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In Guatemala, like in other Central American countries, Western attitudes heavily influence healthcare, which centers and is responsible for assessing itself. However, health systems (as we know them today) and the pharmaceutical industry did not always exist. For centuries and to this day, indigenous peoples have used plants, medicinal herbs, midwives, spiritual guides, and healers to prevent and overcome various ailments and diseases that affect the body and the soul. Indigenous peoples have an ancestral wisdom that can make invaluable contributions in times like these.
COVID-19 upended all our lives. The pandemic did not care about borders, beliefs, practices, living conditions, social status, class, ethnicity, race, age, gender and identities. In this sense, the lines that used to divide us became fainter. Today more than ever, two calls to attention, which environmental groups and indigenous populations have been making for decades, become more urgent and relevant than ever: 1) What we do to the environment has a direct impact on humans and every form of life on the planet, because all life is interdependent, plural, and interconnected; 2) the quality of the food we eat and our lifestyle make us more resistant or more vulnerable to ailments, diseases, and pandemics too.
According to Esperanza Tubac, a Kaqchikel-Maya woman and the lead coordinator of Asociación Grupo Integral de Mujeres Sanjuaneras (AGIMS), there is a direct link between ancestral medicine and Mother Earth,
Because she is the one who provides us with food and sustains us in this great universe. My relationship and experience with ancestral medicine has been very important, particularly as regards COVID-19, which made us realize that our grandparents have bequeathed us an invaluable treasure in the form of ancestral medicine”.
AGIMS is an organization made up of 2,500 women, who all decided to put into practice their ancestral formulas to face the pandemic. They have luckily found many plants and, to date, there have been no infections within the organization.
That only goes to show, once again, that our grandmothers were wise and knowledgeable. And it has been wonderful because we have brewed as many teas as possible in order to contain this pandemic. Many of us were unaware that ancestral medicines were in our backyard. We also realized that our ancestresses lived longer than us, because they did not consume chemicals—everything was natural”, says Esperanza.
Health and living well
According to Ana Cumes, a Maya woman from the Tz’utujil people and lead coordinator of the Red Departamental de Mujeres Sololatecas con Visión Integral (REDMUSOVI), indigenous peoples understand that health and living well, go hand in hand. If there is health, there is life. Indigenous peoples are keenly aware of the fact that people need to be in good health to square up to life, to be present with their families and their community.
Health is an essential component of living a dignified life; however, people’s health has been in decline. This is in part due to the pandemic, but it is also because of the poor quality of the food they ingest, which is neither organic nor fresh.
The increase in the availability of fast food and processed foods in the region, as well as the degree to which they are ingested, has affected indigenous peoples. Indeed, the link between these foods and a variety of diseases now present in their communities is evident.
We have distanced ourselves from nature. Now people in most places eat processed food. They are eating fresh vegetables less and less. As a result, when farmers see that their products are not being consumed, they pursue other activities to earn a living. And that’s a bad thing because the harvest grows smaller. However, as women, as organizations, we have been working hard to advocate for the continued survival of our sowing practices. The decline in our health means we’ve strayed from our ancestral practices”, says Ana.
Ana believes in the importance of eating food provided by nature—not only vegetables but also animals, as long as it is done sustainably. Indigenous peoples pay a lot of attention to maintaining the natural balance so as not to exploit nature and instead harmoniously flow with it.
The hegemonic approach to public health and medicine does not draw from or reflect indigenous peoples’ primary motivation concerning health, that is, to living well and in harmony with the web of life. Hegemonic western medicine focuses on counteracting diseases, but good health is more linked to the wellness industry, which promotes consumerism and an illusory, and not at all consistent, relationship between the mind, the body, and the planet, which belies the true connection between the three.
The medicine we consume today is beyond indigenous peoples’ reach because it is so unaffordable, but we are also casting natural medicine aside. A healer told me that we do not realize it, but sometimes nature asks that we reevaluate our surroundings because the plant that has the power to cure us may be there, by the side of the road”.Ana Cumes.
Something that is neither attractive nor profitable for the pharmaceutical industry.
According to Esperanza:
Due to the neoliberal and racist system, much of our wealth had been lost. Many women no longer thought natural medicine is important. If they had a headache, they immediately went to the drug store, even though they had [natural] medicine at home. Recovering all those formulas from our ancestors was and continues to be very important. We, indigenous peoples, are the guardians of a wealth of wisdom, and now we have to pass it on to the new generations”.
Rescuing and preserving ancestral medicine is a political act
For Ana, rescuing and preserving ancestral medicine is a political act because:
It implies looking back, developing good practices, recovering conversations, reaching a consensus with the authorities, and placing authority in the right hands. For example, not everyone can master ancestral medicine. According to our elders, there are people who are born with the right spirit or have a gift; they are the ones who come to earth with that mission. Midwives can tell, when tending to a birth, if that child has the gift or not”.
In Guatemala, midwifery is on the decline because of colonial, Western, neoliberal policies that compel pregnant women to rely solely on hospitals.
“In that way, we lose a lot of scientific knowledge, because we no longer know if that baby has the gift or not”, concludes Ana.
Neither midwives nor curanderas, who heal with natural medicine, are recognized by the State or the country’s health professionals.
Doctors don’t acknowledge the importance of natural medicine. We have to promote our ancestral medicine; we have to talk to women and tell them that lemon, verbena, and mint teas boost their body’s defenses. We have to rescue our ancestral wisdom and our grandmothers’ teas”.Esperanza Tubac
Esperanza thinks recovering and preserving ancestral medicine is a huge challenge, and she agrees with Ana that the racist, neoliberal system is a hydra they have been fighting and will continue to fight for a long time.
Many doctors told women not to consume any plant-based medicine to fight COVID-19 because that wasn’t real medicine. The doctors said the vaccines were on the way, and herbs would not going to help them”.Esperanza Tubac
Through workshops and videos, compañeras are promoting the practice of living well and their knowledge about ancestral medicine. Esperanza tells us that one of her organization’s goals is to rescue ancestral medicine and raise awareness about its capacity to help contain the pandemic. This exercise has been a success: It was implemented not only at the organizational level but also at the national level, and many of the indigenous populations have not been infected.
A collapsed and exclusionary health system
What would it mean if the Guatemalan health system recognized the wisdom and ancestral medicine of original peoples?
If that happened, it would revolutionize public health. Due to the pandemic, hospitals don’t have room for patients, and people are dying because medicine is so expensive. Capitalism has downplayed the power of natural medicine, but if it was acknowledged and made visible, it could help reduce the death toll.Ana Cumes
In Guatemala, working alongside the healthcare system has always been a struggle because there’s a lot of corruption in the Health Ministry. We don’t see any political will to implement programs from a Mayan perspective. Patient care is not culturally sensitive. Listen to this, when an indigenous woman goes to a hospital, the first thing they do is give her is a hospital gown, but indigenous women are used to wearing their garments, their huipiles. There are compañeras who have had to go to a hospital because have a high-risk pregnancy, but they never find a healthcare professional who speaks a single indigenous language. The system has collapsed, and patient care is impersonal.Esperanza Tubac
There are many Maya women who have trained as nurses, but they hospitals will not hire them because of racism and other discriminatory practices. If they are hired, they are required to wear regular scrubs; they are not allowed to wear their traditional clothes. This is counterproductive because seeing a Maya nurse wearing her Maya clothes can set a Maya woman in need of care at ease, especially when it comes to their sexual and reproductive health. If the whole country and the whole system changed to reflect the country’s pluri-ethnic reality, patient care would be upended for the better.
The majority of Guatemala’s population is indigenous, but the country’s health system does not respond to Maya people’s needs.
We thank Ana Cumes, lead coordinator of Red Departamental de Mujeres Sololatecas con Visión Integral (REDMUSOVI), and Esperanza Tubac, lead coordinator of Asociación Grupo Integral de Mujeres Sanjuaneras (AGIMS). for granting us this interview.
Learn more about the organizations profiled:
REDMUSOVI
AGIMS:
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