Is Your Innocent Abuelita Actually A Secret Bruja?

My siblings and I basically got raised by our Grandma and even though her house was a little creepy, I never thought too much more about it. That is until my sister and I started reminiscing about the past and she brought up a lot of things that made me think I might have been wrong about my dear ole abuela.

Hiding In Plain Sight

So I want to share a few tips and tricks for seeing the signs and finding out whether your abuelita is a normal grandma or actually a full on Bruja hiding in plain sight.

Does Your Abuela Have A Huge Garden?

Okay, this is a pretty normal thing to have. Lots of people have gardens but Grandma witches are sneaky, they come from a time when they had to hide their brujeria. So sometimes a garden is just a garden but if its full of weird plants nobody else has in a garden, bugs you don't see anywhere else in El Paso, or if you've ever seen your abuelas black cat in the garden then looked away and suddenly your abuela was there - your grandmother is a witch. Also why does she have so many dogs?

Is The Rest Of Your Family Terrified Of Your Grandma?

Baby Side Eyeing Suspicious Bruja Grandma

Now, this one doesn't automatically make your abuela a bruja because in Mexican families, grandmas are the matriarchs. The women are the bosses of the household and the home so Grandmas word is law. But some grandmas aren't scaring people because they can whip a chancla at a fly from over 100 miles, some abuelitas have lore that includes hexing a granddaughters ex for doin the family dirty. And nobody ever saw that foo again. Not a coincidence.

Does Your Abuelita Suggest Weird Homemade Medicine When You're Sick?

Bruja Grandma Being A Bruja In Photo

Most older folk have some wild remedies they brought with 'em from the before times when we didn't know asbestos would kill us and we used to recommend cigarettes as a diet supplement. Most of those are probably still unsafe but your lil ole innocent abuelita who keeps shrinking for some reason, always happens to have some crazy recipe she brought back from Mexico. A mix of those weird herbs in her garden that she makes you drink while she does a limpia and rubs an egg on you.

Does Your Grandma Always Wear Black And Have Weird Jewelry?

Someone somewhere probably has a goth grandma but that's not what we're talking about here. Every photo of your grandma from the past has her in black dresses, black pants, black blouses, sometimes black hats with wide rims and black lipstick. She has weird chunky jewelry that doesn't look like normal grandma jewelry, this jewelry has odd looking stones on it. Little copper wires wrapped around a piece of bark from the tree she grows in the front yard. One necklace you saw even had a little fox tail or some kind of fuzzy animal appendage and you always wondered if it was real or not. Now your pretty sure it was real and pretty sure she made it herself.

Has Your Abuelita Been Pretending Not To Understand English?

Bruja Grandma Convening With Animal Familiar

You know, your parents know, your tias and tios know but everyone just plays along. For years, the youngest 'no sabo' cousins have stumbled around their Spanglish trying to say basic greetings to her while tios and tias all speak respectfully to her in Spanish. Yet occasionally they'll say a whole sentence in English and your grandma doesn't miss a beat in the conversation. She doesn't speak English because her language of power is the one she was born speaking. She doesn't mix because it'll dilute her abilities. She needs to be able to put a curse on whichever of her kids burnt the rice.

Listen, these things probably don't mean anything. Your grandma is probably super sweet and very kind and really normal. But I thought the same thing about mine and it couldn't have been further from the truth. Maybe this list is dumb and fake or maybe this list is gonna open your eyes to the reality that has been living with you your whole life. Your Abuela is a Bruja.