37 2. Re-enchanting the world: la bruja and class struggle in Chicana/Latina cultural production Norell Martínez Instead of the evil, dried-out, old prude of patriarchal lore, we know the witch to be a strong, proud woman, wise in the ways of natural medicine. We know her as a self-confident freedom fighter, defending her right to her own sexuality and her right to govern her life and community according to the laws of nature. We know that she was slandered, oppressed, and burned alive for her wisdom and her defiance of patriarchal rule. Luisah Teish, Jambalaya In seventeenth-century Perú, indigenous priestesses who practiced and preserved the old religion were accused of witchcraft. These “witches” played a critical role in leading magico-political movements against the Spanish colonial regime (Silverblatt 195). In 1785 in Alta California, a medicine woman named Toypurina used her power and influence as a wise woman and led eight villages in the attack against the mission’s priests and soldiers. The Spanish authorities constructed Toypurina as a witch to undermine her power (Castañeda 236). In eighteenth-century Jamaica, an Obeah priestess named Queen Nanny organized a maroon army against the British soldiers who wanted to re-enslave her people. The colonial discourse of the British sought to prove Queen Nanny’s diabolical use of Obeah (Fehskens 3). These magico-political rebellions exemplify what Marx and Engels proclaimed in The Communist Manifesto when they described class struggle: the moment when “oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another” (9). Class struggle for so-called “witches” such as Toypurina and Queen Nanny is conjured by drawing on spiritual and healing knowledge to fight against the oppressor—the ruling class—for freedom against oppression. Today among millennials, there is growing fascination with witches, witchcraft, and the occult. 1 A generation of diverse self-identified women 2 are reclaiming the witch as a feminist symbol. Bianca Bosker notes that the recent interest in witches and witchcraft coincides with the rise of feminism in different eras—from the women’s suffrage movement to the second wave feminist movement, and most recently the 1 See Wilson’s NBC article, “Feminist Witches Movement Aims to Destigmatize the Craft,” for more insight on this trend. 2 I will be referring to “women-identified people” as “women” in this chapter. I focus specifically on women because women have generally been the victims of the witch-hunts. For a perspective on queer and non-gender-conforming “witches,” see Beliso-De Jesus’ article “Brujx: An Afro-Latinx Queer Gesture.” Norell Martínez - 9781800889132 Downloaded from https://www.elgaronline.com/ at 07/26/2024 08:14:42AM via communal account