A Haitian carnival takes place every year in Santiago de Cuba, and a Creole radio program is broadcasted nationally [13]. The sour . Uses of medicinal plants by Haitian immigrants and their descendants in the Province of Camagey, Cuba, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, http://www.afrocubaweb.com/haiticuba.htm#creole, http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethcode.htm, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0. Esquivel M, Hammer K. The Cuban homegarden 'conuco': a perspective environment for evolution and in situ conservation of plant genetic resources. Kloss describes it as "good in all female troubles, will increase menstrual flow much better than quinine for the purposes for which quinine is used" (323). Among these, a mixture prepared with the fruit of Crescentia cujete as a main ingredient is highly regarded by Haitians and is considered as a panacea. CAS 2000, La Habana: Oficina Nacional de Hidrografa y Geodesia, Code of ethics of the American Anthropological Association. They are persistent. Nez N, Gonzlez E: Antecedentes etnohistricos de la alimentacin tradicional en Cuba. Among the shared ethnobotanical practices is also the preparation of miel de gira with the pulp of the fruit of Crescentia cujete. Datura is a powerful psychoactive plant, found in West Africa as well as other tropical areas and used there in ritual as well as criminal activities. Su estudio en la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba. During the decades after emigration, the original Haitian ethnomedicinal knowledge progressively changed and adapted to the new environment, maintaining cultivation and use of important medicinal plants, incorporating plants and uses from the host Cuban culture, and diffusing specific plant uses to Cubans in contact with Haitian communities. 8600 Rockville Pike Cabrera L: El Monte. Creole is the second most spoken language in the Province of Camagey, after Spanish. The continuous ingestion of low doses of the allelochemicals in these species may be an effective means to prevent massive parasite infestations, especially in children [43]. Sour orange leaves can fix that. 1957, La Habana: Contribuciones Ocasionales del Museo de Historia Natural Colegio La Salle 10, P. Fernndez and Ca, Alain H: Flora de Cuba. Comisin Nacional de Nombres Geogrficos . I used Kloss's Back to Eden and Santillo's Natural Healing with Herbs for my American source books. Human Ecology. Consuming 2 or three Echinacea capsules twice a day can soothe extreme frustrations as well as other kinds . government site. Privacy Respondents in the city of Camagey were located thanks to the local Haitian Association. The final question that I wanted to probe was some sort of linkage between the two cultures of Haiti and America that might account for the similarities I found in treatment methods. We are a Social Impact (SI) company; we don't focus in making excessive profits, but we primarily . CD ROM Atlas Etnogrficos de Cuba. (Kloss, 215) In Jordan's research on Voodoo medicine, he places more emphasis, however, on the calming properties of catnip, rather than purgative. In these contexts, the main forces that drive change in the cultural domain of traditional medicinal knowledge are: (1) the adaptation of the original knowledge to the new (host) environment (through substitution of no longer accessible traditional remedies with locally available ones, and the incorporation of remedies from the host culture into migrants' own pharmacopoeia); and (2) the development of strategies to obtain the original remedies (through cultivation, gathering, or marketing of the original remedies, and the development of social networks that link migrants to relatives and friends in the place of origin) [47,48]. She uses many local herbs and plants, such as chamomile and thyme (left basket) and ginger root (center baskets), to alleviate afflictions that include coughs, other cold symptoms and menstruation . Careers, Unable to load your collection due to an error. PubMed Although no census of Haitians (residents or descendants) in Cuba has been done to date, we can roughly estimate the number of Haitians and their descendants in the Province of Camagey at about 50,000 or 67% of the population. In the case of a child with persistent 'evil eye' (for example when the child cries excessively), after the bath the child's clothes are burnt, and a collar is made with seeds of Canavalia ensiformis and placed on the child, as reported also in Haiti [36]. It just doesnt taste good, said St. Fort. Although they are also reported in Beyra et al. Economic Botany. What I found was that even though Haiti has many native tropical plants that are used medicinally, quite a few of the same medicinal plants grow there that do in the Ozarks. The incorporation of local remedies into their own pharmacopoeia occurred as a consequence of factors such as cultural contacts and exchanges between Haitians and Cubans and of personal experimentation or imitation of local practices by migrants. Edited by: Hammer K, Esquivel M, Knpffer H. 1992, Gatersleben, Germany: Institut fr Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung, 1: 83-109. I surmise that Quassia the Surinam had seen a plant similar to bitterwood in Africa. Background: Haitian migrants played an important role shaping Cuban culture and traditional ethnobotanical knowledge. Especially dominant are the soothing effects it is known to have on small infants. In this context, traditional ethnobotanical practices are sometimes reconstituted as part of Haitian culture [14]. Fieldwork was carried out from December 2002March 2003 and from FebruaryJuly 2004. only with the new moon [42]), where the remedy is ingested periodically throughout the year. 1988, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba: Editorial Oriente, James J, Millet J, Alarcn A: El Vod en Cuba. Migrants confront a different sociocultural context and new environments where specific plants may no longer be available and traditional practices may come under pressure and therefore may be progressively adapted or abandoned [46]. Cerasee or asosi is typically prepared as a tea: Wash the vine; throw it into a pot of water --leaves, stems and all. Due to its mostly flat territory, the Province of Camagey historically had an economy primarily based on cattle and sugarcane, as well as small-scale farming. Colon, Sandra Hernandez. Traditional and ritual plant posology should be investigated in more depth in ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological studies in order to understand their relation with medicinal plant efficacy and toxicity. GV drafted the manuscript. "You know the herb is the healing of the nation," she said. Immigration was a key factor in the plans for economic reconstruction after the War of Independence against Spain, and West Indians entered Cuba as cheap labour required to cut sugarcane [8]. In: Pieroni A, Vandebroek I, editor. from therapeutic activities pertaining to this cult are of the same kind as those encountered in the practice of Modern Medicine. Traveling cultures and plants The ethnobiology and ethnopharmacy of migrations. Scientific name, botanical family, vernacular Cuban and Haitian name(s), voucher specimen number, part(s) used, preparation, use(s), and frequency of mention are reported for 123 plant species used for medicinal purposes. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For example, three shoots of Mangifera indica are boiled and the remedy is drunk in three different cups to treat empacho, a digestive problem; three leaves of Cissampelos pareira are split into half and three halves are boiled in the case of fever; an infusion made from three whorls or tops of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis is prepared and given to children in the morning on an empty stomach as an anthelmintic; the decoction of three leaves of Momordica charantia must be drunk for three days, and the seeds of the same plant are ingested one on the first day, two on the second, and three on the third, and so on for seven days. 10.1016/j.jep.2003.10.012. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. [12], Nevet and de la Rosa [9], and Pedro [10]. One that I ran across in my research that is very interesting and pertinent to this subject is quassia, or bitterwood. Traveling cultures and plants The ethnobiology and ethnopharmacy of migrations. Especially over the last decade, Haitians in Cuba have begun to rediscover their roots and revitalize their traditional culture by forming Haitian associations and groups and celebrating festivals and other events. Herbal baths are important in Haitian culture in both spiritual and medicinal practices, and represent the second most important category of administration, after ingestion. My mom comes from a line of Haitian women herbalists from Gonaives, Haiti. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. Afrikanische Arzneipflanzen und Jagdgifte Chemie, Pharmakologie, Toxikologie. Those who arrived in the 1940s came either by plane or boat, although they were migrating mostly for the same reasons. Springer Nature. Vervain is a popular remedy due to its multiple plant-beneficial compounds. Although medicinal uses of these plants are not absent from the Cuban pharmacopoeia, they may in some cases be restricted to Haitian descendants and to Cubans who have been influenced by the migrants' culture. For example, a small spoonful of the hairs of the fruits of Mucuna pruriens is mixed with Psidium guayaba jam and ingested before breakfast for three days; the massive diarrhea that follows is supposed to eliminate all worms from the gut and the stomach, as reported also by Seoane [16]. Due to its mostly flat territory, the Province of Camagey historically had an economy primarily based on cattle and sugarcane, as well as small-scale farming. The rural Missourian who uses herbs does so out of an unwillingness to give up a part of her heritage. Haitian immigrants and their descendants mainly decoct or infuse aerial parts and ingest them, but medicinal baths are also relevant. It became quite a popular cure in the rural Southern states and its efficacy was even employed by the white slave owners and their families who needed a thorough worming. Google Scholar. GUID:FB7A69D3-5F4B-4A23-86B2-F73B140ADACB. Cerasee or asosi . 1954, La Habana: Ediciones CR, Germosn-Robineau L: Farmacopea Vegetal Caribea. Sister Francis is a religious woman whose backyard is filled with the healing bushes she grew up using in Jamaica. Although in the recent past there has been an increase in ethnobotanical and ethnomedicinal investigations in Cuba [1519], these have generally not paid attention to the specific ethnic knowledge that immigrants have contributed to traditional Cuban medicine. The species belong to 112 genera and 63 families, with a prevalence of Annona and Citrus (three species each) among the genera, and among the families of Fabaceae (9.8%), Asteraceae (6.5%), Euphorbiaceae and Verbenaceae (4.9%), Lamiaceae and Rutaceae (3.3%). He remembered and was able to impart that knowledge when he arrived in the Caribbean. But quinine is a chemical salt that can cause violent reactions, unlike gentle verbena. (Colon, 154).. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food as Medicine. During the period 19001930, more than half a million Haitians entered the country legally or illegally [6,7]. And thats it. Seabrook claimed it was called "pains cutter" in rural Haiti.. Douching with a decoction made from oak bark is another female remedy found in both Haiti and the Ozarks (Jordan, 735; Kloss, 171). Estudio etnobotnico I. Revista Cubana de Farmacia. Of these, about three quarters were reported with the same medicinal uses, and the remaining quarter with different uses. While I was able to match several Haitian herbs with American counterparts, I was a little disappointed that I could find no mention of the "biggies" of American herbal pharmacoepeia in Caribbean plant botany. 2007, Oxford: Berghahn, 245-269. It is located between the Canal Viejo de Bahamas in the North, the Caribbean Ocean in the South, the Province of Las Tunas in the East, and the Province of Ciego de vila in the West. They both grow well in Ozark soil which contains a lot of limestone sediment. Besides the instinctual, the blood is watched by looking into the eyes, checking the fingernails, behind one's ears and through skin eruptions and bleeding. Two main stores are situated in North Montreal and offer a choice of several dozen Haitian medicinal plants, dried and packaged in small plastic bags (Fig. Voucher specimens were deposited at the CIMAC herbarium in Camagey (HACC). 1974, La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro. When a person thinks of sarsaparilla, what most often comes to mind is probably an old-fashioned sudsy drink not unlike root beer. Most Haitians were illiterate, crowded into barracks (barracones), paid a miserable salary, and compelled to hand over their savings to reimburse the cost of their passage [7,9]. The most frequently used species are Chenopodium ambrosioides, Cissus verticillata, Cocos nucifera, Crescentia cujete, Cymbopogon citratus, Lippia alba, Momordica charantia, Pimenta dioica, Portulaca oleracea, Psidium guajava, and Stachytarpheta jamaicensis. Fuentes V: Las plantas medicinales en Cuba. Somehow, this knowledge was transmitted to slaves in America and they began treating themselves with quassia, also. Some plant uses have a common origin in the ethnobotanical practices of Caribbean people of African cultural heritage, the so-called Afro-Caribbean pharmacopoeia: examples include the use of the aerial parts of Lippia alba and Cymbopogon citratus, as well as the use of roots and ligneous parts of Allophylus cominia, Caesalpinia bahamensis, Erythroxylum havanense, and Chiococca alba. 2001, Guantnamo, Cuba: Editorial el mar y la montaa, Nevet M, De la Rosa AS: Kote ou bouke m pote. The complexity of practices related to traditional posology is rarely investigated in ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological studies. with Momordica charantia, Hamelia patens), as well as to treat skin infections such as carbuncles, to alleviate itching, and to fortify children who have 'fragile health'. Camagey is the largest province in Cuba, at 15,615 km2, corresponding to 14.3% of the nation's territory. For example, three shoots of Mangifera indica are boiled and the remedy is drunk in three different cups to treat empacho, a digestive problem; three leaves of Cissampelos pareira are split into half and three halves are boiled in the case of fever; an infusion made from three whorls or tops of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis is prepared and given to children in the morning on an empty stomach as an anthelmintic; the decoction of three leaves of Momordica charantia must be drunk for three days, and the seeds of the same plant are ingested one on the first day, two on the second, and three on the third, and so on for seven days. Ososki AL, Balick MJ, Daly DC: Medicinal plants and cultural variation across Dominican Rural, Urban, and Transnational Landscapes. They observe nuances in the condition of their blood that are almost unheard of in white Anglo folk pharmacopoeia. Chemical Ecology. Conversely, and to a lesser extent, Haitians contributed to what is today considered as traditional Cuban medicine by introducing into the dominant Cuban community certain specific ethnobotanical practices and uses of plants, as described also in Volpato et al. More than 50% of the mixtures are used to treat afflictions of the respiratory system. 2009, 37 (1): 43-53. Among the Haitians interviewed, 21 migrated to Cuba between 19131926, ten are the offspring of Haitian couples who entered Cuba during the same period, and three more left Haiti between 19461954. Juice extraction is mostly used for green parts and is preferred over decoction and infusion for topical applications. People who migrated in the 1920s generally sailed to eastern Cuba looking for jobs on the sugarcane plantations to improve their living conditions and support their families in Haiti. Interviews were conducted in Spanish after first explaining the aims of the study. around Central Brasil, Minas in the North of the Province and Central Haiti in the South). Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise. Map of Cuba with the Province of Camagey. 1995, 49: 249-256. Traveling Plants and Cultures The Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacy of Migrations. The Haitian herbalist and her Ozark counterpart share a similarity: they both gather and use herbs because of necessity. The Province is inhabited by some 780,000 people, or seven per cent of the Cuban population. Calle Cisneros No. FURCY, HAITI - About an hour's drive from Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, residents of Furcy, a cool, lush, agricultural community high up in the mountains, say they are used to dealing with . Santillo, Humbart. Besides single medicinal plants, 22 herbal mixtures, mostly prepared as a concoction of plants or plant parts, are reported. Edited by: Hammer K, Esquivel M, Knpffer H. 1992, Gatersleben, Germany: Institut fr Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung, 1: 110-137. 1CERES Research School, Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, NL-6706 Wageningen, the Netherlands, 2CIMAC, Centro de Investigaciones de Medio Ambiente de Camagey, Cuba. To gain further insights, we qualitatively compared our results with those reported in other Cuban ethnobotanical studies [18, 19, 42, 49] and especially with the work of Beyra et al. 1990, Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. A few other remedies of non-vegetal origin were also reported. 1985, 497-509. They relied heavily on homegardens, wild plants, and on traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and practices in order to survive. An ethnobotanical investigation was conducted to collect information on medicinal plant use by Haitian immigrants and their descendants in the Province of Camagey, Cuba. Davis had found Datura growing in Haiti. Google Scholar. In today's Video Wilnise Francois will be sharing some of her favorite Haitian Traditional Plants.Wilnise Francois is a Haitian-American Licensed Nurse and H. 1964, La Habana: Asociacin de Estudiantes de Ciencias Biolgicas, Alain H: Flora de Cuba. Map of Cuba with the Province of Camagey. During the decades after emigration, the original Haitian ethnomedicinal knowledge progressively changed and adapted to the new environment, maintaining cultivation and use of important medicinal plants, incorporating plants and uses from the host Cuban culture, and diffusing specific plant uses to Cubans in contact with Haitian communities. GV, DG, AB, and AB carried out interviews and collected data in the field. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 Haitians (21 women and 13 men) whose ages ranged from 45 to 102 years (mean age 68), in the following communities: Central Brasil, Jiqu, Aguacate, Esmeralda, Antn, Batey Varela (Antn), San Serapio, Caidije, La Jagua, Macuto 2, Camagey (neighbourhoods of Puerto Prncipe, Bellavista, Florat, and La Guernica). Its not even like cod liver oil. Ethnopharmacological themes in sub-Saharan art objects and utensils. Momordica charantia, Solanum americanum and Stachytarpheta jamaicensis are among those species most cited by Haitians in this study. 2000, La Habana, Cuba: Centro de Antropologa-CEISIC-Centro Juan Marinello, Espronceda ME: Parentesco, inmigracin y comunidad. 2002, Camagey, Cuba: Editorial cana. Medicinal plants used by Haitian immigrants and their descendants in the Province of Camagey, Cuba. Many Haitians are believer of "remed fey" or "bush medicine". 10.1007/BF00052650. ). Its worse than cod liver oil.. I soon learned however that Caribbean folk medicine cannot be studied without comparing it to African-American practices. 1951, La Habana: Contribuciones Ocasionales del Museo de Historia Natural Colegio La Salle 10, P. Fernndez and Ca, Len H, Alain H: Flora de Cuba. Besides single medicinal plants, informants also reported 22 herbal mixtures that are mostly prepared as a concoction of plants or plant parts and ingested. The research led to the identification of 123 different plant species used for medicinal purposes by Haitians and their descendants in the Province of Camagey. A tummy ache? Revealing Latinos' plant-healing knowledge and practices in New York City. Edited by: Pieroni A, Vandebroek I. 2005, 102: 69-88. Traveling Plants and Cultures. Esquivel M, Hammer K: The Cuban homegarden 'conuco': a perspective environment for evolution and in situ conservation of plant genetic resources. Just one of the high notes from Seraphic Fire's first 20 years, Judy Blume, on top of the world (and her Key West bookstore), Adrienne Kennedy akennedy@wlrn.org (305)-995-2256, FRIENDS OF WLRN, INC. AS MEDIA MANAGER OF WLRN PUBLIC MEDIA. Baths are the second more important category of means of application at almost 16% of the total. [http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethcode.htm], Len H: Flora de Cuba. Loma Linda, CA: Back to Eden Books, 1987. [2125]. This lapse of time is long enough to permit insights to be drawn regarding the process of transformation and adaptation of ethnomedicinal knowledge after migration and in the ways in which the progressive integration of migrants in the host culture modifies this knowledge.
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