genealogy Article How We Heal: Genealogical Narratives of Healing among San Lázaro Devotees Elaine Penagos   Citation: Penagos, Elaine. 2021. How We Heal: Genealogical Narratives of Healing among San Lázaro Devotees. Genealogy 5: 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ genealogy5010018 Received: 28 September 2020 Accepted: 25 February 2021 Published: 28 February 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA; elaine.penagos@emory.edu Abstract: Healing is the basis of belief in San Lázaro, a popular saint among Cubans, Cuban- Americans, and other Latinx peoples. Stories about healing, received through faith in San Lázaro, are typically passed on through family members, rendering them genealogical narratives of healing. In this photo essay, the author draws on her maternal grandmother’s devotion to San Lázaro and explores how other devotees of this saint create genealogical narratives of healing that are passed down from generation to generation. These genealogical narratives of healing function as testaments to the efficaciousness of San Lázaro’s healing abilities and act as familial avenues through which younger generations inherit belief in the saint. Using interview excerpts and ethnographic observations conducted at Rincón de San Lázaro church in Hialeah, Florida, the author locates registers of lo cotidiano, the everyday practices of the mundane required for daily functions and survival, and employs arts-based methods such as photography, narrative inquiry, and thematic poetic coding to show how the stories that believers tell about San Lázaro, and their experiences of healing through faith in the saint, constitute both genealogical narratives of healing and genealogical healing narratives where testimonies become a type of narrative medicine. Keywords: San Lázaro; healing; Cuban; narratives; faith; lo cotidiano; arts-based methods 1. Introduction Living through a global pandemic gave me pause and cause to reflect on the impor- tance of faith, family, and community in my life. The first few months of stay-at-home orders were a strange mix of frustration, sadness, worry, and a slew of other emotions that I still cannot articulate. Physically isolating from most of the world also forced introspection regarding many of the quotidian aspects of my day-to-day life. Thinking about lo cotidiano (the quotidian), in terms of the everyday practices of the mundane required for daily functions and survival—most famously written about by mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz—I reflected on the question of what it means to heal. Contemporarily, the need for healing is often thought of as an individual necessity, one that has been increasingly perceived as only being met through the marvels of science and biomedicine. However, my life experiences as a gay Latina have taught me that healing goes beyond therapies administered in a clinical setting or the contents of a prescription bottle. For me, the word “heal” is a holistic verb that encompasses more than just the capabilities of biomedicine; healing requires a unification of science and culture, of faith and reason—an alchemy of all the things, ordinary and extraordinary, that comprise being in and of this world. As a Latina with Cuban and Colombian roots, my beliefs have always teetered on the line between popular Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religious traditions. My faith practices are a product of familial traditions, beginning with those I learned from my abuela, my maternal grandmother. As a child, stories contributed significantly to my religious forma- tion (I never received formal religious instruction beyond infant baptism in the Roman Catholic tradition). Stories and testimonies from family and friends helped me delineate what, as a child, I perceived as real, possible, magical, miraculous, or untrue. I understand the seemingly ordinary act of storytelling as an integral part of lo cotidiano—a concept born Genealogy 2021, 5, 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5010018 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy