Mexican Witches

Chain-smoking and near tears, Maria de Los Angeles Macedo told her sad story to the witch. After seven years of marriage and two children, her husband ran off with another woman, and she wanted him back for the New Year. 

Doctor Aura, a self-proclaimed witch with large eyes and a necklace of little wooden skulls, nodded confidently. She wrapped 10 lemons in black silk, placed them in a plasticbag and doused them with an oil guaranteed to sap any sweetness out of the fruit. That night, she promised, she would visit a graveyard and bury the bitter bag near the tombstone of a woman named Maria, asking her spirit's help to drive a wedge between the wayward husband and the homewrecker. 

"Soon they will be fighting nonstop; If they stay together, I won't let him rest," said Doctor Aura, collecting about $10 to cure Macedo in a cramped little booth deep in the labyrinth of Mexico City's Sonora Market. 

Sonora Market covers a couple of city blocks. It buzzes with commerce, in everything from pottery to hamsters, as well as witches and other spiritual mediums peddling their expertise and the tools of their trade. For $1.50, "love sprays" in aerosol cans promise an end to unrequited love. A dash in the right direction and the object of your affection is under your spell. 

Stalls are buzzing with customers asking about different potions and clerks stuffing potion after cure after lotion into plastic bags. At one given moment on a recent day, a half-dozen people waited in line for Aura. They each paid about $10 a day's wages for many of them for a consultation in her tiny corner office. 

At this most hopeful time of year, many Mexicans are seeking a change in their luck, not through New Year's resolutions, but through this nation's remarkably large number of witches. Looking for love? Want to be rich? Just hoping next year will be better than this one. Mexico's witches offer their help, for a price. 

Macedo, the downcast wife who had come to seek Aura's help to get her husband back, perked up and began smiling when Aura went to work on the lemon concoction that was supposed to sour relations between the cheating husband and his mistress.

With one of her small daughters clinging to her side, Macedo said she believed the witch's spell was her best hope for saving her marriage. She said she had seen Aura on a television show and had come to the Sonora Market to tap into her magic to get her husband back.

"I miss him," she said.

Karla Canche and Sebastián Melendez.