La Maldición de la Brujería: Decolonial Memory and Healing in Texas Mexican Literature

Abstract

While Chicanx Studies scholarship has endured since the 1960s, contemporary Texas Mexican literature and brujeria-centered narratives have remained largely unexamined, particularly in relation to decolonial memory, healing, and identity formation. This thesis argues that brujería (Mexican witchcraft) and brujería (curses), in contemporary Texas Mexican novels, function as decolonial narrative strategies that reclaim historical memory, spiritual knowledge, intergenerational healing, and cultural identity. This study examines Rubén Degollado’s The Family Izquierdo (2023), Rudy Ruiz’s Valley of Shadows (2022), and V. Castro’s The Haunting of Alejandra (2023). Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s framework of conocimiento, this thesis situates brujería as a discursive manifestation of inherited colonial trauma rather than supernatural plot devices. By centering brujería as an epistemological system, this study challenges the colonial literary framework and contributes to the borderlands and Chicanx studies by highlighting Texas Mexican spiritual knowledge as a critical site of decolonial scholarly study.