misiones located in local neighborhoods. The Fidencista movement is supported at its most basic level by local spirit mediums, materias. Hundreds of misiones support hundreds of thousands of regular followers as well as untold numbers of one-time or episodic visitors to the misiones for healing and counseling.
The growth of Fidencismo is enhanced by an informal system of oral communication that operates effectively in the Latino community. The structure and function of Fidencista misiones in Mexican and Mexican American communities is based on faith and the unavailability of local medical or religious care. Individuals who seek healthcare at Fidencista misiones fall into three general categories.
The first, consists of a small inner circle of faithful followers and assistants. A second, large group consists of regular attendees at prayer meetings. These individuals regularly participate in weekly healing sessions and in special temple activities. The size of the regular group is dependent upon numerous complex factors including the current popularity of the trance medium. The third group consists of persons seeking treatment on an episodic basis. The size of the third group depends upon the success of the informal, word-of-mouth network established by the regular group.
Most of the regular members of a Fidencista temple make weekly appearances for simple blessings/bendiciones and positive emotional reinforcement. Ritual sweepings, barridas or limpias in which the healer uses a sweeping motion with herbs or special sacred objects, are used to rid the patient of malas vibraciones/bad vibes and envidias/envy or witchcraft spells placed against them.. Almost without exception, regular members have received a miracle from El Niño Fidencio at some point in their lives, and thus fortifying their belief in Fidencio.
In difficult cases that require continued benefaction, the recipients are expected to remember to whom they owe their good fortune. Offerings are gladly accepted but followers are never charged. Loyalty is demonstrated by regular appearances at templo functions and by the general support of temple activities and the materia.
First-time visits to a Fidencista healer are usually prompted by a serious physical, emotional, personal, or economic problem in the life of the visitor. Contrary to popular belief, people who seek physical care from a spiritual folk-healer/curandero do not do so as a first choice, having visited a counselor or doctor beforehand without success.
Almost without exception, physicians have been consulted first. If medical therapy has not been successful, alternative therapies, especially miraculous treatments, are sought. Every Fidencista mission has a regular group of persons who provide impassioned testimony concerning impossible and miraculous cures that have been documented through the intercession of El Niño Fidencio with God on their behalf. That is, the petitioner asks El Niño Fidencio to intercede on their behalf with God to grant a miracle. Chronic ailments requiring secondary or ongoing care commonly go untreated in the Mexican American community. Therefore, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and similar life-long ailments are common in El Niño Fidencio’s patient load and treatment continues throughout their lives.
Mexican-American folk-healers or curanderas/os treat physical ailments in a variety of ways. They work on the natural or material, the mental, and or the spiritual levels. Material-level treatment in Fidencista temples is consistent with techniques and remedies found in nonspiritual healing traditions. The material and mental levels of treatment are common, but require spiritual treatment, directly from the spirit of El Niño Fidencio or some other Saint, and is more highly valued (Trotter and Chavira, 1997).
Healers are said to work spiritually when in a trance state. Individual spiritist healing sessions usually follow a similar pattern. The patient is greeted by the spirit and returns the salutation. The initial greeting is followed by a personal discussion, with the spirit of Fidencio, about a personal problem. In physical ailments, El Niño, working through the healer, immediately approaches the problem, using a combination of techniques. These include massaging , cleansing and sweeping and, in serious cases, spiritual or actual surgery. Often, El Niño prescribes a remedy that may be a mixture of herbal and religious items and requests that the patient follow some prescribed or ritual at home then make a return visit to the temple, usually on a weekly basis.
The average number of visits to El Niño Fidencio for physical ailments is equaled or surpassed by visits for other personal reasons. Although many of these consultations are of a serious nature, involving major family problems, many are simply routine visits by the faithful for emotional reinforcement, like attending the weekly six-step therapy program.
Research has consistently shown that the Mexican American community is severely underserved in all aspects of healthcare. In the United States, mental health treatment has become commonplace but does not regularly include Latinos. Ethnic stereotypes continue to promote myths suggesting Mexican Americans are poor and happy not requiring mental and emotional healthcare. The stereotype continues that they lead well-adjusted, simple lives, free from the common emotional and mental health problems experienced by middle-class Americans. This stereotype supports the contention that Mexican Americans are not in need of mental healthcare, which is totally false.
Consequently, the fastest-growing population in the country has little or no access to even minimal healthcare, especially mental health care. Because of these high growth rates and the fact that the Mexican American population is disproportionately poor relative to the general population, we can expect alternative healing systems like those of curanderas/os and Fidencismo to continue to thrive. In almost every other country in the world, including Mexico, lay practitioners, with limited medical support, care for approximately 80 percent of the population’s physical and emotional needs.
El Niño began his spiritual life by serving the physical and mental health needs of the population. However, an important dimension of the movement that bears his name is its emergence as a folk-religion. Throughout Latin America, native belief systems have comingled with Roman Catholicism producing syncretic systems. The syncretic hybrids produced are thriving alternatives to an often disinterested and unresponsive Roman Catholic Church and medical practice(Barrera, 1978).
Fidencismo does not seek to replace Roman Catholicism but simply to be accepted by it. The rejection by the Roman Catholic Church of this movement further alienates huge segments of the Mexican American population. Many Latino Roman Catholic parish priests are openly sympathetic to their parishioner’s belief in El Niño Fidencio but are fearful of their superiors.
The Fidencista movement’s true charm and charisma, which attracts an ever-growing number of persons to its ranks, is its profound piety. Its strong belief and faith represent an attempt to emulate Christ in their lives. Fidencismo never ceases to amaze the observer with the beauty of its mystical simplicity. While one feels compelled to explain its mysteries, the more they are explored, the more it is realized that they are not meant to be explained only lived (Lira, 1980).
The Niño’s Death and Burial - “El Milagro de Lázaro se Repite”
Almost from the beginning of his brief media fame, Fidencio predicted his early departure from this earth. Daily he emulated and acted out the life of Christ. His protectors actively modeled religious symbolism around him; perpetuating the suggestion that the Niño was the Messiah, the second coming of Christ.
One of the most significant stories that has multiple versions concerns his mysterious death. He predicted his death several months in advance telling his followers that he was being called home to be with God the Father. He attached black mourning ribbons to many of the doors in Espinazo indicating that someone had died. Finally, he is reported to have told his closest assistants that he was going into a deep trance and would be in that state for three days and not to allow anyone to declare him dead, that he would return. The similarity to the story of Christ’s Resurrection is significant.
As predicted, the Niño lay down, entering what seemed to be a trance state but three days passed and he did not revive. While his followers were convinced, he would return as predicted, Enrique and others believed he was dead. Medical examiners were called to Espinazo from nearby Mina, and believing him to be dead, cut his jugular vein which spurt out copious amounts of blood. This event is the basis of the controversy of his death. Some say that he was killed by this act, and that he was still alive although there is no proof of that. Others disagree, saying the decomposing body created the pressure and heat which expelled his blood through the severed jugular vein.
Many conspiracy theories were developed around the circumstances of Fidencio’s death. Why would the Niño enter a trance state saying he would revive in three days if he knew he was going to die? As far as we know, the Niño was not sickly or near death. The followers of Panita are generally the believers in the theory that the Niño was still alive while the descendants of Enrique and followers of Fabiola believe he died. Some say that Enrique sent the doctors to kill him while in his extended trance state but this is very unlikely.
When he died, the telegraph system went crazy; people from the surrounding ranches began to flock into Espinazo; trains from all points began to arrive with people who wanted to see his last miracle, his resurrection from the dead. The authorities attempted, but were not allowed, to remove his body from his house so his gravesite was dug and he is buried on the spot where he died.
From beginning to the end, El Niño Fidencio had only 10 short years of life to serve as a symbol for the poor and to treat the ill and the forgotten of Mexico. Almost immediately, after the media frenzy of 1928 and 1929, his popularity in the media began to decline. During the early 1930s, the Niño was almost constantly under fire by the agents of public health and medicine and in later years, the Roman Catholic Church as well. He was arrested and brought before tribunals in Monterrey on two separate occasions, on both the charges were dropped.
Fidencio had the strange ability to read minds, and when, Dr. González of the health department came to review Espinazo, Dr. Gonzalez asked Fidencio numerous and complicated questions about medicine, and Fidencio was able to answer all of the questions accurately. The doctor’s report stated that there was no reason to bring charges against Fidencio and the final report was positive. To this day the ghost of Fidencio regularly appears in the Casa Grande and other places in Espinazo. This period of relentless attack was unquestionably the most crucial period of his life, because while his celebrity in the media declined, his fame and popularity with the common people soared.
It must be recalled that Fidencio Constantino was a simple man who never sought celebrity, who shied away from the endless crowds of admirers and who rarely would look directly into the eye of a camera. From the outset he declared that his purpose and mission on earth was to care for the ill who approached him and that he had absolutely no interest in fame or wealth; he was solely a servant of God.
What Killed El Niño Fidencio? - “Más Ataques Contra a Fidencio”
The second theory of how he died is more of a medical one but not substantiated since an autopsy was not performed. From the 1937 special issue of HOY it can clearly be seen that in his final year of life the Niño gained weight. From numerous eyewitness accounts, the Niño rarely ate, slept very little, and was constantly given a jerez/brandy produced at the hacienda to drink. This jeréz/brandy is said to have had very high alcohol content and was said to have been the only thing that kept him going.
The magazine HOY also remarks about his yellowish skin color, implying that the Niño was having trouble with his liver. It is not fair to say that the Niño was an alcoholic in the normal sense of the word; however, a steady diet of brandy over a decade would most probably produce early cirrhosis of the liver and that more than likely caused his death. It is also believed that he had numerous physical peculiarities and they must be taken into account in the cause of his death as well. We will never know for certain.
Espinazo: Mexico’s Holy Land/Tierra Santa - “Espinazo Convierte en la Nueva Jerusalén”
A 1964 newspaper report described Espinazo as a deserted desert village, and most of the people who lived there are named Fidencio. They stated that in the 88 years since his death the hundreds of shacks and tents had simply crumpled back into the earth and blown away.
There are a few adobe structures remaining for the locals. The few pilgrims who arrive at fiestas go to the Niño’s tomb to pray and leave petitions for miracles. During Fidencio’s time there was not a single car or pickup or any other motorized vehicle in Espinazo. People moved around on foot or on donkey or by a wagon pulled by mules they called the “express.” News in the 1960’s however, state that, “Over the years with the resurgence of Fidencio and the rise of materias, Espinazo in the 1960s and 70s became a circus with gambling, prostitution and drinking.” In the early years of the fiestas and especially during the 1950s and 60s, Espinazo lost its innocence in the rivers of beer that flowed and with dozens of commercial gambling enterprises arriving from Monterrey including, “Palenque/cockfights, professional women and gay men.”
Espinazo was more like a circus than a religious pilgrimage site. “No one is surprised to see pilgrims performing a penance on the street with child in arms moving past dice games and all manner of painted men dressed as women and women of the night.” This was the dark side of the fiesta that was forced out of Espinazo by the 1980s. Faith is blind and the fiesta goes on regardless of the unsavory individuals that might attend, While on the main railroad line to Mexico City, the waterless Espinazo could barely support a skeletal population on a meager subsistence of corn plots called milpas. Espinazo had greater potential than most ejidos, because it was bolstered by the devotees of the Niño Fidencio who seasonally make pilgrimages to his burial site. In some cases, the Niño’s original helpers living in Espinazo remained until they reached their senior years, dying in Espinazo. But a few were still living in 1988 when I first arrived. It is estimated that the population of Espinazo in the late 1980s was no more than 100 permanent residents. Due to its extreme location and with little incentive to invest in the ejido, the county/municipio of Mina, Nuevo León found no reason to develop its rural infrastructure.
However, with its infamous past and illustrious resident buried there, Espinazo awaited an important destiny. By the end of the 1980s, Espinazo witnessed a greater level of visitation and activity promoted in Mexico by the release of Nicolás Echevarría’s award-winning film The Child Fidencio: The healer of Espinazo, about Fidencio the Taumaturgo, the miracle worker. As a result, support of the two major semi-annual fiestas in March and October was renewed and people began to flow back into Espinazo (Echevarría, 1980).
Sacred Ritual Sites - “Instrumento de Mistificación”
Additionally, several important ritual sites in and around Espinazo are thought to be sacred and frequently visited by pilgrims. There is a vast mountain range lying across the desert plain, about 10 miles away from Espinazo. The Niño was known to frequent many sites in the region including the Cerro de la Campana, La Gavia, and Puerto Blanco all outside of Espinazo proper.
After the revolution, and because of land reform, the large haciendas of the north and throughout Mexico were divided up into communal farms called ejidos. Tens of thousands of acres became communal farmland granted to whomever would work them. At first, the landless peasants grabbed the fertile lands of the central highlands of Mexico, but as time passed the more remote, desolate and less productive land was distributed. It was so with the deserts of the north. Espinazo was fortunate in that it lay along the nation’s main rail line, but still there was little water and eking out a life was tenuous, and nearly impossible.
Slowly the Mexican counties/municipios did their best to improve the infrastructure of these remote ejidos. The hacienda of Espinazo that was renowned for its grape growing and wine making was converted to an ejido barely able to scratch out life on the desert. Ejidatarios seldom had the skills necessary to continue the large operations of haciendas. The revolution had as it promised provided the campesinos with land but at what cost to the economic productivity of Mexico. Today, Mexico does not produce enough corn to support its population and must import corn from the United States and beyond to feed its population.
Even during Espinazo’s pre-revolutionary days, fewer than 50 people lived on Teodoro Von Wernich’s hacienda. When this research began in the late 1980s, Espinazo was home to fewer than 100 permanent residents with two types of people living there: the ejidatarios and the people who support the pilgrimage site. When I began my travels to Espinazo in1988 there were stone ruins of the actual hacienda building remaining but today they are gone. The stones have been salvaged for construction and reinforcement of new adobe homes and other buildings in modern Espinazo.
The families of the ejidos of the northern deserts lived on small plots of land that have been cleared for dry-land subsistence farming. Scant crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, chili, and other essentials are grown along with limited fruit-and-nut bearing trees. As one drives across the desert following the unimproved caliche trail, you literally view small oases sheltered by trees whose taproots have reached the water table or an underground stream.
Families survive with a small herd of goats producing milk, cheese, and occasional meat. Roast kid known as cabrito/milk-fed goat is a popular delicacy of northern Mexico. Only the most fortunate family has a horse although many have donkeys that serve as pack animals. Other barnyard animals found at northern ejidos include chickens, ducks, and turkeys. The availability of harvested food supplemented with limited protein from eggs, milk and meat is how the hearty people of the desert survive. The life expectancy is low, and conversely, the infant mortality rate is high on the desert.
Only recently has butane gas and electricity arrived at the ejidos on the desert and some deep-water wells have been dug such as at Agua Nueva a few kilometers from Espinazo. In spite of the harsh existence, the desert is a beautiful place ringed by the numerous mountain ranges in this fossil-rich region of Nuevo León and Coahuila.
El Pirulito - “El Árbol Milagroso y los Medicamentos Maravillosos”
The central arrival point at Espinazo is the railroad crossing, and immediately across the tracks on the right are the remains of the Niño Fidencio’s sacred pirul tree. The original pirul has been lost to drought and lightning strikes but a new pirul has been replanted numerous times so that there is always a pirul present in Espinazo. The pirul is a very aromatic and rapidly growing tree with a heavy production of oil and gum so anytime it is touched it leaves a heavy resin with a pleasant aroma.
The sacred pirul tree is one of the most sacred locations in Espinazo and is revered by all. The pirul is the location of the Niño’s first revelation and encounter with a supernatural deity who bestowed upon him the gift of healing. The importance of the pirul is such that all arriving and departing Fidencistas perform the arrival and departure rituals by circling the pirul three times counterclockwise while singing the arrival and/or departure songs.
Additionally, the pirul is the central starting point for all processions and penitencias that move up the Avenida de Dolor/Avenue of Pain to the Niño’s tomb and the fiesta begins and ends at the pirul. It is also a major gathering point for healing during the fiesta. On the day of the Grand Parade/Desfile General, a Roman Catholic Mass without priest is celebrated, thousands of pilgrims are gathered and one of the Niño’s sacred scriptures is read aloud. During the days of the fiesta, the pirul is never alone as materias love to gather around the tree to perform their individual healing rituals for their groups in a ring around the pirul tree.
Day and night, there are materias performing impromptu healing sessions at the pirul continuing late into the night and early morning hours. This event is especially interesting because this is when the many alternative and foreign spirit entities secretly emerge from the shadows, congregating at the pirul in the late night and early morning hours. The common child spirits of Aurorita Prado, Tomasito Herrera, and the Santo Niño de Atocha, are always present along with Pancho Villa, Spanish gypsies, Native Americans, and numerous Roman Catholic Saints. Allegedly it is believed that the Virgin Mary joins them late at night and even the spirit of Jesus Christ will make an appearance. Many of the materias channeling this assortment of strange spirits are gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender males and females who have adopted the fiesta as their sacred performance venue. It is far enough from urban centers of Monterrey and Saltillo that they are left alone (Johnson, 2011)
In addition to trance mediums and their followers, numerous Matachine dance groups perform. All of the dance groups are associated with a particular mision back home, sometimes great distances from Espinazo. They dance around the pirul and up the avenue with their misiones and penitents led by their materias as they proceed. Because their unmistakable dance step requires them to slap the ground with their enhanced flapping sandals, the air in Espinazo is always thick with dust (Gilles and Treviño, 1994).
The sacred tree, el pirul (California Pepper) is one of the most significant locations in Espinazo and where the Niño received his spiritual calling. Not only is it centrally located, it serves as the initiation point of both arrival and departure to and from Espinazo. All groups are expected to make three caminatas vueltas or turns around the tree while singing the appropriate arrival songs announcing the groups misions arrival and departure.
The songs are led by the primary cantor and the coro is sung by the whole group. Once the appropriate arrival ritual is completed the senior or lead materia directs the entire group up the Avenue of Pain to the Niño’s tomb announcing their arrival. The columna as it is called, in a very orderly fashion, then enters the Niño’s tomb room to pray and pay respect. Nobody is expected to get out of order, every action is directed by the materia principal. In large groups there may be multiple materias present in an order of hierarchy and led by how long they have been members. These parades also include children in training who come last.
The quarter of a mile from the pirul to the tumba is known as the Avenue of Pain, and is where those members planning to complete a penitencia either roll or progress on their backs, or using some other method, make their way from the pirul to the Tomb room, thus completing their promised painful thankful penance for a miracle received. From the moment the group arrives in Espinazo all movement is regulated by the senior or lead materia and her helpers. This is a very serious and solum event. The member has made a promise for a miracle they received, and are giving thanks. The spirit of the Niño is believed to be present and is frequently seen in his tomb room in spirit form.
La Avenida de Dolor - “Frenéticos Creyentes Buscando Alivio”
The well-worn trail from the pirul where all processions begin leads to the Niño’s Tomb and is about a quarter of a mile long. This Avenue of Pain, as it is called, is lined on both sides by small stands hawking religious paraphernalia of all sorts. When first encountered in the 80s this route truly was an Avenue of Pain for those completing a penance. The main street in Espinazo was nothing more than a rocky trail waiting to dig into one’s knees or back inflicting pain and injury. It was not unusual to see the bloody result of penance as the penitent reached the Niño’s Tomb. Penitents had to be supported with holy water and spiritually by their materia who guided the suffering and crying agony toward the tomb of the Niño Fidencio.
During the peak days of the fiesta, there are so many people moving up and down the Avenue of Pain that it is difficult to negotiate it; and unless you have a reason to be there, it is wiser to walk the back streets. This is especially true when there are arriving and departing columnas on the thoroughfare. A columna or column is the name given to the double row of faithful and their penitentes representing a localized misión or trono/throne. The trono is where the materia of the Niño Fidencio, prince of princes, has her/his healing altar and sits while channeling the spirit.
A materia arriving from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, or from Fresno, California, with his/her group marches and sings up the street; in a traditional column men are on the right side and women on the left with the penitents in the middle. The column is led by the head materia of the group since the larger misiones may have several materias including materias in training. Some columnas are small and humble while others are extremely large and elaborate with color-coordinated clothing and silk capes.
Each misión has its identifying flag/bandera and standard/estandarte. All of the banderas are rectangular carried by two women and depict the Mexican tri-color flag and national symbol. The estandarte is much more elaborate and carried by men. It is held upright and is typical of standards carried by religious and musical groups in Mexico and Spain. The estandarte has the identifying image of the Niño Fidencio or some other Saint taken from one of his known photographs along with the designated town and barrio they represent and with the date the misión or trono/throne was founded.
For example, the first misión/trono founded in Texas is that of la Hermana and materia Nieves Carrión in Robstown, Texas. Her estandarte bears the founding date of 1962 and the number 1. The estandartes are very colorful works of art and the Niño’s research project has collected photographs of hundreds of them.
La Casa Grande
From 1926 onward, huge amounts of cash and gold coins were left for the Niño at Espinazo. This is known from eyewitness accounts but what is not known is what happened to that money or how it was spent and by whom. As far as we know, there was no accounting system and it is probable that huge fortunes vanished. However, we know that a fortress-like compound called the Casa Grande as well as a smaller building directly across the street were built for the Niñe at great expense and survive to this day serving as the Niño’s Tomb and Panita’s quarters. The foro as well as the living quarters for the López de la Fuente Family are located in the Casa Grande. Panita’s quarters are located across the street in a substantial multi-room building.
We do not know if the Niño was capable of supervising the design and construction of these compounds. I would say it simply did not interest him but someone had to be in charge of design and construction. The large building that survives in Espinazo today was comprised of his personal quarters, his hospital and maternity ward as well as a rather large room with a stage used for entertainment called El Foro.
We do not know if the Niño appointed someone to be in charge of entertainment but we do know from eyewitness accounts that there was ongoing entertainment including performances by the Niño himself.
The Niño’s staff and traveling companies produced allegorical plays, musicals, carnival-like performances, and other events including hosting black-tie dinners for wealthy dignitaries. We know this from photographs and scant surviving newspaper articles that refer to them. Any number of wealthy socialites pursued the Niño proposing marriage, and asking him to move to Monterrey, Saltillo and or Mexico City.
The Niño never showed any interest in a romantic liaison. Throughout his short life, the Niño stayed completely focused on his mission to heal the sick and relieve suffering. However, someone had to have been organizing activities especially where the wealthy were involved. At one point, it was in vogue to attend galas in Espinazo with the Niño. We don’t know who was in charge of the Niño’s social calendar or responsible for the invitation list. We do know that the galas were impressive events, including beauty pageants.
Upon his death, his followers would not allow his body to be removed from where he died on his bed adjacent to his hospital room and in the arms of his lifelong friend Enrique. A crypt was dug in the floor beneath him, so the Niño was laid to rest on the spot near where he died. Since Enrique López de la Fuente was very much alive and in charge of Espinazo and raising his girls in the Niño’s house, they retained possession of the Niño’s Casa Grande after his death as they do today. Through the years after his death, Enrique’s daughters have taken varying interest in the desert facility and today retain possession and control of the Niño Fidencio’s tomb and primary pilgrimage sites. Under Fabiola’s leadership, they have also created a formal religion registered by the Mexican government, Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana, A.R., Reg. de Gob. No. SGAR/175/93. One other quasi-right of ownership or control comes from the fact that their father Enrique claimed to have adopted the Niño as his son. This was not a formal legal adoption, but regardless Enrique’s daughters seem to be the rightful heirs.
Cipriana Zapata de Robles, Panita, on the other hand, is the daughter of Víctor Zapata, the Niño’s Revisador. When her father died in the 1970s, she was asked to move to Espinazo to take control of that part of the Niño’s compound right across the street from the tomb. From the 1970s until her death in 2008, Panita lived there and served as the undisputed leader of the non-church-affiliated Fidencistas, Iglesia Católica Apostolica Fidencista en Mexico Independente.
Today, Panita’s heir, David Donado Zapata, died in December 2025 and has left Panita’s group with questionable leadership. Panita had a large group of followers that includes most, if not all, of the Fidencistas living in the United States as well as a very large number of those who were faithful to Fidencio through Víctor and Panita in Mexico.
At the beginning of my study there were two very identifiable groups of Fidencistas, each loyal to their respective leader. Fabiola and Panita grew up in Espinazo and both knew and worked with the Niño when he was living. The Fabiola group has been consolidated into a formal religion registered in Mexico, with rules and regulations while the Panita group has always appeared to me to be the more traditional of the groups in their independence. They do have certain rituals taught to them by the Niño, but the Niño never had any interest in forming a church. For the most part, the schism between the two groups has always been cordial, equal, but they maintain separation. Fabiola’s group has a church while Panita’s group, in recent years has attempted to form an official church without success. The Mexican department certifying churches stated that one Fidencista church was sufficient.
With Panita’s health declining, in her final years two very significant things occurred: the relationship between the two groups cooled and Fabiola’s group attempted a takeover of Panita’s group. This attempt to unify the two Fidencista groups was not successful due to the sheer size, force and diversity of Panita’s group.
It has always been my contention that a single Fidencista group and organization church or not, would benefit all Fidencistas in the face of continued review by the Roman Catholic Church as well as, the government, federal, state, and local officials. In all probability, as the present generation of leaders’ passes, the two great groups of Fidencistas, the Church IFC and the followers of Panita, will merge into a single group of Fidencistas. When that happens, it will be to their advantage but it will take some time for them to realize the advantage.
A final nuance to Fidencismo is the fact that there are individuals including trance mediums that are not affiliated with either of the two primary groups. These people have come to Fidencismo of late and do not have any generational legacy or connection to Espinazo. They operate outside of the context of organization and heritage. They simply want to worship the Niño for what he has done for them in their lives. For the most part when in Espinazo, they do not participate in the formalized rituals and conduct themselves as they see fit. For them, the publication of the Niño’s Holy Escrituras is an important guide for their future participation.
The Niño’s tomb is located in the Casa Grande where he died. Local officials attempted to remove his body for burial as is customary in Mexico but his throngs of believers, would not allow his remains to be moved. He lay in repose and when it was obvious he was dead he was entombed. They believed that, Like Jesus Christ, he would return to life on the third day. The Niño’s remains have never been disturbed and certainly not exhumed or removed to the cemetery. Thus the Niño’s tomb room is of utmost importance as the Holiest spot in Espinazo. The Niño’s tomb is under constant care and surveillance.
The Niño was buried in his infirmary in the front of the building along the front entrance on the Avenue of Pain where penitencias are performed. One enters the Tomb Room from the street and proceeds through a room toward the Niño’s Tomb. The building and all of its spaces were carefully designed to provide ample room for both a residence and now the all-important tomb room. During any given fiesta, all attendees numbering in the thousands file through the tomb room at least once and often more times depending upon what their materia would have them do. Enrique’s daughters grew up in the building now containing the tomb of the Niño Fidencio so it is expected that Enrique’s children would assume ownership. After all, it was their home and they grew up in this building.
The sacred tree, el pirul, is one of the most significant locations in Espinazo and where the Niño received his spiritual calling. Not only is it centrally located, it serves as the initiation point of both arrival and departure to and from Espinazo. All groups are expected to make three caminatas or rounds around the tree while singing the appropriate arrival songs announcing the groups misions arrival and departure.
The songs are led by the primary cantor and the coro is sung by the whole group. Once the appropriate arrival ritual is completed the senior or lead materia directs the entire group up the Avenue of Pain to the Niño’s tomb announcing their arrival. The columna as it is called, in a very orderly fashion, then enters the Niño’s tomb room to pray and pay respect. Nobody is allowed to get out of order, every action is directed by the materia principal. In large groups there may be multiple materias present in an order of hierarchy including children in training.
The quarter of a mile from the pirul to the tumba is known as the Avenue of Pain, this is where those members planning to complete a penitencia either roll or progress on their backs, or using some other method, make their way from the pirul to the Tomb, thus completing their promised painful penance for a miracle they received. From the moment the group arrives in Espinazo all movement is regulated by the senior or lead materia and her helpers. This is a very serious and solemn event. The penitent has made a promise for a miracle received, and is giving thanks. The spirit of the Niño is believed to be present and is frequently seen in his tomb room in spirit form.
With the creation of the Centro and then the Iglesia, the tomb building is firmly under the control of the descendants of Enrique López de la Fuente. This is true for both his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Enrique loved to tell tales of ghosts and Fidencio’s ghastly appearance throughout the Casa Grande.
One cold December night when trying to sleep in one of Panita’s rooms, there was a tug on my sock and with one weary eye open the Niño Fidencio was standing at the foot of my bed. By the time I could get both eyes open and sit up, he had vanished. I had been alerted by Panita’s people that this would probably happen to me and it did.
El Charquito: The Healing Pond - “Cocimiento con Yerbas Misteriosas”
The Camino Real/King’s Road winds through the desert from Saltillo on its way northward to the Rio Bravo at Del Rio, Texas. The Spanish did not establish this route. They simply followed the ancient Native American footpaths that connected one fresh water spring to the next. Many of the springs in this area are hot sulfuric springs, considered by Indians and Spaniards alike to be medicinal and curative. In early historic times and during the major part of the year, the only way the desert may be successfully negotiated was by knowing where the springs are located.
Fidencio also knew that the muddy sulfur waters were curative and he had a small pond about 50 feet in diameter and two-feet deep constructed right outside of the Foro called El charquito.. The muddy water of Puerto Blanco was hauled from the natural spring some miles away, to his newly constructed pond. In addition, he assigned a crew of volunteers to keep it resupplied so there was always water in the Charquito, then and now.
The Niño’s healing pond the El Charquito by all and is one of the major rituals stops while at the fiesta. It is a required stop for many of the materias and their misioneros who have incorporated its visit into their ritual circuit while in Espinazo. During the days and nights of the fiesta, the Charquito is constantly packed with materias, andtheir followers, as well as an assortment of children just playing in the mud. The Charquito is a muddy, mess, yet the faithful have no problem entering the water followed by the ritualized, obligatory three dunks. The believers emerge covered from head to toe with sulfuric mud caked on their bodies, and they do not wash it off until told to do so by their materia. After all, it is believed to be curative and to heal many of their ailments.
During the fiesta, it is quite a sight to see a recently emerged spiritual column walking along the Avenue of Pain soaking wet and covered with stinky mud after their bath at the Charquito. So far, I have avoided being dunked in the Charquito, although I have been told that if I have true faith, I will do it someday. I am still waiting to summon the courage. In my days in Espinazo, I have seen every manner of vile infection and illnesses enter that water. However, the true believers swear that there is never a negative consequence or illness resulting from being dunked in the Charquito.
I would often sit for hours by the Charquito during the fiesta taking video, photographs, conducting interviews and making informal assessments of the virus, bacteria and all manner of illnesses that enter the water. I have been told repeatedly that no one ever gets sick as a result of their Charquito experience, but I am not convinced. I do respect and admire their blind faith, however.
There is an interesting story about the Charquito that is now part of Espinazo lore. It says that the Niño Fidencio had a golden book/Libro de oro of remedies (which is highly doubtful) and when the Charquito was being built and the cement-form cast he asked that it be buried beneath the concrete so as to provide miraculous cures for all who enter it for all time. Most Fidencistas I have met consider this story to be gospel.
El Charco (Charquito): is a mud pond just outside the tomb room and is a favored destination for many materias who direct their followers for a bath at some point during their visit to Espinazo, however, mud baths are optional. The Avenida del Dolor: Is the main avenue running from the Pirul tree to the tomb. It is named as such due to the painful penitencias which are performed there. Each materia directs their column of penitents along the Avenue of Pain up to the Niño’s tomb. Those members who have decided to perform their penance are singled out and perform between the two rows assisted by their materia.
El Foro: Fidencio’s Meeting Room - “Enferma Mental Completamente Curada”
El Foro/The Forum is a large room in the rear of the Casa Grande that was constructed for the Niño in the 1920s, and while he personally had little use for it, it was the location of frequent theatrical presentations, parties and banquets. The largest part of the house is this large open room with a theater stage. It is also commonly used for larger meetings and retreats, especially during the fiestas when both Panita and Fabiola gathered their followers there to hear the Niños spiritual message.
During his lifetime and at the peak of his fame, the Niño or his promoters produced allegorical plays performed in the Foro. Today, both groups of Fidencistas, Panita’s group and Fabiola’s group, utilize the Foro for their regular gatherings and meetings.
After the Grand Parade/Desfile General, the followers of both Panita and Fabiola gather their people in the Foro with the two leaders on stage. This is the only time during fiestas that Panita and Fabiola come together before Panita’s death as the collective leadership of the Fidencista movement; and it is truly magical. Fabiola characteristically defers to Panita, a trance medium, channels the Niño, and delivers a spiritual message to the combined groups. All Fidencistas are encouraged or ordered to attend.
Madre Panita’s loyal followers consist of hundreds of the original materias formed after the death of the Niño in the 1940s and 50s, and their descendants and followers. That group now numbers in the thousands and is the third generation of Fidencistas. The children of the original materias and their children have taken on materia status with their own misiones, many in the United States. Very few of the original materias are still living today while their children and grandchildren carry on their traditions throughout Mexico and the United States. The location and founding number of their temples are emblazoned proudly on their standards.
During the fiesta, the Niño in Panita, is seated in a large room called El Foro/the forum or the theater, built for the plays and musical events that were popular with the Niño and his followers. During his lifetime, admirers would surrounded the Niño clinging to his garments, caressing and stroking his hair, and kissing his hands and feet. After they greeted him, they approach him seeking his advice and counsel. Fidencio was always dressed in a white tunic and barefooted. He was described as serene and intelligent; with a “rare” skin color that was a mixture between brown and white, almost a yellowish color, with thick lips, a full set of large teeth and light brown eyes that he chooses to avert from the intrusive glare of visitors. Some have suggested that the aversion of his eyes was to protect the innocent from his powerful gaze and the danger of inadvertently causing evil eye/mal de ojo and other illnesses.
One governmental health official who visited Espinazo was immediately ushered into the presence of El Niño Fidencio upon his arrival and he meekly extended his hand which was not reciprocated by Fidencio who preferred not to touch him. El Niño asked two of his young helpers to show their guest whatever he wanted to see. Most interesting to the doctor was a room with many bottles filled with tissue and tumors extracted by El Niño. These may still be seen in Espinazo today. The doctor claimed to identify many as obviously benign tumors and commented that the most highly trained surgeons of the day would not have dared attempt those extractions in their offices, implying something remarkable about an untrained curandero performing such surgeries with broken bottle glass on the ground.
The doctor from Monterrey was sent to Espinazo to investigate and he was escorted to all of the places described in dozens of newspaper articles that had appeared during the previous two years. He visited the corral at La Dicha de la Santa Cruz where the mentally ill and the lepers were quartered. He viewed the maternity ward and the post-operative room as well as the columpio/swing used to treat the mute. He witnessed the massive daily production of herbal medicine and the Niño’s famous healing mud pond/El Charquito. He was stunned by the orderliness of the place, and remarked that Fidencio was playing hospital like a child albeit in real life. None of this could possibly work, none of this could possibly be effective, he thought, as the first and then the second and finally, the third funeral procession of the day filed by.
La Dicha de la Santa Cruz
As the gathering at the Foro and around the Charquito conclude Panita’s group participates in a beautiful event at la Dicha de la Santa Cruz, a large desert pan just behind Espinazo where the Niño’s stockade for the insane, mentally retarded and lepers was once located.
At this ceremony, all of the misión flags and standard-bearers line up in an enormous circle covering many acres with the majestic mountains as a backdrop. They assume their places within the circle according to the date each began their misión, beginning with 1938. At the head of the circle, Panita once again channels the spirit of the Niño who bestows upon the assembled group a singular and special message. La Dicha is a flat desert pan located directly outside of Espinazo and is where El Niño would house lepers and the insane. It has significance in that during each fiesta all of the materias take their columnas along with their banderas and estandartes forming a beautiful giant circle. When assembled Panita in a trance state, would channel the Niño for a special spiritual message for all of her people gathered there..
Cerro la Campana - Miracle Hill
One of the most sacred locations at Espinazo is Cerro de la Campana/Bell Hill. The torturous and painful trek to and from the hill is truly a cathartic experience, due to the unimproved caliche trail. Most materias make the painful trek barefooted. This is also a favored destination in Espinazo while at the fiesta, since the others, la Gruta, la Gavia and Puerto Blanco are more remote and difficult to access. The Niño Fidencio is said to have loved to get away from the crush of the crowd in order to contemplate and meditate often in trance where he received his spiritual messages. Once when he had disappeared for several days, he was found high upon Bell Hill/Cerro de la Campana. The cerro became one of his favorite places as well as one of the primary ritual sites Fidencistas visit during the fiesta.
The faithful follow their barefooted materias up the hill for both a lovely view of the desert below and a special cleansing and healing ceremony. Often, a picnic lunch is provided and the faithful spend several hours lounging on top of the hill. In recent years, entrepreneurs have placed makeshift portable lunch wagons at the base of the hill that provide prepared food and enjoy constant attention. Only the heartiest of materias deep in a trance state can manage the two-mile hike to la Cerro de la Campana/Bell Hill barefooted. Not all materias even attempt the walk barefooted but those who are pure of heart and spirit do and are highly respected for it. The desert trail is nothing more than a crushed limestone or caliche trail. The chunks of limestone will cause the normal foot a tremendous stone bruise if not negotiated carefully and can result in cuts and bloody feet that I have often seen. However, I have seen many materias in trance run over the rocks unscathed as if walking over hot coals.
The rest of us, not granted such faith, drive the distance, and simply hike up the small hillock that rises about 500 feet above the desert floor. A weatherworn trail easily guides the seeker up the hill without danger as long as he/she stays on the path. The top of the hill has a small cinder block shrine of recent origin and dozens of large wooden crosses that decorate the top of the hill.
Modernization: 1988-2016 - “Salubridad deja en Paz al Curandero”
My first trip to Espinazo in 1988 was a trek across the Coahuiltecan desert as primitive and beautiful as any off-road drive through a wasteland can be. The 25 or so kilometers off of the Monterrey to Monclova highway to the ejido of Espinazo consisted of a barely improved trail across the desert along a dry riverbed with occasional rises, not passable during rare deluges. A two-wheel vehicle could negotiate it on a good day but any other time it required a four-wheel drive vehicle.
Today the entire distance from the Monclova highway to Espinazo is improved, raised, and paved. I sometimes long for the original experience but the investment made by the State of Nuevo León and the Municipio of Mina have wisely enhanced accessibility and hence the positive economic impact of the pilgrimage site. In the early days, decommissioned school buses would hazard the drive but never the large commercial buses, for there was simply too much liability for those vehicles if they broke down.
Unlike today, arriving in Espinazo, there were few if any cinder-block structures; the majority of the few permanent structures were adobe, the primary construction material. The main street, the Avenue of Pain, stretched from the pirul tree up to the Tomb and was lined with single-story adobe structures and the street itself was simply graded from the natural limestone and river rock that was native to the area. The golf-ball sized rocks along the vía were often the cause for bloody backs and knees as the pilgrims completed their painful penances at the Niño’s Tomb. They were fulfilling their promise or manda.
Even though each passing misión over the years attempted to remove the rocks from the roadway, they always seemed to find their way back as if by magic or as if the Niño replaced them himself for the next penitent to atone for their sins and give thanks for a miracle received.
The caliche roadway is now gone, the road is beautifully paved with curb, gutter, and sidewalk, most of the quarter mile to the tomb lined with beautiful archways on either side. Recently, the combined parties of the State, Municipio, and Ejido, along with two Fidencista organizations have improved the overall look of the main via so that today it appears to be a substantial site. Additionally, the tomb, a room in the Niño’s house, has been re-plastered and painted producing an overall appealing venue for a pilgrimage site complete with colorful murals.
Today, many misiones from both Mexico and the United States have invested heavily in cinder-block structures; gone are most adobes, and many of these block structures are two stories with elaborate altar and healing rooms. Espinazo continues to grow as a tourist destination and as such will continue to be improved as individuals and organizations realize economic gain from its improvement.
La Fiesta: Ancient Earth Religions: Penance and Peregrination Heal - “Concentración de 135 mil Enfermos”
In his book, “The Liberating Spirit: Toward a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic,” Eldin Villafañe examines the role and importance of the fiesta in Latino culture. This article may extend his thesis to an examination of how the fiesta is played out in Espinazo in the cult of the Niño Fidencio. Villafañe describes the Latino fiesta as follows:
“The fiesta in Latin American culture and society is deeply meaningful. The fiestas patronales/patron saints (such as El Niño Fidencio), are typical throughout the Latin American world. Religious and non-religious events in the calendar year mark the occasions that are the basis of a marvelous sense of community that celebrates life through fiesta.” (Villafane, 1993).
Roman Catholic theologian Virgilio Elizondo places the fiesta in an even more primal context, “The happiness and joy…is immediately obvious to outsiders. The tragedies of their history have not obliterated laughter and joy…fiesta is the mystical affirmation that life is a gift and is worth living…. In the fiesta the Mexican American rises above the quest for the logical meaning of life and celebrates the very contradictions that are of the essence of the mystery of human life” (Elizondo, 1983).
It should be noted that the Mexican fiesta is based in folk-Roman Catholicism and Villafañe describes the importance of the worship of Saints. Elizondo’s fiesta is very different from the indigenous cargo cult fiestas studied by American anthropologists in southern Mexico and Guatemala in the 1960s and 1970s. Anthropologist Waldemar Smith in his book, “The Fiesta System and Economic Change,” states that one distinguishing feature of the fiesta system is the extraordinary costs that families bear during their year in office in the cargo cult. “Fiesta sponsors are expected to hire ritual specialists, perform considerable ceremonial labor, and host a fiesta complete with food, drink, and musical entertainment for other members of the community” (Smith, 1977).
The labor and expense of the Fidencista fiesta is very much the same but the funds are accumulated by the materias and their followers in their hometowns and subsequently invested in a fiesta played out in Espinazo at the Niño Fidencio’s pilgrimage site (Villafañe, 1993 and Sánchez-Walsh, 2003).
Waldemar Smith points out that: “The fiesta system (in Mayan communities) is less a cause of the Indians’ cultural and social status than a consequence of how Indians have been integrated into Mesoamerican colonial regimes. Exclusion of Indians from cosmopolitan social life, coupled with their subjugated economic position and their freedom in running their own community affairs, are the larger conditions that motivate fiesta sponsorship.”
This is exactly how I characterize the fiesta system in Espinazo, Nuevo León, a celebration in memory and honor of El Niño Fidencio. Fidencio was a barefooted kitchen boy who rose to folk-Sainthood. His fame as a thaumaturgo/miracle worker and curandero comes from the attribution of the people he helped and not from self-promotion. As in the description of the indigenous fiestas above, the followers of Fidencio are themselves more often than not at the bottom of the Mexican economic scale. Additionally, they suffer from exclusion from cosmopolitan social life that is combined with their subjugated economic position.
In addition to the thousands of regular Fidencistas, it is also appropriate to mention that Fidencista subculture includes gay, lesbian and transgender communities of the large metropolitan communities of Monterrey and Saltillo. During the fiestas at Espinazo, these outcast classes find an acceptable outlet for their spiritual and ritual performances without fear of reprisal or physical harm (Tudela, 2000).
Fidencistas celebrate two major fiestas of the Niño Fidencio in Espinazo each year: the first in March commemorating Saint Joseph and Holy Week, the other in October commemorating both the birth and death of the Niño Fidencio. There are also several other important celebrations during the year coinciding with the Roman Catholic calendar such as at Easter, Semana Santa/Holy Week and Navidad/Christmas in December-January, Candlemas/Candelaria on February 2nd and finally a celebration of the summer solstice on June 24th, celebrated for Saint John the Baptist (Durán, 1980).
To me, it was immediately obvious that the four primary Fidencista celebrations are the approximate dates of the four cardinal celestial celebrations corresponding with the solstice and equinox, the oldest religious traditions on earth. This cannot possibly be a coincidence. In fact, while interviewing the indigenous Huichol and Chichimeca groups of extended families who walk across the deserts of northern Mexico to attend the fiesta at Espinazo, I learned that by attending the Niño’s fiesta the remaining indigenous peoples of the desert are able to celebrate the rites of their ancestors as well as those of the Niño. This was a true revelation for me and added great meaning and understanding of the fiestas in Espinazo.
The regional native tribes survive in a subsistence way of life in the surrounding hills and on the desert. For them, the old system of hunting and gathering is very much alive. They are the humblest people I have ever met and are generally not noticed as one drives across the desert, over hills and mountains often camouflaged by the chaparral, but they are there. After a three-day walk across the desert, arriving hungry and without resources for their return, the native populations of the desert joyfully join the celebrations of the Niño Fidencio confident that financial contributions will be made to fund their walk home. I am sure that you will agree that a six-day walk across the Chihuahuan desert is a grueling penance in itself. The thought of a three-day walk to the fiesta followed by three days of fiesta and then the returning three-day walk home, totaling nine days was incomprehensible for me and an indication of deep faith.
I found that almost everything Fidencistas do includes pain and sacrifice well beyond what I could imagine. It was a great honor to serve these Chichimecas, as the Aztecs referred to them. Any benefaction, helping them with a few dollars for water, tortillas and beans for the return walk to their desert homes was a propitiation to their gods and spirits and greatly appreciated by them. Over the years I became friendly with numerous groups of the indigenous people of the desert .
Interviewing dozens of persons over a 50-year period, from the Fidencista leadership to the common pilgrim, the fact that their four celebrations correspond to those of ancient earth religions is not a part of their normal comprehension while the fact screams out at me. The fact that I was on a desert in northern Mexico celebrating the movement of the cosmos and the change in seasons is always very moving and gives the Niño’s celebration greater meaning.
I have traveled to and experienced dozens of fiestas throughout Mexico, on my personal and spiritual odyssey. Seasonal fiestas are played out in every region of Mexico and by every native group. The Niño Fidencio’s fiestas in Espinazo are spectacular by any definition and I have never understood why Mexicans mostly ignore them. Maybe it is because they are seen as too primitive or pagan for the Roman Catholic Church, or maybe because there are no accommodations for the arriving pilgrims, or as the ignorant think it is simply a gay celebration.
From my very first fiesta, in search of the El Niño Fidencio, I was unknowingly directed toward Cipriana “Panita” Zapata de Robles. There were several reasons for this. In the beginning, Panita reached out to me; sending a request that I visit her. I did and without ever having met, she offered me the protection of her home and most importantly, her support, love and food. On my first trip in 1988, she revealed that the Niño told her that he was sending her a person with special talents to assist her earthly mission and the publication of the Niño’s Holy Scriptures. She believed that person to be me and I graciously accepted her confidence. I had no idea that by accepting I was embarking on my own lifelong pilgrimage/penance, and I was named the Niño Fidencio’s secretary, a designation I hold today and have taken very seriously.
In the early years, it did seem that my involvement with Panita and her Fidencistas was more than serendipity. Over the years and on numerous occasions, Fidencistas have identified my spiritual calling or don/gift as the Fidencistas storyteller. In a non-literate society, the keeper of memories, the teller of tales is a crucial station, an undertaking I wholeheartedly accepted for the Fidencistas.
Years later, she said, “I knew you were coming and the role you would play because Fidencio had announced that he was sending a person, who through his talent and hard work would perpetuate and strengthen the Niño’s mission on earth.” She identified me as that person and later during a spiritual session, Fidencio declared to the collected hierarchy of Panita’s group that I was to be regarded as the Niño’s secretario/secretary, an appointed office I hold today (Panita, 2008)
Beginning with the fiesta of 1988, when we first met, until her death in 2008, Panita treated me as her son and I, in turn, called her mother/mamá. While I still travel to Espinazo today and enjoy the safety of Panita’s home, she is gone now and only her memory remains of how much love she offered and the sadness of separation I felt each time I packed my truck to return home after a brief stay in Espinazo. However, the continued awareness of Panita’s spiritual presence in Espinazo is tangible.
I heard Fidencio’s name for the first time on my grandmother’s cotton fields in the 1950s. I will never forget the feeling of love, safety, and protection that both my grandmother Mamá Conchita and Mamá Panita provided me. Espinazo reminded me so much of my grandmother’s ranch and her love. Panita’s primary concern was that I be safe and secondly that I be well fed. I will, to the end of my life, remember being called on the streets of Espinazo to come to Panita’s kitchen table where something good to eat was always waiting for me.
I recall that initial sensation of feeling like an interloper or an intruder. Sometimes I arrived in Espinazo with a research team of up to six students and we were all invited to eat at Panita’s kitchen table. We were always welcome in her home and at her table as we gathered around and in later years as we traveled to Espinazo, my team would routinely stop at the grocery store in Rio Grande City, Texas to buy bags of staple items to help replenish her kitchen: potatoes, flour, sugar and other staples for Panita’s kitchen as well as a special cake for Mamá Panita.
I clearly remember sitting at Panita’s kitchen table watching my little group wolf-down flour tortillas, eggs and beans followed by cup after cup of coffee and feeling a huge guilt for having invaded her home with my hungry bunch. However, she would have it no other way and amazingly her expectation and gracious giving nature supported us all those times accompanied with a smile and the Niño expected it.
In those first years, I was willing to study Fabiola’s followers as well, but they were never as welcoming; if anything, they were leery of me, not necessarily unfriendly, but there was never the same sense of trust. In the early years they voiced that, they believed that my work would result in monetary gain for me instead of them. That, of course, was never true; while that tension kept me distant from the Church IFC, the passing years have allowed me to enjoy a cordial relationship with the Church IFC leadership today.
The primary reason I was drawn to Panita’s group was that they invited me in and it felt very natural. Panita and her followers are people of the earth mostly campesinos/peasants and common workers without pretense. From the perspective of an anthropologist, it was more appealing to deal with people who were humble, unassuming, and welcoming than with people whose primary interest seemed to be the formation of a bureaucracy and a Church IFC in which the leadership always suspected me of some ulterior motive.
In the years since the death of the Niño, there has never been a sustained academic study of his life and followers of this magnitude and this was my chance. Fabiola and the IFC leadership were used to interviews with journalists who filed their stories never to return or shared their story with the Fidencistas themselves.
I, on the other hand, returned year after year to their disbelief until I became a permanent fixture in Espinazo. For a few years, I owned a comfortable little adobe casa/adobe house on the Avenida de Dolor just down from the Niño’s Tomb. It was a wonderful vantage point and both locals and missionaries would call to me by name.
I developed an ethnographic research model in which I was open to interview anyone who wanted to be heard or had a story to tell. The implementation of my research model required that we identify the old-timers to interview first; many of them approached us wanting their thoughts on record. In making a decision about whom to interview, we were always receptive to both Fidencista groups including old timers and incoming independents.
Panita had been in Espinazo from a very early age and knew Fidencio well and I had many conversations with her about him. She assisted him and watched attentively as he practiced his miracle cures. Panita became an authentic medium of the Niño Fidencio early in life. As the daughter of Víctor Zapata, Panita had total access to the most personal aspects of the Niño’s life including his array of unusual physical peculiarities all of which she recounted to me over hours and days of conversations. She described to me how she would bathe him; it was like bathing a child. The Native American groups of Pueblo Indians who visited him in the 1920s regarded him a berdache, a two-spirit, man/woman, sacred in their world.
Panita was the undisputed and most revered leader of both Fidencista groups and this is probably because she could actually channel the spirit of the Niño Fidencio. While there is most certainly a prescribed set of activities and rituals performed by Panita’s group, they are performed out of tradition and not by formalized structure. The Church IFC members are just as reverent and faithful in their belief in the Niño Fidencio but organizational bureaucracy places them in a more modern dimension.
Panita was the star attraction of every fiesta and even in her declining years. Well past 80 years of age, Panita never failed to fulfill her expected role of overseeing and blessing the fiesta with Fidencio’s special message. The fiesta are Panita’s busiest times of the year. As the Fidencistas’ acknowledged spiritual leader, her followers appealed to her to be available in a manner which any religious leader should be regarded. Fiestas kept her completely occupied.
Panita was married to Manuel Robles who was a pillar of strength, and the male equivalent of his wife. Don Manuel, as I called him, was the stalwart of support at Panita’s place and Espinazo in general. When I first met Don Manuel, he was a stout tireless 60-year-old. He worked most of his life in nearby mines as a retired mining supervisor or mayordomo. Each morning well before light, Don Manuel was out the door, attending to errands that had to be done at the compound and in the ejido of Espinazo. He was a respected official who sat on the ejido council.
Espinazo had several important designations; it maintained a legacy as a desert whistle-stop along the main railroad line for steam engines to fill up with water on their way south to Saltillo from Piedras Negras on the border. Steam engines were long gone by the time I arrived on the scene but the water tower still stands proudly. I would watch with amazement, the local ejidatarios/communal farmers, drive their burros/donkeys laden with large canvas water bags under the old waterspout to fill for household use.
Espinazo was also a communal farm established by the laws of land reform after the revolution and was emerging as a very significant sacred pilgrimage site for the followers of El Niño Fidencio. Significantly, the state line between Nuevo León and Coahuila runs through the middle of Espinazo. Therefore, there are two Espinazo’s, one in the State of Nuevo León, the other in the State of Coahuila.
I will always remember Manuel Robles as noble, gentle and powerful; commanding total respect and always in charge. The few times I saw him deal with a social or political issue in the ejido; there was no finer negotiator or clearer head. Additionally, he was always understanding and tolerant of my incessant questions. It was difficult to corner him, as he was invariably on his way to an errand. I developed a profound friendship with Don Manuel. As I watched him age, it seemed that he was always struggling with broken down and antiquated tools. I loved to ask him if he wanted me to bring him a particular tool. At first, he would always say he did not need anything, but it was clear that he was using some very old tools. His large and sunburned moon face would light up when I would return a few months later with a new circular saw or heavy-duty drill. It was easy for me to get them at the Rio Grande Valley pawnshops (Robles, Manuel, 1988).
Panita and Manuel never had children of their own. The more I learned about their relationship, the greater my respect grew for them. I learned that Manuel had married Panita recognizing that her primary mission in life was to carry on the work of her father Víctor Zapata after his death in the 1970s. She would not bear children and could not be his sexual partner since it is strongly believed that sexual activity and especially child bearing reduces her clarity and ability as a spirit medium. After she assumed her role as the Fidencistas spiritual mother and as the materia mayor/head medium for Fidencio on Earth, it was clear that matrimonial intimacy was not possible. However, this did not lessen their mission and love for one another. They enjoyed a powerful marriage and emotional bond that facilitated their work hand in glove.
Panita adopted David Donado, a boy from West Texas left in Espinazo by his family, or who preferred to stay in Espinazo, when his family visited from west Texas. He took Panita’s maiden name, Zapata; similar to what the Niño did by using his mother’s maiden name and not his father’s. David assumed leadership and assisted Panita becoming her top assistant and died in December 2025. He was an effective leader from 2008 to 2025.
In my early years in Espinazo in the 1990s I remember the young man, David Donado, always around Panita’s house; reckoning he was a kitchen boy very much like the Niño was 50 years earlier. David was not only Panita’s adopted son, but after years of faithful service, he was selected by the Niño in Panita to succeed her as the materia mayor and the head of Panita’s Fidencistas.
Don Manuel was considered a man’s man, very macho and as such was expected to have extramarital romantic liaisons. While always very guarded about fulfilling his natural needs and with whom, there was a middle-aged woman who managed Panita’s home for many years who was reported to be his lover. While this information would never be revealed to an outsider, as the years passed, I gained the utmost trust as a member of the innermost circle of confidants.
After his death, it was painful to go to Espinazo expecting to see and talk to Don Manuel, realizing he was no longer there. The information I was able to gather from him as a principal informant was more valuable and reliable than from most others who had known the Niño in life.
The fiesta of the Niño Fidencio is a highly ritualized ceremony of remembrance lasting several days. Panita and Manuel always played principal roles and I will miss seeing Don Manuel take up his position of honor at the head of the Defile General/grand parade alongside Panita to begin their slow walk from the pirul tree culminating at the Niño’s Tomb and then on to the Foro for Niño’s spiritual message to the Fidencista nation.
At the time I began my work in Espinazo, the Fidencistas were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Niño’s death so it was a very special celebration. There were still a half dozen or so very elderly people whom had worked in Espinazo during the Niño’s day, playing a role in his healing organization. They were all more than willing to grant interviews and their recollections were forthcoming and seminal to my investigation. Their on-camera interviews are also seen in Juan Farré’s film, “El Niño Fidencio de Roma a Espinazo,” (Farré, 2008).
Today, the Fidencista movement is comprised of three identifiable groups: two very large groups and a smaller group of assorted independents and new comers. The two most powerful Fidencista groups, Panita’s group and Fabiola’s group, each count their members in the thousands. Every and March and October, the greatest number of Fidencistas arrives to celebrate the Niño’s memory. The Niño was born and died in the month of October so the celebration is doubly intense in memory of his life.
The March fiesta is celebrated in honor of the Niño’s Saint’s day: Saint Joseph, on March 19th. Occasionally, Holy Week/Semana Santa occurs in calendrical alignment with the Niño’s March fiesta and the two fiestas are celebrated simultaneously in a particularly heightened and meaningful way.
The memory of the Niño’s birth and death are celebrated in October of each year. As in most Mexican birthday celebrations, happy birthday or las mañanitas is sung at midnight before the actual birthday. The celebration of las mañanitas has become one of the Church’s IFC major October fiesta celebrations and Panita’s group is welcomed to participate and does.
During the Christmas season religious confraternities/cofradía groups come to Espinazo to reenact the posada and pastorela. Unlike today’s watered-down celebrations these truly traditional enactments require several days and nights to complete.
The reenactment of the complete pastorela sung and acted out in costume in Spanish is a unique sight to behold. San Miguel Arcángel/Saint Michael the Archangel and his band of angels fight off the devil and his diablitos/little devils who are attempting to distract the Reyes Magos/three kings from reaching the newborn baby Jesus. I remember the emotion and awe of my first experience of the pastorela in Espinazo. I had to get some sleep and left the venue only to return the next morning and find the play going strong, taking several days and nights to complete.
In October both groups celebrate the velación/wake and spiritual birth. It is a traditional Mexican wake including reciting the Holy Rosary. It heralds the beginning of the fiesta season in Roman Catholic Mexico that continues with the Dia de los Muertos/day of the dead on November 2nd, followed by the celebration of día de gracias/Thanksgiving later in the month. In Mexico, the Christmas, season, las fiestas Navideñas, continue with the fiesta of Los Reyes Magos/the feast of the Three Kings, concluding on the feast day of Candlemas/Candelaria, February 2nd.
Considering that the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi is celebrated on October 4th, in Mexico, the High Festival season begins then and continues through March a full half-year, and includes three of the four principal Earth religion celebrations: fall, winter and spring. The summer solstice is celebrated on the feast day of Saint John the Baptist on June 24th, the celebration of Baptism. All Fidencistas are expected to make their way to a body of water, a lake, river, stream or ocean to be re-baptized in their faith.
The October fiesta of the Niño Fidencio is one of the most impressive religious celebrations in Mexico and is visited by up to 40,000 pilgrims over the course of a week. The little ejido of Espinazo with fewer than one hundred permanent residents swells to well beyond capacity during the days of fiesta. In the days leading up to the fiesta, a steady stream of cars, trucks and buses amble their way north and south converging on the little desert village.
All arriving misión groups must be tightly controlled; no sightseeing is permitted and roll call is frequently taken. Everyone in a group has an assignment that is carried out with military precision. Once the initial setup of the camp is completed, the head materia gathers her followers for prayer and a reminder of proper decorum while in Espinazo. The materia, with the help of her assistants and guardia’s, dresses in her ceremonial trance vestments and channels the spirit of Niño Fidencio who is welcomed with fiesta, prayer and arrival songs called alabanza’s. The Niño always expresses his gratitude to his followers for their return trip to Tierra Santa/the Holy Land.
Since all present are hearty believers, the prayers and songs are sung with enthusiastic voices. The members of the group, male and female, form a double line called a columna/column. Walking forward, the men line up on the right-hand side with the materia and luminaries at the head of the column and the women on the left side. This two-lined column is the standard formation while proceeding at any time during the fiesta. At the head of the men and women’s lines are the senior members of the group including those with titles like padrino and madrina/godfather or godmother. The line follows in descending order with adolescents and children at the rear. In the center of the column, between the two lines, walk those who will perform a penance.
The head materia, along with her/his assistants and guardia’s/guards, gather and review her group making sure that all is in order before channeling the spirit of the Niño Fidencio. When the materia is assured that all is in order and everyone is in his or her place, the column begins the procession from the pirul tree up the Avenue of Pain to the Niño’s Tomb, about a quarter mile. Because the penitents’ route is painfully difficult by proceeding on their knees or back, the materia must constantly encourage her penitents, praying for them, touching them, and dousing them with aguas espirituales/spiritual water.
The spiritual column moves only as fast as its slowest penitents are able to proceed. Sometimes faster moving columns will ask to go around and move ahead but this is considered disrespectful and bad form. At the head of the column, the mision estandarte and bandera are carried by the padrinos and madrinas who have earned the honor.
Crossing through a column is considered a very serious transgression and disrespectful so some of the larger columns that take longer to pass carry a rope barrier along each side so that would-be transgressors have to either wait for the column to pass or go around via a back street.
The penitent column slowly makes its way up the street to the Niño’s Tomb, entering the Tomb where special prayers are said and the manda is spiritually forgiven. During the height of the fiesta, the Avenue of Pain and the Tomb room are very crowded so each column is expected to move through expeditiously. At times when the Tomb room is less crowded, a materia is allowed to stay with her group and perform healings until the next group arrives.
Once through at the Tomb room the penance is considered complete, and the entire group proceeds toward El Charquito; the mud bath is generally the next stop for most groups. At this point, the following venue is left up to the tradition developed by each materia. Some materias prefer to take their group across the avenue to Panita’s compound to greet her or to greet David, her successor. Columns belonging to the Church IFC may have a different routine in which they greet the church leader Fabiola. The entire area from the pirul to the Tomb is packed with people and sometimes at the height of activities, there is little room to move or walk around. Many people are milling, talking, or lingering along the avenue side shops where religious artifacts can be purchased.
One of the major defining characteristics of the fiesta is that there is always noise coming from the loudspeakers blaring out the sounds of the latest Niño CD, combined with the loudspeakers announcing bus departures and announcements attempting to locate people coming and going at the fiesta.
The combination of ambient murmuring by thousands of people along with the backdrop of Matachine dance groups produces an extraordinary mixture of sound. While not a roar, there is never any silence day or night.
The organized mision groups prepare their own food. However, there are thousands of people arriving independently so an entire side street is set up with all manner of freshly cooked food. Tables are set out for the row of eateries like a food court featuring something for every taste and desire. This is the Espinazo food court. Since all of the food is freshly prepared, I have never heard of anybody being taken ill from food poisoning or dysentery. Personal hygiene at the fiesta is always a challenge but a high priority. There is very little water in Espinazo but there are rentable outhouses, holes in the ground with wooden structure over them. The familiar porta-potties like in the United States have not yet appeared in Espinazo. A few places advertise a bucket of cold water and a stall where one can freshen up for a few pesos. The only three actual showers I know of are at Panita’s house, at the Misioneros restaurant and in the Casa Grande. I have gained the privilege of all three at one time or another.
Finally, the weather at Espinazo during the fiestas varies from one extreme to the other. That is, it can be exceptionally cold in both March and October or very hot during the day, and on the desert, it is usually cold at night. Simply stated, if attending the fiesta of the Niño Fidencio, preparation and planning are necessary.
Ritual Celebrations - “Tres Días de Increíbles Contradicciones, en las Fiestas del Niño Fidencio”
Fidencismo is a highly expressive religion and so are the celebrations of belief and practice of folk-Catholicism with which Fidencismo is associated. As such, the holy pilgrimage site of Espinazo is active at all times of the year in coordination with the Roman Catholic liturgy and the celebration of a particular Saint’s days/santoral. At a minimum, the two major celebrations are coordinated with the fall and spring equinox and the summer and winter solstice. This is a time to remember the ancient religions and major celebration of the natural cycle of the earth and the cosmos. Easter and rebirth are celebrated in conjunction with the spring Equinox in March. The celebration of life renewed and the feast day of Saint Joseph, the patriarch is celebrated in March as well..
Mid-summer is the summer solstice celebrated in June and a time of baptism and renewal of faith and Saint John the Baptist also in June. If living near a river, lake or the ocean, Fidencistas are expected to make an early morning pilgrimage to water and be baptized by their materia on June 24th. The fall Equinox reminds us both of the Niño’s birth and death, of harvest and is coordinated with the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi on October 4th.
The primary Latino Christian theologians all agree that the manifestations of popular Latino Christianity is a valid form of Roman Catholicism and that as the Latino population continues to grow in the United States, folk-Roman Catholicism will eventually come to be the dominant form of Roman Catholicism. That is the single most important reason why this study is important. To understand Fidencismo is to understand the future of Latino Catholicism.
Alabanzas - Holy Ritual Songs
The Songs and corridos that are sung during the days of fiesta define all Mexican fiestas. Corridos and other songs are retold memories of events set to music are some of the oldest forms of folklore. During the early years of the Niño Fidencio phenomenon strolling musicians would come to Espinazo with rhyme-constructed songs on the spot of a miraculous cure or some other mysterious occurrence. These impromptu songs were picked up by other musicians and repeated so that before long, all were singing them. Many were recorded and therefore, are easily remembered.
As the religious movement of the Niño Fidencio gathered strength in the last years of his life and as regularized rituals were created, songs or alabanza’s were written and inscribed for specific rituals and events and locations during the fiesta. Each materia has his/her book of alabanza’s that is a guarded treasure; however, Ariel González of the Church IFC has made them available to everyone by recently publishing several books of the official alabanza’s.
Las Cajitas y Cajones Del Niño Fidencio
Fidencismo is the faith in, and the following of the doctrine of the Niño Fidencio. In the final years of his life, the Niño and his core of leaders including Víctor Zapata and Damiana Martínez, made concerted efforts to create a doctrine supported by rituals that would be adopted and followed by all. The Niño Fidencio and his followers converted a spontaneous and disorganized healing ministry of Espinazo of the 1920s into a highly organized, benevolent-healing cult centered around the spirit of the Niño Fidencio and his burial place today.
Before his death in 1938, the Niño made it very clear that he expected to continue his healing service on Earth from the spirit world long after his passing. He planned to do this through specially gifted people or materias who would channel his spirit and respond to his requests..
The foundation of the cult of the Niño Fidencio is the possession of the Niño’s spirit by a willing and capable trance medium. In the condition of a true trance state, the Niño Fidencio can heal in multiple locations simultaneously; exhibiting a consubstantial ability as mentioned in the Roman Catholic liturgy. That is to say, the Niño takes possession of a trance medium called a materia or cajitas/little spirit box, and speaks and heals through them in multiple people and places simultaneously.
Since authentic trance mediumship is the basis of the Fidencista priesthood, the authenticity of the ability of a person to attain a trance state and to channel the spirit of the Niño Fidencio is essential and must be tested for its veracity. Fidencistas must always be cautious because there are many who feign the trance state. Fidencio had a clear mystical vision of what would come after his death and predicted that many would claim to channel his spirit when in fact most could not. Therefore, verification is essential.
Fidencio recognized that the key to his succession would be the ability of the group to authenticate materias and appoint Víctor Zapata to be his Revisador/validator directly responsible for verification. Víctor served in this role from 1938 until his death in the 1970s. After his death, his daughter Panita relocated to Espinazo to carry on his mission of healing benevolence and leadership.
The responsibility of the Revisador was the most critical in the positions established by the emergent cult. Victor Zapata, the Revisador, was required to travel throughout Mexico and into the United States to wherever materias were located and claiming to channel the spirit of El Niño Fidencio in order to verify them as authentic. The Revisador would personally witness the materia’s respective trance states and communicate with the spirit of the Niño, verifying the materia’s authenticity as a true servant of the Niño Fidencio. Additionally, Víctor would witness the performance of Fidencista rituals, prayers and songs as well as the Niño’s spiritual message to his followers.
As such, Víctor Zapata could guarantee that all materias, wherever they were located, were practicing alike and that the spirit of the Niño Fidencio was speaking through them. The zeal and passion with which Zapata performed his duties was phenomenal. Zapata was himself a materia of the Niño and most of the Niño’s Holy Scriptures were channeled through him. Undoubtedly, without the dedicated work of Víctor Zapata, Fidencismo would not exist today; it would have faded with the memory of the Niño and the deaths of his closest followers.
The review of materias, both old and new, is an essential practice that continues today. Verification is the spiritual bond that exists between all materias and their connection to the Niño. Until his untimely death in December, 2025, David Donado Zapata served as Revisador for the Panista group. One of the obvious weaknesses of the Fidencista movement in general is the number of unaffiliated persons claiming to be materias who are not authentic. Today, Ariel González, Fabiola’s son and Church IFC official, serves as the Revisador for the Church IFC (Gonzalez, 2013).
There is a tremendous sense of spiritual theater operating around the Fidencista movement both during and after the fiestas. The cults of other spirits in particular come to Espinazo to act out their spiritual rituals but are not Fidencistas. There are many materias who claim to channel spirits but are actually charlatans, fooling a very gullible public. For example, at each fiesta there will be persons claiming to channel Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. This chicanery is also very evident in the practice of curanderismo both in Mexico and in the United States. Anyone can claim to be a curandera/o and act the part, but in fact, most do not possess the true spiritual gift and are running commercial enterprises.
Each bonafide materia has a specific home location where he/she conducts and practices his/her form of Fidencismo by channeling Fidencio’s spirit and continuing his earthly mission. Most materias, whether in Chicago, San Antonio, or the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, practice from their homes by dedicating a room or an out building or garage for the function of healing.
Materias are generally legacy offspring having grown up in Fidencista homes and learning to channel from their mothers or aunts or another adult female. While most materias are female, there are also male materias. All children who are around the healing mission from the time they are four to six years of age are watched very closely for any sign that they may be able to achieve a trance state. If they show any trance ability at all, they are selected for special training or desarrollo/spiritual development so that by the time they are adolescents, they are able to channel the spirit of the Niño Fidencio. This guarantees that the Niño’s traditions continues generation after generation. Therefore, the original materias established healing centers or misiones beginning in the 1940s and today’s materias have been legacies since that time. It is not unusual for the original misiones to have proceeded through three or four generations of trance mediums and to have literally hundreds of local followers. These followers form the basis of a huge number of Latinos who consult curanderas/os in the United States.
Currently, the two major halves of Fidencismo claim more than 500 materias each; thus, they have thousands of followers. Additionally, both in Mexico and in the United States there are countless materias who are unaffiliated with Fidencismo while claiming to channel the Niño Fidencio and many other spirits. There are many trance mediums connected to spiritist organizations, that are very popular throughout Latin America, who claim to channel multiple spirits and are not dedicated to the Niño Fidencio. For example, practitioners of Santería channel multiple African spirits but are not connected with the Niño Fidencio. The Nino never condoned his materias to channel spirits other than himself.
Throughout South America and Mexico, there are numerous spiritist groups. Spiritist organizations are active throughout Latin America channeling numerous spirits Some claim to channel Fidencio while not being members of the Fidencista movement. For example, there are spirits for everything, the spirit cult in Michoacán, La Nueva Jerusalén claims to channel former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas who serves as their spiritual attorney (Lemus, 2014).
In his Holy Scriptures/Sagrada Escrituras, the Niño makes multiple references to Espiritismo as not acceptable and for his followers to avoid it. In spite of his admonition, many so-called trance mediums are not solely dedicated to Fidencio; they claim to channel numerous other spirits. This is very unacceptable to both Panita and Fabiola. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable during the days of fiesta when dozens of so-called spirit channelers bring their spirits to the Niño’s fiesta.
When materias attend the bi-annual fiestas in Espinazo, they bring as many of their followers as possible. Misiones must typically save money for a year or more to raise the funds necessary to make the trip with their followers, especially those who are planning to complete a required penance for miracles received. Wealthier groups bring large numbers of pilgrims to the fiestas; they lease expensive commercial buses and often have permanent facilities in Espinazo where their group is billeted while on pilgrimage. They also have elaborate silk clothing. The poorer groups must camp on the ground or under tents which they bring themselves.
In Fidencismo, there is a hierarchy of materias and misiones and their order and prestige are based upon the year they were established. The order of establishment is a highly prestigious matter determining one’s order in the Grand Parade and at other functions. Those misiones established in the 1930s and 40s are the most highly regarded and are considered the leaders of the movement. Their original materias knew the Niño Fidencio personally.
Each materia has one or more personal assistants called a guardia/guardian. It is the role of the guardia to protect the materia while in trance. The guardia provides assistance by handing the materia the spiritual items she/he requires during a healing ceremony such as agua bendita/spiritual water, pomada, or pirul branches. The guardia is also tasked with writing the receta/prescription that the Niño orders to be filled at the hierbería or botánica by the patient. Ordinarily, guardia’s are very close friends or family of the materia and remain the special protector of the materia throughout life.
Additionally, each mision will have a number of specially appointed members who serve as Godparents, padrinitos and madrinitas and who regularly contribute to and support the local materia and her misión. Therefore, they have special offices and alignment both at home during their local anniversary fiestas and while in Espinazo. There are other positions, depending on the development of the misión. For example, all misión groups are expected to sing and there is a lead singer or cantor, who sings the refrain of a song followed by the entire group singing the verses or chorus. Some of these cantors have magnificent voices and everybody stops to listen to them as they walk by singing an alabanza.
The arrival of each group in Espinazo is heralded by the traditional procession and arrival song. Prayer and song punctuate all Fidencista ceremonies and rituals where all participate. The sacred songs/alabanza’s that are sung are very traditional and attached to the particular event in which they are participating so all the groups know them and are singing the same song at the same place and at the same time. The head cantor carries the sacred songbook and leads in the singing. The remainder of the misión responds with the verses. This makes for an impressive crescendo of synchronous sound from one area to another. Along the arrival route and throughout their stay in Espinazo, there is the constant clamor of voices combined with song.
There are, additionally, materias in training of all ages, beginning at eight or nine years old and sometimes younger. Additionally, the larger groups will elect a princesa for the fiesta who is elegantly dressed in a quinceañera dress. This is a great honor for the local group. From an early age, materias will begin to collect their vestments, and as they develop their own misiones, followers provide the finest robes they can afford. Therefore, there is a wide range of the quality of vestments ranging from simple cotton to luxurious silk.
Finally, all misión groups while at fiesta have women assigned to cook for the group. This is an important and honored duty. They, likewise, have their own assistants so that everyone, including children, has regular duties. While at the fiesta, the entire group is under tight control and no one is allowed to wander around. I have always found the fiesta to be steeped with religious solemnity and order. No drinking is allowed.
Pilgrim groups arrive and depart from the fiesta all day and all night for several days. Since there are no public facilities in Espinazo, pilgrim groups must either have established small compounds or arrive completely self-sufficient including with showers and toilets. Most groups bring with them everything they will need to survive during the days they are in Espinazo. In addition to intermittent rain showers and cold fronts that come rolling in over the nearby mountains, nights can be either frigid cold or sizzling hot.
La Danza: Matachines - “Hay de todo entre Cajitas”
Finally, most of the larger and more established groups have their own dance groups called, Matachine/also called a Matlachine dance group associated with the misión as well as with Roman Catholic parishes at their home base. Matachine dance groups are different from the Conchero or Aztec dance groups which have existed since before the Conquista and are at the same time a form of adoration of a particular Saint or Virgin and described as an act of protest.
In her book, “The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley,” Sylvia Rodríguez describes Matachine and Conchero dance groups as follows: “Deriving from a genre of medieval European folk drama symbolizing conflict between Christians and Moors, brought to the New World by the Spaniards as a vehicle for Christianizing the Indians. Iberian elements merged with aboriginal forms in central México, and the syncretic complex was transmitted to Indians farther north, including the Rio Grande Pueblos. The Matachine dance symbolically telescopes centuries of Iberian-American ethnic relations and provides a shared framework upon which individual Indian and Hispanic communities have embroidered their own particular thematic variations” (Rodríguez, 1996).
Matachine dance groups are always colorfully dressed in their traditional costumes and accompanied by a drum corp. There is a tremendous amount of consistency in the specific costuming of these groups as well as legacy which goes back generations. There is also a hierarchy of positions very much like a military unit. There are several well-known steps as well as many alternative steps based on sub-culture and regional variation. Misión groups arrive in Espinazo continuously, day and night, and are accompanied by their Matachines who dance for their mision group. In fact, dance is an essential part of prayer and adoration.
Today, there are hundreds of Matachine and Conchero dance groups operating throughout Mexico and the American Southwest. Participation in a dance group is extremely popular and is usually associated with a local Roman Catholic parish or patron Saint. Some misión groups make the trek over the 25 kilometers from the highway on foot or in dance, bunched in cars, trucks and in the occasional weatherworn, decommissioned school bus imported from the United States. Aditionally, some dance groups dance the total length of the 25 kilometers to Espinazo. Matachine dance group has one or more members dressed in disguise as a monster or demon, for the purpose of scaring children.
Breakdowns are common over the course, but during the days of fiesta, the length of the trek is scattered with pilgrims under various forms of power and help is always near. Fidencista pilgrims have a bond or fraternity surpassed perhaps only by the military. In fact, the Matachine groups use a military system of rank to distinguish membership, each group has its Capitan down to regular members like privates. The groups return year after year, renewing old friendships and most groups are well known to one another.
A misión procession may consist of only three or four people who are able to afford the journey to a fiesta or much larger groups who arrive at the fiesta with dozens of followers in their dance group. It is not unusual to see groups from the larger towns and cities in the U.S. and Mexico arrive in multiple buses with 30 to 130 people in their columns. Sometimes, affiliated groups conduct their processions together producing a very impressive sight. The senior materia is at the head, followed by younger materias in training and their entourage of guardia’s or assistants.
Matachines, are traditional dance groups associated with Roman Catholic parishes, clubs and native tribes when not at the fiesta. They honor particular Saints or other Holy persons and places. Matachine dance groups are found throughout Mexico and the American southwest and Midwest. They all follow a standard costume and have well known music and their dance steps have been studied. (Rodriguez, 2009)
The tradition of carrying estandartes/standards and banderas/flags is a pre-Columbian as well as ancient European practice introducing one’s group to an opposing people both on the road it was in battle in ancient times. Certainly, this was the practice of the Roman legions. Europeans in the Americas brought the tradition of standards that heralded both military and religious affiliation, such as the Order of Franciscans. Fidencistas adopted the practice of displaying the standard in the 1920s as soon as there were groups operating outside of Espinazo. The standard allowed people to identify who they are and where they are from, such as the one from Robstown, Texas, the first Texas-based Fidencista mision.
Estandartes and Banderas
The estandarte/standard serves multiple purposes. It is the largest and most pronounced feature carried by any one group and bears the painted-on likeness of their patron Saint or Fidencio in multiple poses. In the case of Fidencista groups, this is usually the Niño in one of his customary poses such as in riding attire or dressed as a “lawyer.” However, many display other folk-Saints such as the Santo Niño of Atocha or La Virgen de Guadalupe. Remember, Fidencistas are mostly Roman Catholic (Nebel, 1995).
The standard also proclaims the groups origin town or city, the date the group was created including a registration number and other identifying data. So, at a glance, as a procession of pilgrims comes up the road you immediately know that they are from Monterrey, Nuevo León or Brownsville, Texas and Fresno, California.
Some of the estandartes are simple and humble but many are works of art and extremely elaborate. Every misión headed by one or more materia will be known by its standard. For every standard a standard-bearer has earned that honor, with the position ceremoniously bestowed upon him. Only the men traditionally carry the estandarte, while women carry the banderas. With the honor comes the responsibility of work and providing for the group very much like the cargo cults or cofradías of southern Mexico.
Each of the Mexican-based misión groups also has a bandera/flag that is always the Mexican flag portrayed in a rectangle approximately eight-feet long by three-feet wide. The tri-color as it is called may also bear other identifying marks. Two women who have earned the honor and rank of carrying the flag in procession carry the bandera.
Every local misión has a head materia just as Panita was the head materia or materia mayor in Espinazo. The inner circle of loyal assistants earns these coveted positions and are referred to as comadres and compadres. This corps of helpers is the mainstay for each misión group, whether from Monterrey or San Antonio.
Pilgrimage and Penance - “Cientos de Retablos en la Casa que fue el Consultorio del Taumaturgo”
The acts of pilgrimage and penance are ancient traditions that pre-date Christianity and have been adopted by it. Petitioning the supernatural for a special or personal gift guaranteed by the promise of propitiation and possible visitation to the intercessor’s sanctuary completes the circle and nullifies the petitioner’s spiritual debt (Champe, 1983 and Darely, 1968).
The pilgrimage itself may be considered the fulfillment of a penance or the petitioner may promise to fulfill a special penance to be performed at the site. The materias lead every activity and soon after arrival, their misión lines up at the pirul tree in preparation for their penances to be fulfilled. This is often coordinated with other groups; a number of simultaneously performed penances are impressive.
At the completion of the sacred performance, the columna proceeds slowly up the main street in Espinazo known as the Avenida de Dolores/Avenue of Pain. As the fiesta reaches its crescendo the main avenue is barely passable as one mision lines up after another stretching the complete length of the street beginning at the pirul and ending at the Niño’s Tomb about a quarter mile away (Harris, 2000).
The line of Penitentes/penitents includes people of all ages as they complete their long-awaited penance in one of several forms. Many roll along the length of the dusty street to the Tomb. The recently paved avenue is a welcomed change from dust and dirt strewn with rocks as the street was for generations.
Performance of Penance - “Cajas o Médiums el Niño y sus Poderes de Curación”
The sacred pepper tree/pirul is the focal beginning point for almost all of the rituals performed at Espinazo during the days of fiesta. All day and all-night groups arrive and socialize around the tree renewing acquaintances and romances, singing their arrival songs in varying order. This produces a pleasantly resonating sound as stanzas are re-sung by different groups. The sound of multiple groups becomes a cacophony of voices. Some are noticeably stronger and purer in their singing ability and stand out over the rest.
Other voices are scratchy and unsure of themselves such as those of children; possessing a desirable high-pitched voice pleasing to the ear. Every now and then, the columns with the best singers arrive performing their arrival song and everyone stops to listen and admire them. The pre-ritual staging takes place simultaneously and everyone gathers around the pirul tree upon their arrival.
In the Fidencista movement, at home and at the fiesta, the leaders of the group who are also the primary healers have absolute power and obedience is expected of their followers at all times. Fidencismo is a movement for all ages and as such, children are always welcomed and present in large numbers. While there are times for children to play, they are expected to participate in all group events that often last all day and all night. It is not unusual to see mothers asleep in the Foro with their children asleep in their arms or at their feet. The official events of the fiesta and their schedule are well known so people are prepared for the respective start times. Mothers and older sisters carry babies with young children in tow. Older children and teenagers who have known the routine since childhood are full participants throughout the various rituals and look forward to seeing friends made at earlier fiestas.
Many proposals of marriage have been contracted at the fiesta of the Niño Fidencio over the years, creating novios/betrothed. In fact, the spring fiesta could be likened to the spring mitote or powwow of Native Americans performed on the deserts from pre-historic times. Gatherings have many purposes including political associations and the establishment of marital promises. Constantly arriving groups of Fidencistas disperse; disappearing behind the gates and adobe walls of the many small compounds each with communal sleeping and cooking areas, outhouse facilities as well as a sacred area where the altar-healing room is located.
The fiesta is characterized by a dizzying level of enthusiasm and the excitement is palpable. In each group, there are followers who are psychologically and spiritually readying themselves to fulfill promises by completing a manda and performing a penance during the fiesta.
The Fidencista movement has carved out very specific liturgy and rituals, so that all Fidencistas, both the Panistas and the Fabiolistas, follow the rules. Only those Fidencistas who are new or are unaffiliated, drift aimlessly from venue to venue during the fiesta copying what others are doing but not really knowing the meaning. However, even the unaffiliated groups may be asked to join one group or the other if their materia is deemed valid, that is if they have a materia.
Works Cited
Anaya, Rodolfo, 1972, Bless Me Ultima, Warner Books, New York, NY.
Applewhite, S. l., 1995, Curanderismo: Demystifying the Health Beliefs and Practices of Elderly Mexican-Americans, Health & Social Work, vol. 20, no.4, p. 247.
Barnes, and Sered, 2005, Religion, and Healing in America, Oxford University Press, New York
Barrera M. 1978 Mexican American Mental Health Services Utilization, Mental Health
Baum, 1928, The Wizard of Oz, New York.
Boone, Elizabeth, 1989, Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli Mexico and Europe, The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pa.
Brenner, Anita, 1929, Idols behind Altars, Payson and Clarke, LTD., New York, NY
Bricke, Victoria, 1981, The Indian Christ, The Indian King, The Historical Substrate of Mayan Myth and Ritual, The University of Texas Press, Austin
Califa’s Blogspot.com 2014, The Mexican Catholic Church.html
Cardena, Etzel, 1992, Trance and Possession as Dissociative Disorders, Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, (29), 287-300.
Cash, Castro and Cadena 2013, www.rcastro.net/fidencio.htm
Champe, Flavia W., 1983, the Matachine Dance of the Upper Rio Grande: History, Music, and Choreography, University of Nebraska Pess, Lincoln, Ne.
Chestnut Andrew, 2011, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.
China’s Barefoot Medicine, 1974, Health for the Masses, WHO, Vienna, Austria.
Clinician’s Reference Guide to Curanderismo, Texas-Oklahoma Aids Education, and Training Center, Dallas, Tx.
Condal, P., 1977, Vida y Milagros del Niño Fidencio, In E. Hammington (ed.), todo es historia (pp. 4-35), Mexico D.F.
Contenido, El Niño Fidencio, 1937, Mexico D. F.
Contenido, 1971, El Niño Fidencio Mexico, D.F.
Crumrine, N. Ross and Alan Morinis, editors, 1991, Pilgrimage in Latin America, Greenwood Press, New York,
Darely, Aalex, M., 1968, the Passionists of the Southwest, The Rio Grande Press,
Dossey, Larry, 1993, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, Harper, New York, NY
Dow, James, 1986, the Shaman’s Touch: Otomi Indian Symbolic Healing, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, UT.
Doyon, Bernard, OMI, 1956, the Cavalry of Christ on the Rio Grande, Blake Press, Milwaukee, Wi.
Echevarría, Nicolás, 1980, Niño Fidencio: El Taumaturgo de Espinazo, Canícula, MX. (full-length motion picture).
El Excelsior de México, February 11, 1928, p.10, Espinazo he Convertida en un–Gran Foco de Infection.
El Porvenir de Momonterrey, March 14, 1928, p. 2., April, 1, 1928, February, 17, 1928, January, 23, 1928, January 25, 1928, June 4, 1930, March 14, 1928, March 17, 1928, May 27, 1930.
El Universal de México, 1928, February 16, p., Dementes, Paralíticos y Leprosos, mas de Mil Enfermos Esperan que los Cura el Niño Fidencio en Espinazo, un–Verdadero Pueblo Entero, February 17,1928, February 18, 1928, February 19, 1928, February 20, 1928, February 21, 1928, February 22, 1928, March 10, 1928, February 10, 1928.
Espin, Orlando, 1997, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Religion.
Espinosa, Gaston and Mario, García, Editors, 2008, Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
Facio, Elisa and Irene Lara, 2014, Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ
Farré, Juan, and Curry Fernández, 2008, Niño Fidencio de Roma a Espinazo: Que Vayan a Roma Todos los Demas Iremos a Espinazo, Conaculta, Mx. (full-length motion picture).
Fey, Ingrid and Karen Racine, 2000, Strange Pilgrimages: Exile, Travel, and National Identity in Latin America, 1800-1990s, SR Books, Wilmington, DE.
Finkler, Kaja, 1985, Spiritualist Healers in Mexico, Bergin and Cravey, South Hadley, New York, NY.
Finkler, Kaja, 1994, Women in Pain: Gender and Morbidity, Mexico, University of Pennsylvania
Foster, George, 1994, Hippocrates’ Latin American Legacy: Humoral Medicine in the New World, Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam, NY
Galarza, Ernesto, 1964, Merchants of Labor, The Mexican Bracero Story, McNally and Loftin Publishers, Santa Barbara.
Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine, 2005, The Curandero.
Galvez, Rosamaria, 2009, El Niño Fidencio: Una Brecha Hacía el Campo del Dolor, La Prensa
Ganster, Paul and D. Llorey, 2008, The US. -Mexican Border into the twenty-first Century, 2nd ed., Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, New York, NY.
Gardner, Dore, 1992, A Heart Thrown Open, Museum of New Mexíco Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Garza Quiroz, Fernando, 1991, El Niño Fidencio y el Fidencismo, 5th edition, Monterrey, Mexico, Editorial Font.
Gilles, B., and Treviño, A., 1994, Spring, a History of the Matachine Dance. New Mexico Historical Review
González, Ariel, 2013, Chronologic del Niño Fidencio: Historia Verdadera, Alabanza’s Tradicionales, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, MX
González, Ariel, 2015, 280 Alabanza’s Fidencistas, Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, MX.
González-Valdes, Heliodoro, 1998, Cabalgando con Fidencio: el Despertar a Una Nueva Vida Spiritual. Instituto Nacional del Derecho de Autor, Número de Registro: 166277, Secretaría Eucación Pública, MX.
Greensnake, J L, 2007, Brujo, Espiritu y Santo, Llewellyn Press, Woodbury, Minnesota, MN.
Guerrero Andrés G. 1987, A Chicano Theology, Orbis Publications, Maryknoll, NY
Guerrero, R. Díaz, 1967, Psychology of the Mexican: Culture and Personality, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Hamer, Dean, 2004, The God Gene, How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes, Anchor Books, New York.
Harris, Max, 2000, Aztecs, Moors and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Harwell, Thomas Meade, 1997, Studies in Texas Folklore, Rio Grande Valley Lore,
Henderson, Brett, 2014, Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo, New York University Press, New York, NY
Herman, Peter Sigal, 2000, From Moon Goddess to Virgin: The Colonization of Yucatan, Maya and Sexual Desire, University of Texas Press, Austin
Hinojosa, Felipe, 1014, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore
Hoffer, Eric, 2010, The True Believer, Harper Perennial, New York
Holden, William Curry, 1978, Teresita, Stemmer House, Owings Mills, MD.
Hopgood, 2005, The Making of Saints, Contesting Sacred Ground, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL.
Hoy de México, 1937, Con Fidencio en Espinazo, p. 20, méxico, DF., Mex.
Huber, Brad, R. and Alan Sandstrom, 2001, Mesoamerican Healers, the University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Hudson, Wilson, 1951, The Healer of Los Olmos. SMU Press, Dallas, Tx
Instituto Nacional de Historia y Antropologia, de Mexico, DF, MX.
Jafray, N.E. 2004, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE
Jonsdottir, Kristin Gudrun, 2014, Bandoleros, Santificados: A Jesus Malverde y
Joralemon, Domald, 2016, Exploring Medica Anthropology, Routledge, New York
Juárez, J R., 1973 La Iglesia Católica y el Chicano de Sur Tejas: 1836-1911, Aztlan, vol. v, no. iv, Fall.
Kan, Elio, 1998, Sectas y Iglesias: Viejos o Nuevo’s Movimientos Religiosos, Plaza y Valdez Editorial, México DF., Mex.
Kardec, 1853, The Sirit Book.
Kelley, Francis, c. 1987, Blood Drenched Altars, Tan, Rockford, IL.
Kiev, A., 1968, Curanderismo, The Free Press, NY
Kleinman, Arthur, 1980, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Kleinman, Arthur, and J Ggale, 1982, Patients Treated by Physicians and Folk-Healers: A Comparative Outcome Study in Taiwan, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, vol. 6.
Krauze, Enrique, 1987, Plutarco E. Calles, Fondo de Cultura Económico, México DF. Mex.
Krauze, Enrique, 1998, Cristero, Fondo de Cultura Económico, Mexico, DF.
Krippner, Stanley, 1992, Profiles of Three Contemporary Central American Shamans. Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing (pp. 148-155). Berkeley, CA.
Krippner, Stanley, 2000, The Epistemology and Technologies of Shamanic States of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 7, pp. 93-118.
Kruger, Helen, 1974, Other Healers, Other Cures: A Guide to Alternative Medicine, Guadalupe, Fondo de Cultura Economico, Mexico, DF
La Prensa de San Antonio, Texas, April 6, 1928, p. 1., February 18, 1928
LaFaye, J., 1985, Quetzalcoatl y Guadalupe, Fondo de Cultura Economico, Mx.
Lemus, J. Jesus, 2014, Cara de Diablo: La Historia de la Nueva Jerusalén y el Hombre Que Quiso ser Dios, Grijalbo, México DF, Mex.
Levin J., and Schiller, 1987, Is there a Religious Factor in Health, Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 26
Lewis, I M., 1971, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. Routledge, New York.
Lira, Manuel Terán Fuente, 1980, El Niño Fidencio, Editorial Macondo, Torreon, Coahuila, Mex.
Lopez de la Fuente de Gonzalez, Fabiola, personal communication with 1994, in Espinazo, NL, Fidencista Movement leader.
Macklin, June 1974, Folk Saints, Healers and Spiritist Cults in Northern Mexico, Revista Interamerica Review, vol. iii, no.4.
Macklin, June 2005, Saints, and Near-Saints in Transition: the Sacred, the Secular, and the Popular, in the Making of Saints Contesting Sacred Ground, ed. James f.
Macklin. June, 1973, Three North Mexican Folk Saint Movements. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15 no. 1, pp. 89-105.
Madsen, William, 1955, Shamanism in Mexico. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol.11, pp. 48-57.
Madsen, William, and Claudia Madsen, 1992, Guide to Mexican Witchcraft, Minutiae Mexicana, Mex. DF
Madsen. W., 1967, Religious Syncretism, In R. Wauchope. (ed), Handbook of Middle American Indians vol. 6., University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Malca, Haydee Quiroz, 2000, Fiestas, Peregrinations y Santuarios en México, Conaculta, México, DF
Marsch, Michael, 1987, Healing Through the Sacraments, the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN.
Martin, Desiree A., 2014 Borderland Saints in Mexican Culture, Rutgers University Press, NJ.
Martínez, l., 2009, South Texas Mexican American Use of Traditional Folk and Mainstream Alternative Therapies, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 31, pp. 128-143.
Martínez, Oscar J. 1994, Border People: Life and Society in the US.-Mexico Borderlands, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
Martínez, Oscar J. 1996, US-Mexico Borderlands Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, SR Books, New York,
Mayo, C. M. 2013, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, Dancing Chiva Literary Arts, Palo Alto, CA.
McKinney, Kelsie, John of God, Journey to the Spirit World, John of God Publications, Brazil.
Meyer, Jean 1974, La Cristiada, vol., 1-3, Siglo Vientiuno Editores, Mexico City
Michelson, Johanna, 1975, The Beautiful side of Evil, Harvest House Publications,
Micozzi, Marc, 2011, Fundamentals of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 4th ed., Saunders and Elsevier, NY
Morinis, A., 1985, The Ritual Experience: Pain and the Transformation of Consciousness in Ordeals of Initiation, Ethos vol. 13
Morinis. A, & Crumrine, N.R., 1991, La Peregrinación: The Latin American Pilgrimage. in Crumrine and Morinis. (eds.). Pilgrimage in Latin America. pp.1-17, Greenwood Press, New York.
Moro, P.A., Magic, Witchcraft and Religion: A Reader in Anthropology of Religions, McGraw Hill, New York
Murrey, William, Breen, 2005, Spirits of a Holy Land Place and Time in a Modern Religious Movement
Najera-Ramírez, 1997, La Fiesta de los Tastoress: Critical Encounters in Mexican Festival Performance, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Nebel, Richard, 1995, Santa María Tonantzin Virgen de Guadalupe: Continuidad y Transformacíon Religiosa en México, Fondo de Cultura Económicas, MX.
Nesvig, Martin A. 2006, Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Nesvig, Martin A. 2009, Ideology, and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Nesvig, Martin A. Editor, 2007, Religious Culture in Modern Mexico, Bowman and Littlefield, NY.
Olmos, José Gil, 2008, Los Brujos Del Poder: El Ocultismo en la Politica Mexicana, de Bolsillo, MEX
Olson, Jon, and Natalie, 1973 We Believe in the Niño Fidencio, Film.
Ortiz, Fernando, 1973, Los Negros Brujos, Ediciones Universal, FL.
Ortiz, Fernando, 2012, La Filosofía Penal de los Espiritistas, Editorial Nuevo Mundo, San Juan, PR.
Ovalle de Tamayo, María., 1989, Curandera, Personal Communication.
Pancho Villa, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, B.C, Mex.
Paredes, Américo, 1993, Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border, the Center for Mexican American Studies, the University of Tx, Austin
Parisot, Pierre, OMI, Reminiscences of a Texas Missionary, San Antonio, Johnson Brothers, 1899.
Perez, Joe, 2014, Gay Spirituality 101: Introduction to the Theory of Homophilia, personally published.
Peters, Rosalind M., 1999, The Effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch: A Meta-Analytic Review, Nursing Science Quarterly. vol. 12(1), January 1999, 52-61.
Pinheiro, John, 2014, Missionaries of Republicanism: A Religious History of the Mexican American War, Oxford New York,
Prower, Tomas, 2015, La Santa Muerte, Llewellyn Press, Woodbury, MN.
Psychiatric Assessment of Mexican-Origin Population, 1995, Proceedings of the Ninth Robert Lee Sutherland seminar in Mental Health. Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, University of Texas, Austin, TX.
Pulido, Marco Antonio, ND, Dios en Tamaulipas, Contenido, Mexico
Purnell, Larry and Betty Paulanka, 2008, transcultural healthcare: a culturally competent approach, F.A. Davis, Philadelphia, Pa.
Quirk, Robert, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910-1929, Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Quiros, Garza Fernando, 1991, El Niño Fidencio y el Fidencismo, Editorial Font, Fifth edition, Monterrey, Nuevo León, MX
Ramirez de Aguilar, Jose Dalevuelta, Various articles, El Universal, 1928
Ricard, Robert, 1982, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
Robles, Manuel, personal communication 1994, in Espinazo, NL., MX
Rodríguez, Sylvia, 1996, the Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Roel, Santiago, 1938 Apuntes Historicos Para la Historia de Nuevo León, Monterrey, NL, MX.
Romano, Octavio, 1965, Charismatic Medicine, Folk Healing and Folk Sainthood, American Anthropologist, vol. 67, p. 1151-1173.
Rubel, Arthur, et.al. 1984, Susto: A Folk Illness, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Rutiaga, Luis, 2007, Magia Blanca: Amor, Protección, Dinero, Trabajo, Privately Published, Mex.
Saenz, Luz María, 1997, Learning to Heal: The Medical Profession in Colonial México 1776-1831, Peter Lang, New York,
Salazar, Cindy Lynn, 2012, Religious Features of Curanderismo Training and Practice, Master’s Thesis, Baylor University, Waco, Tx.
Salinas, Alberto, Jr. personal communication with a RGV Curandero 1994, Edinburg, Tx.
Sánchez-Walsh, Arlene, 2003, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society, Columbia University Press, New York
Santa Biblia de La Santa Muerte: El Libro Máximo de La Santa Muerte con la Revelacíon de sus Siete Sellos Sagrados, 2009, Colibri, México,
Schneider, Luis Mario, 1995, Cristos, Santos y Virgenes, Planeta, Mex.
Serrano, Francisco, 1998, La Virgin of Guadalupe, Better World Books
Smith, James, Black Saints: Mystics and Holy Folk, Archangel co. Press, Los Angeles, CA.
Smith, Waldemar, 1977, The Fiesta System and Economic Change, Columbia Press NY
Spence, Lewis, 1994, The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico: The Arcane Secrets and Occult Lore of the Ancient Mexicans and Maya, Newcastle Publishing, Los Angeles, CA.
Spence, Lewis, ND, The Mythologies of Ancient Mexico and Peru, Theophania Publishing, Calgary
Spielberg. Joseph and Antonio Zavaleta., 1997, Historic Folk Sainthood along the Texas-Mexico Border. in M. Kearney, A. Zavaleta (eds.). Studies in Matamoros and Cameron County, pp. 347-374, University of Texas at Brownsville, TX
Starr, Paul,1984, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Basic Books, NY.
St. Clair, David, M 1976, Pagans, Priests and Prophets, Prentice Hall, NJ
Stahl, Jorge, 1928, Vida y Milagros de El Niño Fidencio, Documentary Film, 30 minutes, February 1928, ex.
Symposium on Immigrant Health: Special Issue, 1996, Texas Medicine, Texas Medical Association, vol. 92, no. 10 Austin, Texas.
Tafur, et. al., 2009, A Review of Curanderismo and Healing Practices Among Mexican Americans, Occupational Therapy International, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 82-88.
Tamayo, Maria personal communication 1994 In Brownsville Tx, Brownsville curandera.
Tavarez, David, 2011, The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline and Dissent in Colonial Mexico, Stanford University Press, CA.
Teicher, Jordon, 2013, Mexico’s Spiritual Healers, Slate,
Texas Tech Journal of Rural Health. p.39-45., Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Tx.
The New York Times, February 22, 1928, p. 6, The Niño Fidencio, NY.
The Talking Cross, in Search of, http://méxicolesstraveled.com/talkingcross.htm/ accessed 10/21/15
Thompson, Waddy 1846, Recollections of Mexico
Torres, Eliseo, 1995, Curandero: A Life in Mexican Folk Healing, Albuquerque, NM.
Torres, Eliseo, 2006, Healing with Herbs and Rituals: The Mexican Tradition of Curanderismo, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque., NM.
Treviño, Carlos v.,2001, Curanderismo in Mexico and Guatemala: its Historical Evolution from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century, in: Brad R Huber and Sandstrom Mesoamerican Healers, the University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Treviño, Roberto, R. The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston, the University of North Carolina Press, NC.
Trotter R and J Chavira, Curanderismo Mexican American Folk Healing, University of Georgia press, Athens, Ga.
Tudela, Elisa, 2000, Colonial Mexico: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality in Mexico 1580-1750, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Tushner, Eve, 2014, Gay and Catholic: Accepting my Sexuality, Finding Community, Living my Faith, Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN.
Valerio-Jiménez, Omar, 2013, River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands, Duke University Press, NC
Vallejo, Soledad, 2006, Muxhe: Una Nueva Identidad Sexual, Actitud Gay, Magazine.
Van Wagenen, Michael and Mónica Delgado, Spirit Doctors, Film.
Vanderwood, Paul, 1998, The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, CA.
Vasconcelos, J. (1958). La raza Cósmica: Misión de la Raza Iberoamericana , Barcelona: Agencia Mundial de Librería.
Velimirovic, Boris, ed., 1977, Modern Medicine and Medical Anthropology in the United States-Mexico Border Population, Pan American Health Association, WHO Publication, no. 359, Washington, DC.
Vice, Television News Investigative Reporting, El Niño Fidencio, 2014, Espinazo, Nuevo Leon., MX.
Vidaurri, Cynthia, l., 2002, Las Que Menos Quería El Niño: Women of the Fidencista Movement, In: Norma Cantu and Olga Najera-Ramirez, eds., Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, the University of Illinois Press, IL.
Villafane, Eldin, 1993, The Liberating Spirit: Toward a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI.
Villarreal, José María, 2015, The Devotion to a Living Santo and His Religious Healing: An Interdisciplinary Study of El Niño Fidencio and His Religious Movement, Doctoral Dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.
Winkelman, Michael, 2000, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing, Greenwood Press, CA.
Wright, Laura 2013, Chosen to Heal, Immaculate Heart Press, Macmillan, NY.
Wroth, William, 1991, Images of Penance, Images of Mercy, in the Late Nineteenth
Century, Moonlight Book Co.
Zabaleta, Fray Juan de, 1885, El Día de Fiesta por la Manama y Por la Tarde, Nabu, Public Domain, Reprint.
Zacharias, S., 2006, Mexican Curanderismo as Ethnopsychotherapy: A Qualitative Study on Treatment Practices, Effectiveness, and Mechanisms of Change, International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education, vol. 53, no. 4, 381.
Zapata de Robles, Cipriana personal communication 1994, in Espinazo, NL, Curandera, MX, Fidencista leader.
Zavaleta, Antonio N. and Alberto Salinas, jr., 2009, Curandero Conversations: El Niño Fidencio, Shamanism and Healing Traditions of the Borderlands, Authorhouse, Bloomington, IN.
Zavaleta, Antonio N. 1998, “El Niño Fidencio: Un–Santo Popular para el Nuevo Milenio”, Sociotam: Revista International de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, CD V victoria,
Zavaleta, Atonio N. 1997, El Niño Fidencio, William Zellner, Editor, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
Zavaleta, Antonio N. 2012, El Niño Fidencio (José Fidencio Síntora Constantino) (1898-1938), Encyclopedia of Chicano Folklore, Maria Herrera-Sobek, editor, pp. 441-450, abc-clio, Greenwood Press, CA
Zavaleta, Antonio N. Editor, 2013 El Niño Fidencio: Libro de las Sagradas Escrituras, Authorhouse, Bloomington, IN Spanish.
Zavaleta, Antonio N., 2012, La Transmigration de la Religion Popular: Practica y Renovación de Creencias Sincreticas a Traves de la Frontera México-Estados Unidos de America, in Sociedad, Estado y Territorio, pp.7-27, el Colegio de Tamaulipas, Cd. Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mx.
Zellner, William and M. Petrowsky, 1998, Sects, Cults and Spiritual communities: a Sociological
