This colorful old postcard entitled “Cowboys of New Mexico Taunt the Floating Corpse of a Desiccated Bruja,” was part of a series of six postcards encouraging tourists to “Visit Desiccated New Mexico,” the state’s slogan before “Shriveled from the Sun” was officially adopted in 1941.
For those not in-the-know, “bruja” means “witch” in the charming old language of colonial Spain, and “desiccation” is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying.
The other postcards in the series feature a desiccated sheep’s head on a fence post; a bowl of Halloween jerky; and three more shriveled witches’ corpses.
FUN FACT: Baby Gruenwald often playfully refers to his kindermädchen (German nanny) as “La Bruja,” or sometimes “Nurse Ratched.”
