I am planning on starting a podcast covering witchcraft in different cultures and times in history and I want to cover something from Central/South America as they have quite a particular type of magic that's important in creating the Bruja culture and is just interesting and fundamental in it's own right. However, I'm having a horribly hard time finding enough info to actually make a podcast episode on it.
Does anyone have any information and/or suggestions on where to get information?
You may be interested on a couple of past comments:
There's a few key sources which may be helpful to you, the first is the paper "Cuarenta Clases de Magos del Mundo Nahuatl (40 types of magicians in the Nahuatl world)" from Lopez Austin. It lists and summarizes various primary source references to magicians, witches, sorcerers, etc.
The other is Ruiz de Alarcon's 17th century work, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions that Today Live Among the Indians Native to this New Spain, which covers a wide variety of mystical practices. The work needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as Ruiz de Alarcon was explicitly writing in order to identify pagan practices to be stamped out and replaced with Christian rituals. He always was not near as familiar with Nahua culture as someone like Sahagun, nor did he employ Nahua colleagues in creating his work. As such his understanding of the meaning behind the recorded rituals can be somewhat shallow, to say the least.
Finally, there is Sahagun's General History of the Things of New Spain, Books 4 & 5: The Soothsayers and The Omens which similarly catalogs a broad and diverse array of metaphysical practices, though most heavily involves calendrical meanings and various omens.
You might also look into Brinton's 1894 Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History, which set the stage for much of the 20th century investigation into Mesoamerican supernatural practices. Keep in mind that this work is also not without critique, as Saler notes in his 1964 article, "Nagual, Witch, and Sorcerer in a Quiché Village," that the term has been used as a catchall for disparate and unrelated practices throughout the region.
I read a book a bit ago that is somewhat related-- Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish and Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande by Marc Simmons. Brujeria/curandismo is an important part of the Southwest US as well, and though much of its origin comes from a mix of Pueblo, Spanish, and mesoamerican cultures, but some practices are pretty pan Mexican. Such as the evil eye being inadvertently given to a child by someone who wants a child. It also contains short descriptions of witch trials, not all being severe, but rather acting as a manner to bring turmoil out into the open.