The Curandero of Falfurrias

The burial shrine for saintly South Texan Don Pedro Jaramillo sits beside a dusty farm-to-market road in the brush country near Falfurrias, about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi.

If you’re unfamiliar with Jaramillo, the inscription on his granite headstone might seem a bit hyperbolic. It proclaims him “the benefactor of humanity.” But for South Texans raised on stories of Jaramillo’s legendary benevolence, his epitaph could not be more fitting.

Jaramillo, more widely known as Don Pedrito, was a community leader and , or folk healer, around the turn of the 20th century. In black-and-white photographs, he’s shown with a long white beard and a deep scar across the crumpled bridge of his nose. From 1881 until his death on July 3, 1907, he lived in a modest adobe hut near the banks of Los Olmos Creek