The Witchcraft Capital Of Mexico

CATEMACO, Mexico (AP) - Workers from the local tourism office stop
cars at the edge of town to pitch the unique services Catemaco has to
offer. "Want a quick spiritual cleansing to suck away all your troubles?" one asks. "It's cheap, and you'll feel better afterwards," chimes in another.
Catemaco, population 35,000, is the witchcraft capital of Mexico - and some say of the world.

Tucked away on the eastern shore of a lake by the same name, high in the
jungle-covered Tuxtla Mountains along the Gulf of Mexico, the town definitely has a mystical feel. Haze hovers overhead most of the day, and the stench of decaying vegetation wafts on a light breeze.

Mexico has thousands of practicing witches, warlocks, shamans, herbalists, seers, healers, psychics and fortune tellers, worshippers of a mixed brew of Roman Catholicism and ancient rites and practices that survive from pre-Columbian days. Almost every marketplace in Mexico has at least one herb-woman and a "curandero," or healer. But only the 13 sorcerers of Catemaco, who call themselves "the Brothers," are acknowledged as the high priests of the trade. They say only they are privy to secret, ancient rites and practices. Their acolytes call them "masters."

Leading that coven are brothers Tito and Apolinar Gueixpal Seba, who live and
practice in their separate homes on a paved street at one edge of town, and Jacinto Zuniga Alfonso in a cheaper house on an unpaved street at the opposite end.

Master Tito, 48, and Master Apolinar, 35, dress casually but sport lots of
golden chains with expensive amulets around their necks and piles of gold and silver bracelets on their forearms. Master Jacinto, 38, wears a black judge's robe and practices in a tiny, barely lit back room crammed with stuffed birds, "spiritual" statuettes and vipers preserved in jars. He acts as a spokesman of sorts for the Brothers.

A rival National Association of Sorcerers is based in Mexico City, headed by "Professor" Antonio Vazquez de Alba. But Master Jacinto belittles them. "They practice spiritism, magic," he says. "We practice spiritualism. We practice the occult sciences. "We cure diseases very difficult to cure. We've had important people come to us, and we give them spiritual strength - famous musicians, soccer stars, actors and even a president." He wouldn't say which one. "We try to be discreet about it. Unlike the others, we are not political." The Brothers charge 100 pesos - $10 - for a simple "cleansing of evil forces." For a more complicated operation - such as curing arthritis - they charge 4,000 pesos - $400 - or more.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, Master Jacinto gives a visiting reporter a cleansing. After spraying the reporter's head with "specially treated" water, much huffing and puffing and a little hugging and passing of hands, he pauses.

"Your editor is envious of you," he says. "He muddles what you write. The envy has now been driven back to him. You are free of his evil force." But what about the crystal ball? "We don't predict the future," he says.

Professor Vazquez de Alba and his national association does. In March, to mark what was supposed to be the Aztec "Reed Grass 13" New Year, a score of the association's top brass gathered at the National Press Club in Mexico City and pledged "to use our ancestral secrets so that the coming presidential elections are fair and democratic."

The crowd of hard-bitten Mexican journalists gathered for the event looked
skeptical. Clean elections are a rarity in Mexico. "Mexico," Professor Vazquez de Alba told them, "is the navel of the world, the biggest spiritual center of the universe. And it can happen."

This year Reed Grass 13 will mark "the birth of a new Mexico. And there will
be pain, as with every birth," he says. Sorcery and the occult are so prevalent in Mexico that television networks air a "healer" hour almost daily. A female healer on the Televisa network recently told her audience about certain herbs that "will help knit broken bones beautifully."

Even law enforcement agencies have been known to use psychics. In 1996, federal investigators used a seer to try to frame Raul Salinas, the brother of a former president, for a high-profile political murder. Francisca Zetina was paid more than $400,000 to find the bones of a key witness who was missing. Instead, she dug up the bones of a dead relative buried them in a garden - and used her "spiritual powers" to lead police to the unmarked grave. The scam was revealed and she was convicted of fraud.

But the payment itself was perfectly legal under Mexican law. Attorney General Antonio Lozano Gracia admitted: "As a seer she helped us a lot in previous cases." So much for "white magic." Practitioners of the occult refuse to even talk about "black magic," which involves killing animals and sometimes people.
But they admit it is practiced in Mexico.

An infamous case was uncovered in 1989, when police raided a ranch outside the border city of Matamoros. They dug up about 30 bodies that showed signs of ritual sacrifice. One of the sacrificial victims was Mark Kilroy, a 21-year-old university student from Santa Fe, Texas. Sara Aldrete Villarreal, 24, the high priestess of the cult, her Cuban-American boyfriend, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, and four other men were arrested after several gunfights with police and two priests rumored to belong to the Knights Of St John.

The Sacrifice Ritual has seen a resurgence in the Cult of Holy Death. The Cult is sweeping Mexico and now has moved over the border into the United Sates.

Each was sentenced to 50 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Mexico, for premeditated murder.