By STEVEN HATHCOCK
MOMENTS IN TIME
Stuck Full of Thorns and Burned to Death: A man is living at Camargo named Ambrosio Ramirez, who has been for some time been suffering from a loathsome disease. As he has been unable to recover from the medical treatment he has received, both himself and his wife concluded he was bewitched by a curandera (witch doctor), named Antonio Alanis. Marias Ramirez, the father of Ambrosio, who is one of the wealthiest Mexicans on the river, sent a party of men to kidnap Alanis and take her to Camargo.
The men lassoed and dragged her through the brush for a ways. They beat one of her daughters badly for interfering and trying to protect her mother and shot at another but missed. After much ado, they dragged the older woman across the river to Camargo, where they proceeded to beat her severely, and her body was stuck full of thorns of prickly pear.
The men beat again as soon as she recovered from the initial assault. They repeated this treatment for over two weeks, but Ambrosio stayed in poor health, and it seemed like this treatment was not going to work.
The witch doctor then told them that they must burn her, that the sick man had pigeon bones in his head, and that as soon as the witch commenced burning, the bones would protrude from his head, and she (the witch doctor) would then pull them out, and the man would recover!
The woman was tied up and severely burned by the process of lighting corn shucks under her feet until there remained no possible chance of her recovery, and, I understand, she soon died.” (The New Albany Daily Tribune, March 31, 1860)
Editor: Did Poor Ambrosio suffer from “pigeon bones in his head?” Or perhaps he just had a few bats loose in his belfry? A bigger question today would be, is witch burning covered under the Affordable Health Care mandate?
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