Investing their Lives in ‘Lost’ Causes
Witchcraft was a way of life for an ethnic Mixtec father of six in a Mexican village who lost his two youngest children to mysterious illnesses.
Villagers who relied on his potions and rituals in their yearning to acquire fortune or favor believed that Roberto’s two young sons must have died in a war of spells between him and another specialist in witchcraft – and that his rival’s spell also doomed his other children to die.
It took a long, long time for Roberto to realize his perpetual drunken stupor would not take away the pain.
