# Border-Crossings November 02, 2026 Alfredo García Garza, Harvard PhD 2025 | Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey ![photo of a large river](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-11/Image%20One.jpeg?itok=z0_lJsu6) Río Bravo/Grande: border between Piedras Negras, Coahuila and Eagle Pass, Texas. Photo by Alfredo García Garza.In an ancient Mesoamerican cleansing cure called *limpia*, limes are sweeping instruments that remove maladies, and within spiritual healing traditions in the Río Bravo borderlands, limes absorb, retain, and transfer pain and relief. As a conduit of corporeal sensations and emotional states, a lime allows the healer to exchange the illness by diminishing her own being so that of her patient may be augmented: The patient recovers vitality at the expense of the healer’s. I had to cross the borders between ethnographic and therapeutic encounters to grasp this toll of ritual cures. ![Photo of ritual objects](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-11/Image%20Two.JPG?itok=FF5wQyJ9) Ritual Objects: Palo Santo incense stick, candle with image of Manuelito de Atocha, and iPhone showing María José. Photo by Alfredo García Garza.During my 2024 fieldwork in northeastern México, I interviewed María José, a spiritual healer based in Monclova, Coahuila. During our conversations, she argued that understanding the *limpia* requires experiencing it in one’s own person with body, soul, and spirit; through physical, emotional, and spiritual engagement. Although I had participated in a *limpia* with her as a patient, I had not yet done so as her assistant. When that opportunity presented itself at the other side of the border, I did not hesitate—though María José had warned me that the *limpia* took a great toll on the ritual performer. Camilo, her transnational patient in need of a *limpia*, is a young migrant restaurant worker in Austin, Texas, who, like me, grew up in the Coahuilan countryside near the Río Bravo border. I was invested in his cure because he is a dear friend of mine. Although exposed to Mexican traditional medicine as a child, Camilo is now a skeptic. Finding himself hurt, weakened, and restless with few biomedical options given his legal status, he was compelled to become a patient of María José. ![photo of hand holding a lime](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-11/Image%20Three.jpg?itok=nwKZvyik) Lime on María José’s hand before the *limpia*. Photo by Alfredo García Garza.In his kitchen, exhausted after work on a Friday night, Camilo faced me during a video check in with the healer; it was time for the *limpia.* María José invoked the presence of her tutelary spirit, Manuelito de Atocha, a Hispanic infant manifestation of Jesus Christ popular in Latin America. A lit candle bearing his divine image was on a table next to us, accompanied by a burning copal incense stick and the iPhone from which María José spoke. With faith, I rubbed a lime over Camilo’s body: head, chest, ribs, arms, stomach, and legs. All the while, María José activated the touched lime’s medicinal property through the secret language of prayer that Manuelito had taught her in her dreams. As the fervor of her speech intensified, the heat waves on the palms of my hands augmented, and I intensified the strength of my outward sweeping. I imagined the lime stripping away ills from the patient’s body. Inviting him to be receptive to the cure by undoing his fists, I kept rubbing the lime through Camilo’s hands. He conceded. I felt drawn to hit his chest and ribs with the lime, as if I was undoing the illness with each strike. After a few minutes, I grew sweaty and weary. As María José’s prayer became gentler, I moved slower and slower until we ended the ritual, “In the name of God-Father, God-Son, and God-Holy Spirit.” I was too exhausted to shift into being an ethnographer. We received María José’s blessing, and I left. The next night, I saw Camilo again in order to document our shared experience. As I began to interview him, I found myself distracted by an ache in my chest. A sudden and intense pain in my left ribs bothered me throughout the day, and it returned, accompanied by anxiety. I had never been stabbed, and I imagined this is what it would feel like if I ever did. Discomfort in my voice and face, I tightly held my ribs and explained to Camilo that it felt as if the knife kept twisting while going deeper. Surprised and impressed, his eyes widened, he exclaimed, “That’s exactly what I felt!” ![photo of a lime on a hand](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2026-11/Image%20Four_0.jpg?itok=MjuRpANT) Same lime after the *limpia*. Photo by Alfredo García Garza.Then it clicked. Camilo’s corporeal pain transferred to me through the lime during the ritual cure! As a conduit for the dialectical interplay of projections and reactions between patient and healer, a lime also transfers the emotional states that constitute illness and health during the cure: loss and recovery, emptiness and fullness, weariness and liveliness. Being is at once diminished and augmented during the therapeutic encounter. By showing and acknowledging his newfound vitality, Camilo provided further proof of our dialectical transfer. Despite having a long day at work, he looked relieved and more energetic than me since the night before. By collaborating with María José and Manuelito, I had been weakened but my friend had been strengthened. In the end, more than gaining a sense of understanding and grasping the toll of spiritual healing in the Río Bravo borderlands, by performing this *limpia* I felt a sense of fulfillment. *This Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions.* ### Alfredo García Garza Alfredo García Garza is a migrant ethnographer specializing in spiritual healing in the aftermath of state violence, particularly across the U.S.-México borderlands. He was initiated as an existential anthropologist and historian of religions in The Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Alfredo completed his PhD in 2025. ![Alfredo Garcia](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-11/Alfredo%27s%20Headshot.jpg?itok=tlooAoW8) See also:- [ Researcher Reflections ](/topic-tags/researcher-reflection)