Antonio Puruncajas is sitting on a wooden bench getting his broken nose touched up after hoodlums smashed it while stealing his money during a recent robbery, but the woman working on the 52-year-old bus driver’s nose is not a doctor or a plastic surgeon.
She is a “restorer of saints,” an artisan who tenderly cares for Ecuadorans’ damaged plaster Virgin Marys and other religious icons. Like many in her profession, she has begun offering her services to injured and scarred human beings as well.
“They are going to touch me up like the baby Jesus,” Puruncajas says with a grin as artisan Miriam Trujillo, 37, covers his nose with a flesh-colored concoction she promises will erase his wounds.
Photo: AFP
The narrow street where Trujillo works in Quito’s old colonial center has long been home to artisans who restore broken saints and Jesuses in this predominantly Catholic capital that is home to dozens of churches and chapels.
They have also begun offering services of a different kind, using the same techniques to cover — and, they say, also heal — living, breathing clients’ facial injuries.
Besides acrylic paint and plant-based dyes, they also use a “secret ingredient” they say carries healing powers.
Photo: AFP
Some clients even seek them out just to get their makeup done, preferring them to the beauty parlor even if they have no scars.
After a 40-minute session, Puruncajas gets up, gives himself a quick look in the mirror, pays Trujillo US$7 and asks for some of the “miraculous makeup” to take home.
“Apply it to your nose and it will restore your skin a little each day,” she tells him.
Artisan Edwin Munoz says his uncle Victor, a fellow icon restorer, first discovered the healing powers of the paint used to restore religious icons.
According to Munoz, his uncle applied the paint to his wife on a hunch after her face was badly cut in an accident 40 years ago.
Today the practice has become a booming niche business for Bolivar Street artisans like Munoz, who at 52 has spent three decades working in icon restoration.
As Munoz recounts his story, a client arrives with her 16-year-old grandson, whose face is covered with cuts and scratches she suspects were inflicted by a woman.
Without asking many questions, Munoz mixes some colors on a pallet and paints over the wounds.
Ten minutes later the boy gets up, asks for a mirror and gives an approving nod.
Munoz charges US$5 per treatment.
That is much cheaper than the price to restore an icon — up to US$150.
The beauty treatments have today become a key part of his business.
A sign outside his small shop advertises his “wound touch-ups,” but most of his clients hear about him by word of mouth, he says.
Medical experts are not so easily persuaded.
“These are chemicals that can cause a lot of health problems. Some workers who have been in long-term contact with this paint develop skin problems and even lung problems, because skin absorbs everything,” dermatologist Francisco Yandun said.
The artisans interviewed for this story said they had not received any complaints about their second line of work.
However, they declined to answer questions about whether they had health permits or regulatory approval.
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