Amazonian Indigenous remedies

Traditional medicine is also regarded as a complex system made up of elements such as knowledge, traditions, practices and beliefs, which are organised through their own knowledgeable practitioners (specialist healers, midwives, health promoters, bone-setters and massage healers).

These practitioners have their own method of diagnosis and treatment, as well as their own therapeutic resources, which are known as medicinal plants.

More specifically, Indigenous traditional medicine comprises those medical practices that originated before the colonial period, in the social and geographical spaces of Indigenous communities, and that emerged through processes in which the therapeutic method is based on Indigenous history, worldview and cultural identity.

This emphasises its roots in a cultural tradition, which means that we can speak of different traditional medicines depending on the community and the geographical area where they are practised.

The close relationship between health and nature can be understood through the practice of traditional medicine within shamanic knowledge systems, which involves the clearing and legal recognition of territories, their planning and the use of their resources.

When these aspects are agreed within the co-management of protected areas and Indigenous territories, the relationship between health and territory also becomes clear.

This relationship is also embodied in medicinal plants, which are plant species with active ingredients whose therapeutic properties have been proven empirically or scientifically.

These plants produce secondary metabolites that are useful for solving specific human health problems, reflecting the effect of nature on the chemistry and biology this process requires.

Traditional doctors have extensive knowledge of this relationship and of the importance of these plants, not only in the biomedical field (diagnosing, curing or preventing illnesses) but also for the territorial and cultural organisation of ethnic groups.

This refers to the fact that many medicinal plants are part of the community’s history, and their true owners may be spirits who live in another world (which only shamans can access) or immortal beings who were never human. Their use therefore depends on the shaman’s negotiation with these beings and on the permission granted to him. This use of plants goes beyond the practical, as it involves recalling and commemorating their stories and revealing their origin. For this reason, the mythical history of each plant is key to its use, as it explains why the community uses it.

The Tikuna of Macedonia conceive of traditional medicine as focusing on a person’s appropriate or inappropriate behaviour, as this directly affects their health or illness. Healing therefore lies more in changing behaviours that the community considers morally unacceptable than in the physical treatment of the body.

Based on this perception, beyond a biological dimension, we can speak of a relationship between illness and the moral code of the community, which is justified by the shaping of a cultural body. However, this relationship is not legitimised by Western medicine, and so the way of treating illness will not be similar, as it does not fit with the validity of knowledge as defined by Western rationality.

In this Indigenous reserve (resguardo), medicinal plants are used in the form of “home medicine”, leaving aside shamanism, traditional healing and any other form of pagan rite that would run counter to the evangelical faith practised in the community.

Among the medicinal plants with the greatest cultural use in Macedonia are yarumo (Cecropia sciadophylla), star fruit or carambola (Averrhoa carambola) and cat’s claw (Uncaria tomentosa). Indigenous people use them on the basis of knowledge linked to each individual’s relationship with the physical environment, shaped by their own experience.

Indigenous traditional knowledge can be understood as a cumulative system of informal knowledge, resulting from empirical observation and the oral transmission of experience from one generation to the next. In this sense, knowledge of the medicinal use of yarumo, carambola and cat’s claw within the community should be passed down from grandparents to young people.

Among the oldest people, knowledge of the use of medicinal plants was found to predominate, especially regarding cat’s claw and yarumo (82% for both plants). By contrast, most of the young people did not know the possible medicinal uses of cat’s claw (67%). In the 43–60 age group, everyone knew of at least one medicinal use of yarumo.

When the sources of knowledge for each plant were investigated, the family, especially grandparents, was found to still play a significant role in passing on knowledge through oral tradition and everyday activities.

However, the mother’s influence was low for both carambola and yarumo, and non-existent for cat’s claw. It is likely that the difficulty of obtaining cat’s claw in the reserve, due to its scarcity and the long distances that have to be travelled to find it, has led people to favour other, more accessible medicinal plants.

As a result, knowledge about the use of cat’s claw has become increasingly restricted to knowledgeable elders, who have been in contact with people from outside the community and have acquired part of their knowledge from them. This type is known as “distributed knowledge” because it is not shared by the whole community, but people know who has it and turn to them.

The results for the three plants show the influence of sources of information from outside the reserve, both national and foreign, on the age groups at either end (young and elderly people). Interethnic relations with other Indigenous communities and with Western culture therefore have a constant influence on the traditional learning process in Macedonia.

Since the 1970s, however, the WHO has spoken of the need to integrate traditional remedies into our Western medicine, above all for cultural and economic reasons, since 80% of the world’s population has no access to Western medicine and therefore turns to traditional medicine.

In this exotic location we find an extremely varied flora from which most of the medicines we use today are made. Well-known pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer extract raw materials from this area to make their products. We will look at these traditional methods, techniques passed down from father to son, from one generation to the next: a set of methods which, although they may seem rudimentary or strange to us, are 100% natural and effective.

GINGER: this is a tuber with a strong, exotic flavour that we normally use to flavour our dishes, whether desserts, salads, sauces, etc. However, if we focus on its medicinal benefits, in this culture ginger is used as a painkiller and anti-inflammatory, and also to relieve nausea, thanks to the phenols and gingerols in its root. A kind of ginger tea is made by leaving the tuber to steep in boiling water for a few minutes. Drinking it relieves pain and nausea. If hot cloths soaked in this remedy are applied to an inflamed area, the swelling and pain disappear.

In our culture, some athletes add ginger to their protein and antioxidant shakes while recovering from injuries.

SPIDER’S WEB: Indigenous peoples use spider’s web as a coagulant. When someone suffers a wound or cut, a piece of this strong, sticky substance is applied to the bleeding area, clotting the blood and speeding up healing. The web in question is taken from the black widow, one of the most exotic and venomous spiders in the world. Fibroin (a structural protein) in the spider’s web has been shown to be responsible for this medicinal effect. Scientists at the University of California have managed to isolate the genetic sequence needed to synthesise fibroin so that it can be produced commercially and used to make medicines.

CHERIMOYA: this fruit comes from the Americas, and its name means “cold seeds”, as it germinates at high altitudes.

It began to be grown in Europe after the conquest of the Americas, and from there Spanish explorers took it to the East. It has countless health benefits: it strengthens memory, reduces everyday stress and is easy to digest thanks to the many hydrolytic enzymes it contains, as well as vitamin C, proteins, sugars, phosphorus, antioxidants, etc. What is more, this fruit is a great help during childbirth, an astonishing property. Cherimoya seeds are boiled in a little water and given to Indigenous women just before and during labour to speed it up. It acts like prostaglandins, contracting the smooth muscle tissue of the uterus during childbirth. Some laboratory studies have also found that certain compounds in its seeds act on cancer cells, although there is no evidence that they prevent cancer in people. It is worth remembering that the seeds are toxic and should not be consumed without medical supervision. All in all, a highly valued fruit for its antioxidant, digestive and laxative properties, among others.

These are just a few examples of the vast body of traditional medicine in Indigenous culture, which may seem strange and unusual to us. However, its effectiveness has been demonstrated, not only by studies carried out at various universities, but also because these remedies have been used for thousands of years and their chemical components are used to make our much-valued medicines.

Amazonian peoples are developing containment strategies through their traditional medicine, making wide use of preventive plants aimed at strengthening the immune system of the respiratory tract.

One of these responses, which has emerged in the Peruvian Amazon and could be seen as part of this set of home traditions for easing the severity of respiratory problems, is the creation of the brave “Comando Matico”. Besides being an ironic response to the famous “Comando Covid”, in Pucallpa a group of young people have come together to fill a gap. Their aim is to provide medicinal plants to villages in quarantine on the outskirts of the cities, especially to families already showing symptoms of respiratory disorders. They work in the districts of Yarinacocha, Manantay and Callería, and because of the impact this initiative has had, it is being replicated in other places, such as the Province of Padre Abad, in the villages along the banks of the Aguaytía River.

This “Comando Matico” initiative does not arise from a spontaneous, improvised humanitarian impulse, but from an age-old practice whose components are ancestral wisdom and solidarity. Both are part of the fundamental strategies that have enabled Indigenous peoples to survive throughout their history, especially since the arrival of Westerners in the Americas, which directly or indirectly caused the many epidemics that decimated their population. This practice has a central rite around which traditional medicine and Amazonian Indigenous spirituality are organised. Its name is very well known on other continents, probably much more so than in Peru itself: it is called “the ayahuasca ceremony”. Here is a summary of how it works.

The ayahuasca ceremony

When the tropical dusk has surrendered all its charms to the night, and the dark mantle has spread from the shadows of the trees to the most open ground, even seeping into the eyes of the animals lurking in the forest, the table is set for the ayahuasca ceremony.

At the heart of the ceremony is a drink made from the master plant called ayahuasca and its companion, chacruna. The greater spirits of the forest plants dwell in them. Participants drink this dark brown liquid, thick in texture, bittersweet in taste and smelling like a plant offering, in a precise dose that the leading master serves to each of them. Beforehand, the medicine man, talking with the person who has come to him, has taken a first look at his patient and prescribed a strict diet; in this way he knows the right measure of the “dose”, so that once the brew has been drunk it will guide the person step by step up the sometimes inhospitable ladder of their soul.

The prior diet has prepared the body to receive the master plant. Shortly after taking the dose, when fireflies dot the darkness with their sparks of fire and the chirping of crickets cuts through the long murmurs of the jungle, the lightened bodies relax and feel a slight chill. Then communion begins among those present, who, without ceasing to be themselves, also become the group.

The inward journey that the ceremonial substance leads you into begins with a series of associations, memories, projections, worries and all that emotional jumble that so often weighs us down. Then come the first visions, in the form of a complex geometry of zigzagging phosphorescent lines that produce a dizzying sense of accelerated movement.

This gives way to the moment when you experience the fragmented condition that the routines of everyday life force upon us. It is the moment of fragmentation and of the “mareación” (dizziness), the moment when evil is expelled. Here the body seeks to rid itself of physical and emotional excess, of the tensions and fears that take the form of intestinal fluids and of the excessive tension of muscles and tendons broken into irreconcilable fragments. Then comes the retching that forces you to expel, physically and emotionally, sometimes abruptly and uncomfortably, everything that stands in the way of the calm and the symbolic flight that the participant is about to undertake. This is the part where the master plants cleanse the body of everything that has shackled the free and harmonious movement of bodies in unity with souls.

After the battle, the body regains its warmth and enters the stage of visions. Mind and emotion set off on a biographical journey in which the most unsettling memories that have marked our lives appear as images. Image after image, one’s personal path is reviewed at speed, in contrast to the stillness and lethargy of the organs, muscles and bones lying at rest in the maloca. During this part of the ceremony, the master healer – traditional doctor, medicine man – sings the sacred songs called “ikaros”. These are eternal songs that, with the stimulus of medicinal plants, have been passed down from parents to children, from generation to generation, among the ancient Amazonian cultures. Each people has preserved this legacy, adapting it to the sounds of its language and the mythology of its lineage, as a song that condenses the unfathomable sounds of the jungle. The images may appear in orderly sequences or chaotically, as fantastic visions. The master, equipped with a mapacho (a wild tobacco cigar) and attentive to the effect of the visions, watches over the patient with an individual ikaro and with great puffs of tobacco smoke, which at this stage of the ceremony joins, with its protective spirit, this moment of encounter and unification.

Ikaros are repetitive, penetrating melodies that the master sings during the ceremony. If the “mareación” becomes too overwhelming to handle, the ikaros help the participant through the storm. With these songs, whose high, soft and at times delicate modulations alternate with deep, martial sounds, the master renews his connection with the group and with each participant at every moment throughout the night. These sacred songs follow a structure with a beginning, a middle and an end: an opening song, which also wraps the group in a protective layer, followed by a series of developing songs, and finally a closing song.

The message conveyed by the final song is known as the “arkano”. It is a form of protection in the form of a melody, which the participant will carry until the next ceremony and which, depending on their inner follow-up work, will accompany them throughout their life.

It is important to stress that Indigenous traditional medicine is a body of knowledge, practices and beliefs of a culture that gives the concept of health a holistic meaning, encompassing the physical, spiritual and environmental spheres.