About me

    Plants have has been used as medicine since the start of humanity. Medicinal plants have been used as a way to combat illnesses, prevent, treat, physical and spiritual diseases. Plants are also the foundation of what we know as current medicine. Around 50% of modern drugs are directly or indirectly derived from plants. And around 25% of those drugs are derived from the rainforests, which are currently endangered because of the ongoing of illegal practices of oil extraction, mining, and wiping out of vegetation in indigenous territories for agricultural and commercial purposes.

     Within indigenous communities, medicinal plants have been used ritualistically, medicinally, and have formed an inherent part of their daily lives. In their cosmovision, plants are considered as living beings that play the roles of healers, teachers, companions, and wisdom holders. In many indigenous traditions, plants are seen as higher intelligence beings. Indigenous people all over the world have learned to maintain an equilibrium with nature and work with plants that grow around them. Although indigenous people make up only 5% of the world's population, they support about 80% of the world's biodiversity and are at the forefront of defending their territories against corporations who are exhausting the world's natural resources and degrading ecosystems that are crucial to the natural processes of the earth and the livelihood of many.

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I was able to participate as a Mellon Research Fellow for the Pathways Program through my college John Tyler Community College Becoming Brightpoint. This opportunity allowed me to look deeper at the topic of Medicinal Plants of South America and their Relationship with Indigenous tribes and start collecting a body of research to construct this website. This is a topic that has always caught my attention, but my interest especially grew during the pandemic. I became more engaged as a way to work with the plants that were available to me at the time and learn about the ways they could benefit my health and prevent me from being sick. My interest also came from learning about the plants that my indigenous ancestors used to implement in their lives. This project has allowed me to reconnect with vegetation I grew up seeing, and to document important information on these plants that are widely used by indigenous tribes and indigenous descendants in South America.

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Special thanks to my mentor, Professor Greg Hansard for helping me in the development of the project, my VCU faculty connection Professor Incoronata Inserra for steering me in the right direction, and the whole Pathways Program staff and community for always showing interest in students and giving them tools to advance in their personal life and career.

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"My most sublime desire is that every human being should begin to put as much attention as he or she into the knowledge of plants, because they are the greatest healers of all. And all human beings should also put effort into the preservation and conservation of the rainforest, and care for it and the ecosystem, because damage to these not only prejudices the flora and fauna, but humanity itself."- Pablo Amaringo.(Peruvian artist and Shaman)