Nino Fidencio
Nino Fidencio
Nino Fidencio is a popular folk St. of South Texas and Northern Mexico. He has always been referred to as El Nino, as he was innocent, boyish/child-like.
He was born October 17, 1898 in the village of Yuriria, Guanajuato, Mexico, where he learned to work with herbs and began usage of the healing arts. In 1925, he relocated to Espinazo, Nuevo León, Mexico where he continued the practice of faith healing until his death in 1938.
In Brownsville, Texas, and the surrounding areas even as far North as San Antonio, 7 day candles can be found with his image and prayer on the back. It is believed that during the 20’s and 30’s that people from South Texas made pilgrimages to see Fidencio and learn about his healing techniques and usages of herbs. Today, the cult following continues via the use of spirit mediums who are numerously women, and ‘channel’ the spirit of El Nino. According to some documentation, those who had traveled from South Texas during that time period and obtained some of El Nino’s knowledge or observe, have stopped passing down this tradition or
knowledge since the late 70’s or early 80s.
Unfortunately, I am not able to get all of the papers I have about this section translated at this time, but when I do, I will add more information and stories here. I wanted to at least put a page up for him, since he was such an important part of tradition in cuanderoism typical to South Texas.
Dr. Zavaleta of Brownsville, Texas, has done years of work and research and had the Fidencio Project going for a while. I will add some resources and links here for his pages and articles:
http://reportingtexas.com/the-healing-spirit-of-el-nino-fidencio/
https://www.msu.edu/~torresm2/nino.html
I believe these are all really good resources, especially elninofidencio.com, as there are books and articles in which may be of great interest.
The material I have is from the 60's and early 70's, and this particular section is an unworldly mix of Spanish and Nahuatl in which I can't seem to figure out just yet to be able to coherrently remark
or derrive a really good article out of. When I began work on it, I had a strange feeling that maybe when it was written, it may have been so in a code as to be understood only
by the people who had written. I'm not readily willing to have anyone help me with it; I don't know what exactly it says, and sometimes...as we know, it's a good idea to keep some
things under your hat, so to speak.
If I am able to get some coherrance going--great. If not, I will continue to add links and research to this page in the upcoming future.