Sastun Read online

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to Don Elijio Panti

  Greg Shropshire

  Crystal Ray Arvigo

  James Arvigo

  Mick, Lucy, Piers, and Bryony Fleming

  Compañeros de mi vida.

  EPIGRAPH

  Sastun (pronounced sas-toon):

  The Mayan sas means light, pure, unblemished, and mirror, while tun is stone or age. Together the words can mean Light of the Ages, Stone of the Ages, and Stone of Light, all of which are names for a cherished tool of divination and spiritual power used by Maya H’mens since ancient times. Sastun can also be spelled zaztun or sastoon.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOREWORD by Michael Balick

  MAP

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  PICTURE SECTION

  GLOSSARY OF MAYAN WORDS

  A BASIC CATALOG OF MEDICINAL RAINFOREST PLANTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank: Greg Shropshire for his unfailing love and dedication and for making the many days away from home possible; Crystal Ray Arvigo for her patience throughout and assistance with the Creole language; Mike Balick for his professional guidance and cherished friendship; Lucy, Mick, Bryony, and Piers Fleming for dinner parties, comforting talks, and family events over the years;

  Special appreciation must be given to the late Timothy Plowman, who first believed in us and who gave us our first taste of plant collecting.

  Thanks to Art and Ethel Arvigo and to Frank Arvigo for helping me to become the woman I am today. Thanks to Jenny Eshoo for the life she gave me. Thanks to Mosina Jordan, Barbara Fernandez, George Like, Steve Szadek, Paul Bisek, Mellen and Mohamed Tanomaly, Georgina Vernon, and Melissa Bevans of the United States Agency for International Development for their assistance and grants to conduct the Belize Ethnobotany Project with the New York Botanical Garden and the traditional healers of Belize; the New York Botanical Garden for their longtime support; the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for their funding of the village community health care workshops on traditional home remedies; Carolyn and Jerry Garcia of the Rex Foundation; Katy Moran of the Healing Forest Conservancy; Mickey Hart; Steve King and Lisa Conte of Shaman Pharmaceuticals; Lu Nicolait of the Belize Center for Environmental Studies; Dee Dee Runkle, Sean and Yvette Bailey, Rob and Jane Mackler of the United States Peace Corps; and the residents of La Gracia Village in Cayo District for their support.

  Over the years, the Belize Ethnobotany Project had been assisted by several foundations. We are grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Foundation, the Overbrook Foundation, the Edward John Noble Foundation, the John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the National Cancer Institute. Thanks to Patty Gildea and the Gildea Family Foundation for their generous and continuous support of the Summer Children’s Bush Medicine Camp program and our Kids for Conservation efforts in Belize.

  Thanks also to Charlotte Gyllenhaal-Huft; and Dr. Norman Farnsworth of the University of Illinois Napralert Service for providing scientific data on medicinal plants.

  Thanks to Liz Pecchia, Bob and Nettie Jones, Katy Stevens, Carol Becker, Amini Awe, Alexander Woods, Darlene Domel, Julie Chinook, and Emily Ostberg for their assistance.

  Special appreciation to Marilyn Yaquinto for her work on the manuscript.

  I wish to thank the government and the people of Belize for creating a nation in which traditional medicine and traditional healers can thrive and flourish. May it always be so.

  Thanks to the members of the Belize Association of Traditional Healers for their support and for helping me to keep the traditions alive by sharing their knowledge, and for their sacrifice of their own interests for the welfare and well-being of others.

  Thanks to my critics, who have helped me steer a straight course in uncharted seas.

  Thanks to Nadine Epstein for sharing my life and making me a better writer, and to our agent, Regula Noetzli, and our enthusiastic editors, Kandace Hawkinson and Andrea Lewis.

  To maestro Dr. Elijio Panti, “el mero,” for his faith in me, for not letting me get too serious, and for placing the pearls of an unbroken chain in my hands. Finally, I am grateful to those on the other side of the gossamer veil for allowing me to peek in and for being there when I need them the most.

  R. A.

  I would like to thank for their love, faith, and support: Adam Phillips, Michael Epstein, Marcy Epstein, Donald and Jeanne Epstein, David Phillips, Gloria and Mike Levitas, and Lisa Newman.

  Also Lonni Moffet, David McCandlish, John O’Leary, Leo Katz, Ricky Donald, Pat Dahl, J. P. Ferrie, Tracey Bohn, Maria Monthiel, Marta from Chaa Creek, Lee Oestreicher, J. C. Brown, and Sharon O’Malley, all of whom were there when we needed them.

  Thanks also to Diane and Arlen Chase; Steve Houston; the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C.; Ms. magazine, Smithsonian magazine, and The Whole Earth Review for assigning the articles that led me to Ix Chel Farm; and Charles Eisendrath, the Michigan Journalism Fellows program, and the Kellogg Foundation for giving me the time to pursue my interest in traditional medicine.

  I would like to thank Rosita Arvigo for her friendship and for living her life so fully and true; our agent, Regula Noetzli, for her nurturing of the project from beginning to end; and our wonderful editors, Kandace Hawkinson and Andrea Lewis.

  Special thanks to my parents, Seymour and Ruth Epstein, who introduced me to the world of the Maya, and to Samuel “Noah” Epstein Phillips, who was born at nearly the same time as this book.

  N.D.E.

  FOREWORD

  As part of my work, I receive a great deal of correspondence from people around the world. Many of these letters contain suggestions for plants that should be investigated, or invitations to visit people who have an interest in the relationship between plants and people. Some letters “glow” (for want of a better word) and stand out. They express sensitivity, strength, commitment, even intrigue.

  In April 1987, I received such a letter from Dr. Rosita Arvigo, introducing herself and inviting me to visit the farm that she and her husband, Greg, had carved out of the tropical forest in Belize. She wanted me to meet “an old Mayan bush doctor” who, she wrote, “has practiced his ancient system of medicine for fifty years.” No one in his community was interested in carrying it on beyond his lifetime, believing that his work was “with the Devil.” Rosita, a naprapathic physician, herbalist, and now his apprentice, wrote that it would be a tragedy if Don Elijio’s knowledge was lost to humanity.

  Her timing was perfect. A group of us at The New York Botanical Garden had just received a five-year contract from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to collect plants in the tropics of this hemisphere for testing in the NCI AIDS and cancer screens, as part of the NCI Developmental Therapeutics Program. Intrigued by her letter, I decided to stop in Belize that summer on my wa
y back from Honduras.

  I will never forget the day that I stepped off the plane, into a place that was to become one of the great passions of my life. With the warmth and gentility that is natural to them, Rosita and Greg were there to meet me at the airport. We drove across the country to their farm in western Belize and talked late into the night about our goals and philosophies.

  The next day, notebook and camera in hand, I waded across the Macal River with Rosita, cut through the forest, and turned right on the dirt road that leads to San Antonio. Perhaps two hours later, we walked out of the forest onto a hill overlooking the small village of San Antonio. We then went to Don Elijio’s house, where he greeted Rosita with the warmth and tenderness reserved for a favorite daughter. The three of us sat and spoke for hours about ethnobotany, Don Elijio’s work as a healer, Rosita’s apprenticeship, and the Garden’s work with The National Cancer Institute. I was awed by his wisdom and strength of character.

  Later that day, I watched as Don Elijio treated patients who came to see him. It didn’t take long for me to realize that he was a powerful healer. My instincts about this special man were confirmed when at one time during the day he turned to me and asked a question about the National Cancer Institute’s screening program and their search for chemical components of plants that exhibited cytotoxicity against living cancer cells. “Why must you poison the body in order to heal it?” he wanted to know. “If I were looking through the forest for plants that the Gods have given us for the treatment of cancer, I would look for something that would fortify the body rather than weaken it.” In his one brief question, this elderly man from a remote village in Central America, who had never read a book nor seen a television, had crystallized the core of an important issue in the debate between various branches of modern medicine as to how to deal with this terrible human affliction.

  Patient by patient, he explained to Rosita the basis for his diagnosis and the rationale for his subsequent treatment. “You see how swollen this baby’s stomach is, and how the rest of the body looks, and how his pulse feels?” he would ask. Rosita absorbed every detail that was being presented to her. I was extraordinarily impressed with the commitment that Rosita had made to her teacher and to Maya traditional healing.

  Late that night, sleeping in a hammock in a corner of Don Elijio’s small house, I began to wonder where this journey could or would lead. Having been to so many different places in my botanical work over the last two decades, I was looking to settle down in a place where a botanist could make a difference. A place where very little work was going on and the obvious was being ignored.

  The next day, as Rosita and I walked along the dusty road leading back to Ix Chel Farm, we began to talk. How could we combine our efforts to save not only the traditions but the rainforest itself? “Why not utilize a portion of our NCI contract to collect Don Elijio’s plants, and screen these for modern medicine?” I suggested. “At the same time, we can begin to document his teachings from a botanical and health perspective,” Rosita continued. Before we crossed the river we had agreed to a collaborative program that would involve the teachings of Don Elijio’s and perhaps of other healers.

  Later that afternoon, standing on one of the many hills at Ix Chel Farm, I looked out over the rainforest, at the crystal-clear river, and at my newfound friends. As it was obvious that we shared many of the same goals, we agreed to build this small collaboration into something that could affect many others, and somehow serve humanity at large. Thus was born The Belize Ethnobotany Project, a decade-long survey of the relationship between plants and people in Belize.

  The rainforest I could see from the hill is, to me, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. In general, the tropical rainforest is one of the most spectacularly diverse habitats we have, containing nearly two-thirds of all of the plant and animal species that exist. There are many types of tropical forests, each with its own degree of diversity. Over four hundred different species of trees have been noted on a single hectare of tropical forest along the Atlantic Coast of Brazil, while a hectare of temperate forest near my home in Westchester County, New York, might have only five or six different tree species.

  This diversity has extraordinary potential for human use. As Don Elijio likes to say, “for every ailment or difficulty on earth, the Spirits have provided a cure—you just have to find it.” Yet modern science has not yet taken his advice. Fewer than one-half of 1 percent of the planet’s 250,000 species of higher plants have been exhaustively analyzed for their chemical composition and medicinal properties. From that one-half of 1 percent, some 25 percent of all our prescription pharmaceuticals have been discovered.

  In addition to medicines, tropical forests provide us with sources of food, fuel, fiber, dyes, and construction material, as well as the basis for numerous industries. But many benefits—such as diversity—cannot always be analyzed by an economist’s pen. Maintaining diversity itself is a crucial goal for the world today, because with the reduction in biological diversity comes a total imbalance of the global ecosystem, which will eventually lead to its degradation and collapse.

  As an ethnobotanist I know that one of our most important goals is to establish the value of the forest in a way that can be understood by modern economists and policymakers, as well as small farmers. In previous times, ethnobotanists focused on the production of lists of useful plants, sometimes combining nutritional or chemical studies with their explorations. Today, ethnobotany involves obtaining as complete an understanding as possible of the relationship between people and plants, from as many disciplinary perspectives as possible. This means that, in addition to identifying the useful plants, we need to understand the exact nature of their uses, how such resources are managed by people, how they are marketed and otherwise consumed, how they reproduce in the wild, and what their levels of sustainable harvest might be, as well as what are their physical, nutritional, or medicinal properties. Ethnobotany has evolved into an interdisciplinary science focused on the plant-people relationship at many levels, from that in a small village in a remote tribal territory to that in an urban center.

  Sastun is a story of an extraordinary relationship between two people from two different cultures who find a common language in their love of traditional healing and plants of the rainforest. Its pages contain many of the lessons that Don Elijio has taught Rosita and, through this work, the world. This heartwarming story is one that also shows how much modern science can learn from traditional knowledge. Since 1987, we have collected hundreds of plants through working with Don Elijio, and these are now housed at the Belize College of Agriculture, the Forestry Department, The New York Botanical Garden, and the Smithsonian Institution. Each of the plants contains with it information on its location, Mayan name, and Don Elijio’s uses for it. Such specimens will last indefinitely and will continue to teach those generations interested in learning long into the future. In addition, bulk samples from these collections that were submitted to the NCI for testing are now being analyzed.

  The Belize Ethnobotany Project has also involved studies with over two dozen healers in Belize, from a broad variety of cultural backgrounds. Using perspectives from people with very different backgrounds in Western medicine, traditional medicine, ethnobotany, and pharmacology and nutrition, this work has developed as a model for contemporary ethnobotanical studies elsewhere in the world. The project has also led to tropical forest conservation. Through Rosita’s efforts, in June 1993, Terra Nova Rainforest Reserve was established in the Cayo District of Belize as the world’s first ethno-biomedical forest reserve.

  While Don Elijio’s work and the traditions of Belize are being studied, tens of thousands of other traditional healers now face the prospect of erosion of their medical systems and plant resources as a result of acculturation, deforestation, and habitat degradation. I hope that this magnificent book, with its beautiful narrative, will serve to inspire others to carry out this kind of work in other parts of the world, with the same level of i
ntensity, respect, and humility as has been shown through Rosita’s special relationship with Don Elijio.

  MICHAEL J. BALICK

  Philecology Curator of Economic Botany

  Director, Institute of Economic Botany of The

  New York Botanical Garden

  Bronx, New York

  MAP

  INTRODUCTION

  Roses Rosas Nikte Rosa chinensis

  Red Roses have long been known to be useful in cases of infant diarrhea, as a gargle for sore throat, and as an excellent skin wash for rashes and sores. American Indian tribes dried the rose petals and powdered them to use on infected sores and to blow into the mouth to relieve sore throat. Central American women have long relied on them as an effective means to staunch excessive postpartum bleeding. Red Roses contain tannic acid, an astringent commonly found in many plants.

  One breezy, starlit, tropical night in Guerrero, Mexico, my life changed forever. My deep and dreamless sleep was broken by an urgent knock on my door, and I heard one of my neighbors, Doña Rita, calling my name. Doña Rita, an arthritic Nahuatl woman of seventy-five, was on her hands and knees at my doorstep. “My granddaughter is in labor,” she explained breathlessly. “You must come to help deliver the baby.”

  I reeled back in horror and told her she couldn’t possibly rely on me for help, as I had never seen a baby born. I saw on her face the familiar Mexican incredulity over North Americans’ lack of real-life experience. She firmly took my hand, and I numbly followed her down the steps to her house. We worked through the night and delivered her granddaughter, Margarita, of a healthy baby boy. I was ecstatic, but Doña Rita still looked worried. “Something’s not right,” she said. “There’s too much blood.” She instructed me to go outside in the darkness with a pine torch to fill a palm-woven bag with Roses and their leaves.

  Dumbfounded, I did as I was told. She boiled the petals and leaves, and when the mixture was cooled she spooned it gently into Margarita’s mouth and gave her the baby to suckle at the same time. In eight minutes the hemorrhaging had stopped.