Traditional Knowledge
06/01/2012
There
are many aspects to this term; it is amazingly extensive with cultural
elements, oral history and traditions, but I want to concentrate on something
that now seems to be a “gem to be acquired” by the same ones that put it down over
40 years ago.
I
will share my own story. I was born in New York and eventually my parents
decided “I needed to learn Spanish in the island (Borikén/Puerto Rico)”, yes,
that was their lame excuse to leave me behind with my grandparents during one
of our trips. My Manhattan’s tall buildings were exchanged for a humble farm
that cultivated everything but rice. A beautiful sugarcane field was our commercial
source. The coffee field was for the consumption of the family. We had fruits,
spices, bananas of every kind, we had jaguas
(há-goo-as), guamá, caimitos, mamey, guayaba, among
many other autochthonous fruits (look at the names, mostly Taíno), and every
herb capable of curing or alleviating any ailment.
At
the beginning I went along with grandma’s remedies, but eventually I became
infested and I started doubting the effectiveness of their knowledge on healing
with their “archaic ways of healing”. These were times of doctors and medicines
and everyone had the habit of asking what you had been given to help your
illness. Of course, I was a child, the elements of peer pressure were already
present and I did not want to confess that grandma had made me special teas or
placed some leaves of whatever it was to bring swelling down when that was the
case. I learned to feel shame in their ways. I had already lived it and seen
the others’ reactions. When I helped grandma clean and organize the triangle-shaped
shelves, I always placed the alcoholado
with herbs on the back of the shelf, in case we had company. I remember that
whenever grandpa had his kidney problems, I had to go to a particular garden
that had a variety of healing herbs for all kinds of ailments and grandpa would
drink from that water saved for him in that large pitcher with herbs.
Whenever
he came from the sugarcane field and was bitten by a venomous centipede,
grandma would send for these huge leaves that had to be placed over the
affected area.
My
grandma from Mayagüez also made special teas whenever we were sick. Those were
the ways! Oh! But I was from the growing generation that believed and bought
into pharmaceuticals and who presented people like my grandparents and their
ways as primitive and ignorant. Believe me , I had to go to that garden so many
times, and look for jaguas by the
tree for that special water they too, made me drink. Unfortunately for me, I
learned very little compared to all they knew and had to offer.
The
thing is that I was not the only one hopping onto this van wagon of so-called
progress. An entire generation was being influenced and pharmaceuticals started
making lots of money. People began to prefer the pill vs. the tea, the topical
cream vs. the leaf on the affected site. We became the pill generation.
Trusting our doctors and taking whatever they prescribed, while something else
became damaged, so that they could sell you yet another pill and so on. People
started dying of cancers, or as they said in the island: “unexpectedly”. But
hey, they had been on five different pills for their condition!
I
still remember how in the 70’s it seemed like everyone was dying from cancer.
In my family, the Pelli’s and the Negron’s, both strong people, were falling
like mangoes off a tree. Ah! The advancements and progress over those primitive
ways!
Argh!
It angers me to remember grandpa’s stories of meals of funche (corn meal) and bacalao
(cod fish), or simply a coconut when there was nothing else and times were
hard. Him and my great grandmother lived an entire century, when now the
average life expectancy in the U.S. for example is of 89.5 years, but what they
don’t share is the quality of those 89.5 years, of blood diluted with what I
call the “pharma-plasmas” that instead of giving you life, extend your misery.
A
lot of Indigenous Peoples lost their ways and habits of sustenance. I still
enjoyed eating what we grew and grandpa’s agricultural system and wisdom, but
eventually a lot of that changed as grandpa aged. Actually, both grandpas aged
and canned food and packaged things seemed more advanced and practical than
going to “La Plaza del Mercado”, (Farmer’s
Market), which had impressed me so much when I arrived from New York. It was
filled with people, chatter, fruits and vegetables, poultry, all so very fresh.
I still remember the smell and the activity. Oh! Now, it is all fancied-up, but
it is dead; it lost its life and there are so very few people that I prefer
staying away and preserving the joyous memories of my childhood.
Chef
Boy-ar-dee, Spam, canned tuna replaced the cod fish, going to the farm to pull
some yucca, or the wonderful trip to the fish market, as local fishermen
arrived in their “yolas” with their catch (unpretentious small-type-boats), and
watching the beautiful ocean while at it.
However,
the rules of the game changed, and some fool realized that the old way was not
that primitive after all. People were healthier, stronger, and their foods had
all these properties so beneficial to the human body. They also realized that
the old remedies worked, and as they thought about it, dollar signs multiplied
over their heads, and with this grave mentality that anything that belongs to
anyone indigenous is a “free for grabs”, they did just that.
They
started approaching people to learn about remedies. Knowledge that was shared
with good intention, but the receiver was already thinking of the Sales &
Marketing Strategies for it, of course, excluding the indigenous peoples from those
who would benefit from it.
So
they took again! It has not stopped!
Why?
Why do Bolivians have to see their Quinoa
leave their country, so that the fancy in my own city, New York, could benefit
from it? The Quinoa is the most
recent example. Bolivians used it in an array of dishes and forms. Now they can
hardly acquire the nourishment that was part of their diet for centuries if not
longer. Remember “Uña de Gato”? Same
thing, mass production and mass profits.
Why
is organic food unaffordable to Pepe González? It is all about the money, and
if you have it, you can eat organic. If you are part of the bigger mass that
has to stretch the dollar and make miracles with it, you have to buy the
high-fat, high-salt, canned food , which is what you will be able to afford and
eventually, get so sick the pharmaceutical can squeeze you out some more while
you get on some type of pill.
Territories
“officially declared” as Indigenous lands are being taken over, and as opposed to
the continuance of the agricultural system
that has sustained its peoples, what’s being planted is one type of tree, i.e. Eucalyptus,
which drains the terrain of water, hence leaving adjacent villages without the
precious liquid that sustains us all.
I
have listened to “experts” (people that think know a lot), try to educate and
encourage Indigenous Peoples to plant their food. Ok, REWIND!!!!! They are now
coming to tell them to plant, so that they can eat healthier? Meaning no Spam,
no foods high on fats and salt, no canned foods? Go Organic? So, isn’t this
about going back to basics, going back to what had been the normal way of
sustenance before these global invasions?
Yesterday,
while at a doctor’s office, I had no choice but to amuse myself by reading
every poster on the wall; all advertising some pill, of course, with the
disclaimers of all the things that could go wrong, or the areas that may become
affected by taking that medication, including death. Absurd!
I
have learned to appreciate the teas and the leaves. They still work!
Conventional medicine has gotten to a point where saying: “It could be this or
it might be that, or I don’t know”, have become the new norm, while
simultaneously handing you a prescription. However, if someone chooses to seek
alternative methods, they are quick to frown or even drop them as patients not
before telling them off. When someone
has made a claim to have either gotten better or cured from an illness by using
these methods, they are quick to criticize, mock or blatantly discredit and/or
deny that such has occurred.
I
have had my share of medical challenges, I still live with them. I have heard
the I don’t know’s, the maybe it’s this, or maybe it’s that, and at my weakest
moments and frustration, the memory of my grandmothers pop to mind and I am so
sure, that had they been alive, one of them would have had some special tea, or
placed their hands on me in that peculiar way I saw one do to so many people
that sought her help, that perhaps would
have cured me a long time ago, instead of having to serve a Life Sentence with
Pharmaceuticals.
Tai
Pelli
