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Listen » Carlos Mosqueda and his daughter Cindy
“They'd come in limping and they would literally leave walking.”
Carlos Mosqueda tells his daughter, Cindy, about how his father healed people in their East LA home.
Recorded in Los Angeles, CA
Credits
Produced by Nadia Reiman.
Facilitated by Alejandro De La Cruz.
Recorded in partnership with KPCC.
Transcript
Click here to read the transcript for this story.
Interview transcript
CSM: He would come home from work and in our backyard he had a bench and he’d have four or five people waiting for him already.
CM: Yeah, he had his workshop back there.
CSM: And my dad never charged for his services. People that played sports would come with a dislocated ankle, shoulder, what have you—they’d come in limping and they would literally leave walking. Dad used to say “To him that is upstairs there is no impossible thing.” “Para el de arriba no hay ninguna cosa imposible.” Just recently I happened to help a client --
CM: Mhmm.
CSM: --and he said to me, “I used to know a Mr. Mosqueda. They used to live in East L.A. He was a sobador. And when he said that my jaw nearly dropped because I was sitting across the table from him. Then he said, “Se llamaba Bartolo.” His name was Bartolo. “Alguna relacion a usted?” Any relation to you? And I looked at him in the eyes and I said, ‘That’s my father.’ And tears ran out down his eyes. He said, “Your father cured my wife when nobody else could.” Grandpa made an impact like that that has lived on. To have seen him do that, to make a kind of difference like that, it’s an incredible thing.