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La Brujeria (feminine) means witchcraft in Spanish, practiced by brujos (male wizard) or brujas (female). In Latino folklore, the bruja is a figure of malevolence and evil working for Satan. To embrujada is to bewitch a victim.
People visit brujos for good fortune in business, to curse enemies, or to remove curses. Hechizos or amarres are their spells; hechizos de maldición (a curse), hechizos de amor (love), hechizos de dinero (money), hechizos de proteccion (protection).
La Bruja Llorona is the “Weeping Witch”, or La Llorona, a vengeful ghost “The Weeping Woman”, roaming at night wearing a white dress near water while crying “¡Ay mis hijos!” (Oh, my children!) for her children that drowned, or that she drowned in a fit of jealous rage. Children are warned to come in at night or La Llorona will take them to replace her dead children.
Her appearance is a harbinger of misfortune or death.
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2021/10/la-llorona-an-introduction-to-the-weeping-woman/
There is a La Llorona’s/Luana's Canyon with a similar story near Kingman
https://puzzleboxhorror.com/the-ghosts-of-slaughterhouse-canyon/
Another bruja is Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte or Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Holy Death), worshipped by gang and Cartel members and in the barrios of Mexico, Central America and California
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41804243
Youtube
In April 2025 Osmin went to the grocery store in Las Margaritas. The parking lot was full so he had to park 2 streets down from the store. As he was walking to the store, he passed 2 guys smoking marijuana. When he was returning to the truck, one of them spoke to him, saying, "You have a lot of protection." Osmin asked, "How so?" The man said, "When you were walking, I was thinking of robbing you. When you came back, the saint (Santa Muerte) told me, "Don't touch him. We can't mess with him. He has a big light." He held his gun with his hand shaking.
Curanderismo is folk healing by a curandero or yerbero (herbalist) who uses counter magic to treat mal puesto, illnesses caused by witchcraft.
In most cultures, the “witchdoctor” (Shaman from Russian, from Tungus šaman "one who knows") is both a curandero and a brujo; in some Latino cultures they work in opposition to each other; casting curses and counter-curses.
The brujos’ roots are in Indigenous folk magic of Latin America (Mayan in Guatemala); often mixed with Catholicism and Afro-Caribbean Yoruba & Santeria (especially among the Garifuna in northern Guatemala, Honduras & Belize). Dominican Vudú (Voodoo) in practiced in the Dominican Republic.
The Nahuales (shamans) in Guatemala are considered brujos, with the power to shapeshift; Zoomorphs who can become animals. Shapeshifters can be found in the mythology of people groups all over the world; ie. werewolves in Northern Europe.
The use of masks depicting animals and spirit beings is common in the Guatemalan Central Highlands, the center of the worship of Maximón.
Maximón leading the Good Friday procession in Santiago Atitlán
Antique zoomorph (shape shifter) and spirit masks in the market in Antigua
After his inauguration January 2024, President Bernardo Arévalo attended a Fuego Sagrado (Fire Circle) ceremony at Kaminaljuyu (“Hill of the Dead”), a Mayan site in Guatemala City
The Xinca and Pocomam of SE Guatemala have their own ethnoreligious costumbre/practices, sacred places, and fire ceremonies.
Xinca Nahuales in Jalapa in Santa Rosa state
Guazacapán is near Chiquimulilla, is primarily Xinca and known as Tierra de los Brujos/Land of the Witches with unexplained phenomena described even by the Conquistadors. The last of the great brujos there, Pedro Dávila, died in 1974 but witchcraft still has great influence in the area, which is just east of Guanagazapa and Nuevo Tulate.
More information regarding modern Mayan-Catholic religious practices in Guatemala may be found here
and brujos in Guatemala
It is important to recognize that there are brujos everywhere in Latin America, and wherever there is a significant Latino population in the U.S., especially the Southwest. There are brujos in strip malls in Maryvale in Phoenix.
The origin of witchcraft is Satan, and Christians are in a war against “the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil…” (Ephesians 6:12).
Witchcraft/sorcery/divination/spiritism/necromancy/ “magic arts” are specifically condemned in Scripture: Leviticus 19:26b, 19:31, 20:6, 20:27, Deuteronomy 18:10-14, 1 Samuel 28:3–25 (Saul’s visit to the Witch of Endor), 2 Kings 17:16-17, Isaiah 47:8-14, Micah 5:10-12, Acts 19:17-20, Galatians 5:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10, Revelation 21:8
Wherever God and His people are at work, Satan will be there also working to oppose, deceive, confuse, obstruct and destroy (kill) the work (John 10:10) but God is faithful to strengthen us and protect us. (2 Thessalonians 3:3)
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