Misunderstanding a Problem

In old times far away, each gender had its important role in society. Those who complied were accepted as a useful cog. Those who did not were considered outsiders and generally shunned as a possible blight on the rest of the group. A women had the role of being mother and wife. That was considered the role she should fulfill within society. Therefore, the woman who was not married and had no children was believed to be anti-natural. As well as the one who had problems assimilating into society. Nothing good could come of that woman, and popular culture turned her into a witch.

And so our cultural representation of a witch as a hunchbacked, ugly old woman with no husband or child, whose closest friend is a farm animal or the handy cat that catches the pesky mice. Of course, we now understand that different walks of life are fine, and that each of us plays a necessary role in society even if we don't marry and have children. And that psychiatric problems are treatable and can allow the person to lead a normal life. But that understanding has only recently reached certain areas that have been far removed from modern life until a few years ago. In a village in the province of Ourense, close to where the highway from Santiago to Ourense passes, twenty years ago people still believed in witches. And would point them out to you.

Last night, watching a program that talks about strange unexplicable things, they mentioned the witches of a hamlet in Ourense who were "discovered" twenty years ago this year when part of their house burned down. I don't remember the story when it first appeared. Probably because at that time I was busy with a newborn and my world had shrunk to four walls. But it brought to light the misunderstandings and lack of knowledge that was solved by ascribing everything to superstitions that still won't go away.

In a little village near O Carballiño, tucked away into the foothills that lead down to the river Miño, there lived Nieves and Aurora, two octogenarian sisters, in an old house that they had inherited from their father. They had some livestock and a vegetable garden. They kept to themselves and never spoke to any of their neighbors. Their house had no electricity and had remained the same for many years, with no new refurbishments of any kind. The locals believed they were witches and strangers would come to their house and ask for remedies. The women feared the strangers would bring the Evil Eye with them. To ward it off, they painted white crosses on the stone blocks of their house. They also collected old dolls that had been thrown away in local illegal dumps, or in Carballiño, where they went to beg for alms. Those dolls they would then attach to the walls of the house, where they would hang amidst the white painted crosses.    

Their problems had begun thirty years earlier, when their mother died and part of their land was expropriated. From that point on, they stopped talking to the neighbors and withdrew into themselves. Then their father died, and the body practically had to forcibly be taken away, because they were convinced he hadn't died yet. And they were finally left alone by everyone except the curious. Until the night of the 14th of November in 1996. That night Nieves and Aurora were helped by the neighbors they had shied away from in putting out the fire that consumed the living quarters of the house. But the women would not leave the site. They retreated to the stable area and lived there for the next two weeks, threatening anyone who came to take them out with throwing boiling oil at them. They preferred to live in a stable with a dirt floor and rainwater filtering in rather than leave their property. Even though Aurora was blind and limping. 

In the end, they stopped offering resistance and came out to be taken to a hospital and then a seniors' residence, where they eventually died some years later. The house still stands, covered with ivy, the stones falling off the walls, and the remains of the fire still visible. The crosses are still there, as are some of the dolls. The television program left open doubts about whether the sisters were really witches, but the truth is that they were victims of ignorance and superstition. The backwardness that existed in rural areas impeded them from receiving psychiatric help back when they probably began to need it. The fact that they remained single also made them stand apart. Superstition simply pushed them further into the darkness. How many "witches" were really women with psychiatric problems that made them different from their neighbors? Or simply women who chose to live differently? And all this happened only twenty years ago. The ignorance is till too close to us.