EL NIÑO FIDENCIO

About the Book

In El Niño Fidencio: Libro de las Sagradas Escrituras, anthropologist Dr. Antonio "Tony" Zavaleta has painstakingly prepared the 71 original scriptures left by José Fidencio Sintora Constantino, El Niño Fidencio (1898-1938) to his followers. The Escrituras are the scriptural teachings of El Niño when he walked the earth and are also the basis of a core-belief system imparted to by the Niño Fidencio known as Fidencismo. The early-era Escrituras begin in 1925 and continue until El Niño's death in 1938. They were handwritten by his followers as they intently listened to him speak. Since they have never been published before, the Sagradas Escrituras represent the foundation for Fidencio's belief system. This is the first time that they are available to be studied by his followers and others.

About the Author

Zavaleta studied Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin completing a doctoral degree in 1976 and has spent the past 37 years as a faculty member and administrator at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College. In the latter part of 2009 he published along with South Texas curandero, Alberto Salinas, Jr., Curandero Conversations: El Niño Fidencio, Shamanism and Healing Traditions of the Borderlands In 2010, he published Medicinal Plants of the Borderlands: A Bilingual Resource Guide, the result of 40 years of study of medicinal plants on the border. Zavaleta currently serves as Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Texas Center for Border and Transnational Studies at the University of Texas at Brownsville.