- CATEMACO - In Mexico's capital of witchcraft, rivalries are brewing and
bubbling.
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- On the shores of Lake Catemaco in southern
Veracruz state, shamans who commune with Lucifer in snake-filled grottoes
are pitted against "charlatans" who perform for tourists while
white-clad virgins chant in the shadows of jungle stages.
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- "There are many charlatans here,
people who stand in the streets and say, 'I'm the chief wizard,' but they
don't deliver," said veteran shaman Jose Luis Martinez.
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- Catemaco, a town of 20,000 filled with
the chatter of tropical birds near the Gulf of Mexico 260 miles east of
Mexico City, has been famous for witchcraft since Olmec times at least
2,000 years ago, local legend says.
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- Nowadays, tourists are greeted with shouts
of "brujo?" (wizard?) by young tour guides with official municipal
identity cards. They can eat at the "Siete Brujas" (Seven Witches)
restaurant and bar. A market on the lakeside promenade sells plastic witches
on key chains and supposedly powerful amulets.
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- On the first Friday of March, local tourism
authorities promote the "Annual Convention of Wizards," charging
fees for visitors to rid themselves of evil spells as the moon sends a
yellow glow across the smooth waters of the lake.
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- "We're at a center of the energy,
which we channel through the world," Arsenio Ixtepan said with dramatic
pauses and theatrical gestures, dressed in a white doctor's coat in the
waiting room of his spiritual consultancy.
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- He then refused to answer more questions
about his trade, telling a correspondent to find the wizards-for-tourists
syndicate's leader, whom it turned out did not exist.
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- But Martinez and a handful of other shamans
who say they can barter souls to the Devil for wealth or power as well
as intervene with God for good health or love say most practitioners are
just putting the tourists on.
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- "The charlatans and blabberers hold
their convention but those who have a pact with the Devil don't need conventions,"
Martinez, a third generation shaman, said. "There's nothing special
about this place. That's just the product of television, the press. They
come here and dress it up as a great place for witches because it's good
for business."
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- But that does not mean demons and magic
do not exist. Many locals appear terrified by strange goings-on on the
Mountain of the White Monkey, which rises darkly behind Catemaco, and by
the powerful forces apparently swirling overhead as wizards weave their
magical webs.
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- "There's a lot of evil here. There's
much more evil than good," a teenage tour guide named America said
earnestly, leading a group around the Nanciyaga ecological park. In the
park, tourists can purify their skin with natural mud or cleanse their
souls in the wooden hut of a "house-wizard."
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- The main business of the 50 or so sorcerers,
healers, shamans and wizards who have set up shop in Catemaco are "limpias"
(cleansings) " freeing peoples' auras of bad vibes " and fortune-telling
through the reading of cards.
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- But the magic can also be far darker.
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- Martinez has two houses. In one, where
his family lives, a bleeding Jesus swoons on a cross over a white altar
lighted by white candles. In the other, near the town's cemetery, where
Martinez keeps ancient tomes of dark magic like The Supreme Book (El Libro
Supremo) and The Anti-Christ (El Anti-Cristo), a furious red devil rages
above a black altar.
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- "I could not take you to the dark
house for a cleansing because you would be terrified by such a gloomy place,"
Martinez said.
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- The dark side of wizardry, known in the
trade as the esoteric arts, is full of danger. Politicians seeking political
revenge, the avaricious who desire unlimited wealth and the hate-filled
who want an enemy to die in a car crash have to sell their souls to Lucifer.
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- As a shaman, Martinez said, he acted
as an interlocutor, taking clients to a cave in the mountains filled with
vipers where they could strike a personal deal with the demon. But it requires
a lot of strength.
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- "The evil spirit is so ugly, with
long hairs on his face and fingernails as long as this (about three inches),
that you cannot look him in the eye because you would be paralyzed with
fright ... and then he would take you away," Martinez said.
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- In a conversation full of legend and
lore, he sighed at the sacrifices a shaman has to make to serve the dreams,
both evil and good, of his clients. Sitting in the waiting room of his
house, the walls decorated with tinsel Valentine's hearts, a photograph
of the sacred mountain and a small notebook with a bosomy girl on its cover,
he said he had had to offer the souls of seven of his family to gain the
powers he possessed.
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- He spent his nights in the dark house
as a servant of black magic and his days attending a stream of visitors
seeking spiritual help. All the time, he has to guard himself against the
snakes and monsters sent to terrorize him by Lucifer.
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- "It's a hard life, so full of sacrifice,"
he said. But he insisted there was more good than evil in his trade, saying
God created the Devil and therefore God was dominant.
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- It is not usually a trade for women because
of the rigors, he said, and women have frequently cheated the demon out
of their souls, making the evil spirit accept bets he cannot win. "He
is afraid of women," Martinez said with a broad grin.
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- Nevertheless, his 20-year-old daughter
Alondra Martinez Martinez is following in her father's footsteps, toiling
through three years of study. "There are very few of us willing to
take the risk," she said, adding she was one of only two genuine female
witches in Catemaco and the only one to live a pure spiritual life without
a husband and children.
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- "But I was born into it. And I like
it," she said. "I like helping those people who are suffering."
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