Understanding the medicine of our ancestors

Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Two: The culture of the Maya Ixil

11. Understanding the medicine of our ancestors

These women and men are preparing a medicine to cure colds and stomach pain. They think that when they finally are more familiar with natural medicines they will be able to resolve their health problems without spending money buying chemical medicines that are very expensive. We want to use and understand more about medicinal plants so that we will know how to cure our illnesses.

We want to learn and we want to teach other people since you can find the plants in the wild or in the underbrush and it’s free medicine. Since the trees are what bring us rain, we must care for them. Just like our ancestors, we have to take care of our forests very well so that we will never lack the riches of nature, such as our abundant rivers. If we young people understand this reality, we will be the future of our Mayan culture.

To me, I would have liked to learn more about the way my ancestors used to live and what they were like, so humble and wise in their knowledge. This is what pains me most because now we don’t know what each plant is for, and there are people who die of curable illnesses because they don’t know what types of plants can cure and how to prepare them, because no one has taught us even though we have the plants nearby. We have lost so many things in our culture that I don’t know if we will ever be able to discover them anew.

We wish to begin by preserving all the things around us. The hope is to rescue everything that we have lost of our culture, such as the wisdom of our ancestors that we young people have learned so little of because, in reality, we have learned about other things.