Magic Eyes: Scenes from an Andean Girlhood.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

In 1982 American photographer Wendy Ewald settled in the small village of Raquira, in the Colombian Andes, to take pictures and teach school. Through her pupils she came to know the rich Andean folk culture, in which magic and nature are inseparable components of equal value. Through the local people she learned that the otherworldly was as real as the concrete and substantive.

Toward the end of her stay in Colombia, she met Alicia Vasquez, a twenty-eight-year-old single mother of three sons, who ran a women's craft cooperative and a milk program for children. Although Alicia lived in a squatters' settlement near Bogota, her roots were in the country, and her stories reflected the same magical universe as those of Ewald's students. Ewald interviewed Alicia and later, her mother Maria, at length. She collected the women's tales and wove them into the fascinating text of Magic Eyes. Because Alicia was camera shy--she associated the lens with the evil eye--Ewald used photographs of her neighbors to illustrate the text. The result is a vivid, visually engaging portrait of an Andean girlhood.

The "magic eyes" of the title are Alicia's. To the largely Indian population of the Colombian Andes blue eyes carry a curse, for they are associated with the Spanish conquistadors who took the Indians' land. Since Alicia was born with blue-green eyes like her father's, her family assumed she carried the evil eye, like him. She remembers her father staring into her eyes when she was a small child. She felt burning and a sudden pain; she was unable to open her eyes and was confined to bed. Convinced that she was going blind, the family called for the girl's aunt, Blind Ana, a healer reputed to know black magic. After being treated with baths and prayers, the child regained her sight and the color of her eyes changed from blue to brown: "They...