Ethnobotany in South America

According to Matsigenka mythology, the harpy eagle, Pakitsa, long ago walked the earth in human form and taught shamans its own hunting secrets: special toxic plants to sharpen vision, cleanse the body and purify the soul. To this day, Matsigenka shamans ascend to the heavens in hallucinogenic trance [see "Return of the Secret Shaman"] to obtain novel varieties of sedge, manioc and other crops and medicines from the spirits.[1] The Matsigenka recognize four general kinds of hunting medicines:  1) aromatic sedges used to steady the hands and guide the arrow; 2) caustic eye drops to improve vision and heighten the senses; 3) purgatives and emetics to flush impurities from the body; 4) and hallucinogens and narcotics to transport the soul to other dimensions where the hunter communes with spirit beings. Cultivated sedges (Cyperus spp.) are probably the most important of all Matsigenka plant medicines, used for a spectacular diversity of ailments. Matsigenka men grow dozens of sedge varieties in their gardens as hunting remedies, each one prized for its ability to enhance skills for tracking and killing a specific game animal—spider monkey, woolly monkey, various game birds, certain types of fish. Other sedge varieties are rubbed on the hands while planting certain crops to make them more hardy. Women, too, have their own sedge varieties—to bathe babies, soothe fevers, staunch hemorrhages during childbirth, to treat infertility or, on the other hand, as a natural form of birth control. Other sedges are used to treat common health complaints such as headaches, fevers, cuts and diarrhea. Still others are used to treat snakebite, to ward off ghosts and vengeful spirits, to treat depression and nightmares[3], or to cure insanity. Some dangerously potent cultivars are believed to cause insanity. There are even sedge varieties to give one a beautiful singing voice, to become a better weaver, to calm a belligerent drunk, or to pass through military check points and park guard posts without hassles.

7. Auflage mit neuem Vorwort von Franz Obermeier und Wolfgang Schiffner.

Stadens Werk war nicht nur wegen des Berichts über ein in Europa weitgehend unbekanntes Land von großem Einfluss. Denn abgesehen von wenigen Nachrichten in den Briefberichten von Amerigo Vespucci und anderen ephemeren Texten war damals nichts über Brasilien bekannt. Seine Bedeutung liegt auch darin, dass er durch eine geschickte literarische Strategie eines Authentizitätsdiskurses den zu der Zeit noch unpersönlichen Reisebericht auf die Ebene einer persönlichen Erzählung (Narrratio) hebt, auch wenn diese noch stark von erbaulichen Texten geprägt ist. Er verbindet damit religiöse Elemente als Rechtfertigung dafür, überhaupt einen solchen Bericht geschrieben zu haben,  mit der zeitgenössischen Realität des von ihm erlebten Landes. Dies war ein in der Geschichte der Reiseliteratur zentraler Schritt. Es genügt einen der mittelalterlichen Pilgerberichte nach Jerusalem zu lesen, oder selbst Marco Polos Chinabericht (Il Milione, entstanden um 1298/99), um den Unterschied zu solchen unpersönlichen Texten zu verstehen. Dabei ist Staden als Erzähler und in den beigegebenen Texten wie der Widmung an Landgraf Philipp auch als Autor in seiner Jetztzeit der Reformation und damit seiner eigenen Realität und der seiner Leser präsent. Seinen moralischen Anspruch untermauert der Protestant Staden durch einen starken Bezug auf lutherische Elemente und seine des Öfteren thematisierte Zeugenschaft für den Glauben. Es gelingt ihm, sein doch recht großes Verständnis für die Fremdkultur, der er mit einem offenen Blick begegnet ist, mit dem christlich-moralischen Urteil so zu verbinden, so dass sich in seiner Darstellung beide Elemente der Angst vor der Fremdheit des ihn bedrohlichen Kannibalismus und der für das Fremde offenen Wahrnehmung nach seinen eigenen Wertmaßstäben einander die Waage halten. Das geschilderte Erleben wird damit für seine ersten Leser wie für den Erzähler des Texts erlebbar, was allerdings diskursiv durch Wahrheitsbeteuerungen erarbeitet werden muss. Diese erfolgen auf der Text- und Bildebene. Die Trennung von seiner persönlichen Erzählung im ersten Teil und dem ethnographischen Bericht im zweiten untermauert diesen Wahrheitsanspruch, sachlich objektiv zu berichten. Der im Text erhobene Anspruch auf Augenzeugenschaft verleiht dem Referierten damit einen neuen Status, den in diversen Berichten erwähnten Kannibalismus dieser Indianer selbst erlebt zu haben. Er schildert ihn in einer nie gekannten Ausführlichkeit, der Vergleich mit zeitgenössischen französischen und portugiesischen Quellen erweist diese genauen Schilderungen als wahrheitsgetreu. Verschiedene Versuche, dies unter diversen Promissen als fake news zu erweisen, müssen heute als methodisch überholt gelten, auch wenn das Thema in der Populärpresse immer wieder auftaucht.

Auch die Ebene der sehr einfachen, nach Stadens Vorgaben von unbekannten Künstlern erstellten Bebilderung dient dieser bewundernswert ausgeklügelten Struktur. Diese einfachen, aber in der Rezeption außergewöhnlich einflussreichen Holzschnitte zeigen nicht nur das indigene Leben, real nachweisbare Küstenlinien und Elemente der indigenen Kultur, sondern auch den Zeugen Staden mit moralisch-verurteilenden Gesten oder als Gefangenen in einem Tupinamba-Dorf, wo er kannibalistische Szenen abbildet. Vor allem durch diese Bebilderung wurde das Buch zu einem Markstein der Reiseliteratur und  ist in Brasilien durch zahlreiche Bearbeitungen als Kinder – und Jugendliteratur sowie durch zwei Filme im kulturellen Imaginarium des Landes als erstes Brasilienbuch und Gründungstext präsent.

Richness, ethnobotany and potential production were part of a two-year project carried out in the locality of Tumupasa (Dept. La Paz), NW Bolivia. Ethnobotanical interviews to the Tacana people were applied in order to register useful species. Between 2013-2014 twelve Gentry plots were established in order to analyze population structure of five selected useful palms: Iriartea deltoidea, Euterpe longivaginata, Geonoma deversa, Bactris gasipaes, and Phytelephas tenuicaulis. A total of 29 palm species (5 introduced and 24 native) were recorded, with 94% of arecoids and they are mostly related with forests that host the major part of this palm richness. Twenty three palms are used by local communities andwere included into eight uses categories: food (29%), construction materials (17%) and animal food (14%), among others. Keys to Geonoma and Bactris species were contributed. Selected palm species showed regenerative populations, but there is a need for follow-up programs in order to conserve these important natural resources.

“K‟utarapxiw quqanakasxa, ukatxa phichantapxarakiw, quqa tunu lawanaks jik‟irapxi, ukatsi janipuniw jik‟supkit qhuya tunu saphanakasxa.”

“One should take pride in one‟s land and culture. There is a popular saying in Aymara, "They cut our
branches, they burn our leaves, they pull out our trunks . . . but never could they overtake our roots.‟ This was addressed to the Spaniards.”
                                                              - Aymara agriculturist of Chile

Aymara Indian Perspectives on Development in the Andes presents our collaborative research with the Aymara people in the Andes of northern Chile. We conducted ethnographic interviews with Aymara people in more than 18 villages from the coast to the high plateau, 4600 meters above sea level.
Within a multidisciplinary framework and with a detailed understanding of issues from the Aymara point of view, together we explore the enduring reciprocal relations between the Aymara and the elements of land, water, and the supernatural amid exogenously imposed development within their holy land. We discuss the paving of international Chile Highway 11, diversion of Altiplano waters of the Río Lauca
to the arid Atacama Desert coast for hydroelectricity and irrigation, mining within Parque Nacional Lauca, a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve, and Chilean national park policies regarding Aymara communities and their natural and cultural properties within the protected area.
For Andean people, economic, spiritual, and social life, are inextricably tied to land and water. The Aymara
of Chile are the indigenous people of the northern border Region XV, Arica y Parinacota, who are struggling to maintain their sustainable and traditional systems of irrigation waters distribution, agriculture, and pastoralism in one of the most arid regions of our world, the Atacama Desert. Interviews with
Aymara people reveal the social and environmental dimensions of the larger conflict between rapid economic growth and a sensitive cultural and natural resource base. The Aymara help us to understand indigenous issues and their cosmological vision.

Aruskipt‟asipxananakasakipunirakispawa

Described as a 'master plant' by many indigenous groups in lowland South America, tobacco is an essential part of shamanic ritual, as well as a source of everyday health, wellbeing and community. In sharp contrast to the condemnation of the tobacco industry and its place in contemporary public
health discourse, the book considers tobacco in a more nuanced light, as an agent both of enlightenment and destruction.
Exploring the role of tobacco in the lives of indigenous peoples, The Master Plant offers an important and unique contribution to this field of study through its focus on lowland South America: the historical source region of this controversial plant, yet rarely discussed in recent scholarship. The ten
chapters in this collection bring together ethnographic accounts, key developments in anthropological theory and emergent public health responses to indigenous tobacco use. Moving from a historical study of tobacco usage – covering the initial domestication of wild varieties and its value as a commodity in colonial times – to an examination of the
transcendent properties of tobacco, and the magic, symbolism and healing properties associated with it, the authors present wide-ranging perspectives on the history and cultural significance of this important plant. The final part of the book examines the changing landscape of tobacco use in these
communities today, set against the backdrop of the increasing power of the national and transnational tobacco industry.
The first critical overview of tobacco and its uses across lowland South America, this book encourages new ways of thinking about the problems of commercially exploited tobacco both within and beyond this source region.

This article investigates the scientific and local knowledge of biodiversity of quinoa in Peru and its association with racialized classification schemes—both for humans and for plants. While race is purportedly used as a classificatory tool, it has a deep history of negative discrimination that transcends application to people and has been applied to other species associated with racialized humans. This article reports compiled data on the nomenclature of quinoa vari-etals from Andean farmers from the altiplano in Puno, Peru. This research demonstrates that domesticated plants that have deep connections to human diversity and traditional cultures can be racialized. These plants are also critical to the maintenance of biological diversity.

En ese artículo proponemos una reconstrucción del proyecto enciclopédico de Sanchez Labrador (en seguida SL) que hasta hoy no está editado en entero y sobre lo cual gracias a redescubiertos manuscritos y su examen podemos ver más claro que en tiempo anterior. Tratamos aqui el tema de la estructura del libro y la proveniencia.

La Marihuana (Cannabis sativa) se ha vuelto en nuestros días un tema constante de debate y simboliza perfectamente la pugna entre los partidarios de la liberalización total del consumo de sustancias psicoactivas de una parte y por otra parte de los oponentes a toda tolerancia hacia ellas. Esas posiciones encontradas nos obligan casi automáticamente a escoger entre dos opciones “cerradas”: la primera que se envuelve púdicamente en el manto de la tolerancia, la libertad y un acercamiento seudo “angelical” a la “hierba”; la segunda que sataniza toda modificación inducida de los estados de conciencia y evoca horrorizada las cifras efectivamente escalofriantes de la drogadicción en el mundo. Al pronunciarse sobre este tema, uno se arriesga a parecer un verdugo mandado por el “establishment” para mantener el orden moral o un irresponsable rezago de la fantasía hippie incapaz de enfrentar los retos del mundo moderno. Queremos intentar abrir un tercer espacio ubicado a igual distancia de ambos grupos que se refuerzan mutuamente por presentar posturas que consideramos distorsionadas de la realidad y basadas en un cierto grado de auto-engaño sino de impostura.

... As a native of Peru and son of an Inca princess, he had been in an excellent position to find out about the Inca administration ... At this stage I propose a hypothesis: these details of Garcilaso's description originated with Pineda; they were told to Garcilaso by Gonzalo Pizarro, who ...

Vast and rich, harboring tremendous biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, and heirs to a glorious and tragic history, Central and South America have given rise to some of the most ancient, enduring, and spectacular examples of shamanistic practice documented. The Asiatic peoples who migrated to the Americas during the Pleistocene appear to have brought with them a ritual complex that integrated religious and medical functions, centered around trance states, and may have involved hallucinogenic plant use. As in the case of the Siberian cultures to whom we owe the etymology of the term “shaman,” native societies throughout Central and South America distinguish ritual specialists who enter trance to commune with the spirits for purposes of healing, divination, and other matters of individual and collective well-being. Because of the presumed Asian origins of Amerindians, and partly because the Siberian term happened to gain wide usage, certain west Asian traditions and similar Arctic and North American examples have been treated as original or more “pure” versions of shamanism than their Central and South American counterparts. Yet recent archeological and genetic evidence suggests a much more ancient date for the arrival of humans in the Americas than had previously been assumed. Keeping this fact in mind, native Central and South American shamanism should be seen not as derivative of or secondary to “classic” Asian shamanism, but rather parallel, largely independent, and equally ancient bodies of practice that have evolved and diversified in response to heterogeneous ecological, sociocultural, and historical conditions.

This article concerns the practice of cassava gardening among the indigenous Makushi people of Amazonian Guyana. By focusing on the cassava garden (mîî) as a primary site of multispecies engagement, I explore some of the heterogeneous modes that people-plant relationships take in everyday life and ritual practice. Plants, for the Makushi, are typically thought of as 'persons' (pemon), and gardening is predicated upon maintaining relationships of interspecies care via regular human-plant communication. In the idiom of human kinship, cassava plants are spoken of as being 'children' (more yamî'), both of human gardeners and Cassava Mama, the tutelary spirit of cultivated plants. Human-plant communication is both verbal, in the form of poetic language (taren) and songs (eremu), and embodied, in the form of tactile engagement and substance-based transfers. It is in the cultivation of communicative relationships with plants and their spirits, I argue, that Makushi gardeners create and nourish human persons and, ultimately, reproduce society. I go on to address the anthropological problem of plant animism in Amazonia, arguing that a more embodied, sensorial and, following Strathern, 'immanentist' notion of spirit is required to better account for the complex entanglement of bodies and souls that undergirds human-plant interpenetration in indigenous Amazonia. In dialogue with literature from the multispecies turn, I suggest that an anthropology beyond the human, much like Makushi gardening, might usefully be thought of as a process of more-than-human ontogenesis.

This study describes the ethnobotany of the Hotì, a group of about 800 Indians living in the Serranía de Maigualida of the Venezuelan Amazon. Field research was conducted between 1996 to 1999, mostly in four socioecologically different Hotì communities: Caño
Iguana, Caño Mosquito, Caño Majagua y Kayamá. The methodology includes quantitative and qualitative approaches. The research had four main goals.
1. Initiate the documentation of the botanical diversity of a previous unknown region of Venezuela. A total of 2340 botanical specimens were collected, of which approximately 1500 have been determined botanically. Botanical inventories and
ecological measurements (density, dominance, frequency, and importance values) were made in four one-hectare plots set up in different ecological areas, and on the basis of this data different forest types were defined. A total of 59 families, 247 genera and 399 species were identified in the four plots.
2. Explore Hotì cultural ecology, one of the least known ethnic groups in Venezuela. The subsistence ecology (foraging, hunting, fishing, horticulture) is described, with particular emphasis on plant-people interactions, ideological and utilitarian aspects
of plant use, and the role of Hoti as ecological disturbance agents.
3. Test empirically theoretical proposals on the nature of ethnobiological classifications. The Hotì ethnobotanical classification system is described and analyzed in the light of current theory. The system exhibits well defined ethnobotanical categories: Kingdom (unnamed), Life Form (10 taxa), Generic (565
taxa), Specific (509 taxa) and Varietal (5 taxa). The percentage of polytipic generic taxa, (108) 23,6%, is in agreement with the 20% predicted by the theory.
4. Test the hypothesis that the Hotì, described as incipient horticulturalists, have less extensive and less detailed knowledge of the plant world than more horticultural lowland groups. Data from the ethnobotanical plot surveys in fact shows that the
Hotì possess a comparatively higher knowledge of their botanical surroundings in comparison to other groups, thus falsifying the null hypothesis. The global use percentages of the plot species are between 49% to 100%, corresponding to the least (Kayama) and the most (Mosquito) traditional environments respectively.

Richard Evans Schultes was the first to suggest the possibility that there may have been a cultic use of mushrooms in South America, specifically the Northeastern Andes region of the Amazon. Schultes and Hofmann noted that a Jesuit priest had mentioned that the Yurimagua of Northeastern Andes in Peru used a potion, possibly made from a tree fungus [perhaps a species of Psilocybe]. Schultes offered little information except that he mentioned the drink might have included, Psilocybe yungensis as part of the mixture. Schultes' references of that tree fungus appeared in The Botany and Chemistry of the Hallucinogens and later in an article describing some of the mushroomic gold pectorals on display at the Museo del Oro in Bogotá. In recent years, Juan Camilo Rodriguez Martinez, an amateur ethnomycologist, was residing in Bogotá, Colombia. During this period, while researching the various gold pectorals and pendant artifacts on display at the Museo del Oro in Bogotá, a particular gold pendant piqued JCRM's curiosity. It appeared that there seemed to be a possible connection between those artifacts and a few specific species of the known neurotropic fungi that occurred in Colombia. Richard Evans Schultes and Alec Bright were the first Westerners to bring to the attention of Western Civilization, news of the existence of the gold mushroomic artifacts, and pendants on display at the Museo del Oro in Bogotá, Colombia. And now it is JCRM who suggests that the ancient Muisca priests may have once used entheogenic mushrooms in a cultic manner in prehispanic Colombia. And quite possibly, the epicenter of that cultic activity occurred primarily in and around the municipality of Villa de Leyva in Boyacá, Colombia, as well as in other Departments in the surrounding regions. The Muiscas are an indigenous people native to Colombia. They are the original inhabitants of what is now the city of Bogotá and the surrounding countryside. That also includes the Cundiboyacense High Plateau to the south of the Department (State) of Santander, one of the 32 States in this beautiful country. In Colombia, botanists are aware that many entheogenic plants have medicinal value and are of spiritual significance amongst the indigenous populations who use such plants in ritual ceremonies, yet there appears to be little research in Colombia concerning the past or present use of psilocybian fungi. However, there is an online plethora of data on the ludible use of entheogenic fungi by foreign tourists. Many young foreigners come to Colombia seeking such fungi, yage, and other native medicinal entheogenic plants, often searching for new ways to communicate with God or to have some mind-altering ludible experience. The authors suggest that such ludible use of entheogenic plants, especially

Western scientists and entheogen enthusiasts have used terms such as “psychoactive,” “hallucinogenic,” “psychedelic,” or more recently, “entheogenic,” to refer to shamanic plants and substances. Yet in all their permutations, such terms reinforce the foundational Cartesian dichotomy between body and mind, substance and spirit, the finite and the infinite. Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, by contrast, do not distinguish the mental or spiritual effects of shamanic plants and substances from their physiological or sensory properties. Among the Matsigenka people of Peru, for example, the term kepigari (which could be translated as “toxic,” or “intoxicating”) encompasses the physiological, sensory and cognitive dimensions of shamanic experience under a single, unified concept. The Matsigenka and other Amazonian peoples make no distinction between a shamanic plant’s active pharmacological ingredients and what we might refer to as the anthropomorphized “soul” that animates and infuses it with agency. Indeed, for the Matsigenka and other Amazonian peoples, the body can sometimes be used as a synonym for what we would refer to as the soul, and vice versa. And yet just as ethnobotanists might overlook the phil- osophical ramifications of indigenous ways of knowing, anthropologists in Amazonia, increasingly concerned with ontological questions, often overlook the material and phenomenological basis of indigenous knowledge. Indigenous concepts surrounding the sensory properties, body/mind mani- festations and spiritual properties of shamanic plants transcend Cartesian dualism. Specific plants and plant-based substances are sometimes personified by Amazonian shamans as “plant teachers.” Scientific findings about the role of messenger molecules in plant communication and an emerg- ing appreciation of “plant intelligence” provide new windows of understanding into the deep truth behind shamanic concepts.

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

Major categories of uses of native Arecaceae to Bolivia are registered based on 252 records. Fifty eight palm species - which represents the 67% of total) are used under 10 categories, namely food (fruits, palmheart and beverages), medicinal, fuel, ornamental, construction materials (thatch and structure), utensils, handicrafts, toys, animal food, and ceremonial. Also 24 species known as the most utilized by people were considered with more information in regards to their uses; animal food represents the 16%, food for local communities (14%), construction materials (13%), ornamental and handicrafts (both with 10% ea.), oils (7%), cosmetic (4%), toys and ceremonial (both with 3% ea). Finally, seven study cases were included written by L.R. Moreno & O. I. Moreno, R. Hurtado, M. Toledo, F. Montoya, Z. Pérez, E. Blacutt, N. Paniagua-Zambrana et al.

En la Sierra de Santa Marta (Veracruz, México), décadas de intervenciones de las políticas públicas han dejado como secuela actitudes de dependencia, en contraparte de un paternalismo exacerbado, que dejaba fuera a las comunidades locales de las decisiones que afectaban a su futuro, así como un grave deterioro de la biodiversidad original del medio ecocultural. En consecuencia, la pobreza, la presión antrópica sobre los recursos naturales endógenos, la vulnerabilidad y, por ende, los procesos de emigración-expulsión de la población local, son fenómenos que recientemente adquieren gran trascendencia.

En este contexto, se han ido abriendo paso distintos enfoques que cuestionan ideas acerca del desarrollo convencional hegemónico, eurocéntrico y neocolonialista. Es el caso de los postulados de modelos de desarrollo emergentes como participación, empoderamiento, etnodesarrollo, las teorías posibilistas de Ostrom para el gobierno de los recursos de uso común (RUC), ecología política, agroecología, diálogo/ecología de saberes, interculturalidad o sustentabilidad integral.

Así, a partir de la implementación de una metodología de investigación cualitativa con enfoque de(s)colonial, se han registrado y analizado un conjunto de incipientes y heterogéneos proyectos de gestión de recursos naturales, agrosilvopastoriles, pesqueros y ecoturísticos en las comunidades indígenas campesinas de Nahuas y Popolucas de la Sierra de Santa Marta y su entorno geográfico, la Reserva de la Biosfera de Los Tuxtlas, puestos en marcha a partir de los años noventa por diferentes organizaciones civiles y no gubernamentales, emanadas del movimiento del ambientalismo social mexicano, en colaboración directa y participativa con la población campesina local. Entre los principales objetivos de este trabajo se encuentra el relacionar las prácticas de estos proyectos con los postulados de los modelos de desarrollo emergentes citados con anterioridad.

Dentro de los principales resultados del abordaje metodológico implementado en esta investigación, las nociones posdesarrollistas anteriores asumidas por estos proyectos, que se concretan en los discursos y las prácticas de algunos movimientos sociales, de ONG y otras asociaciones civiles, de un sector del mundo académico vinculado a éstas, y de la población local del área objeto de estudio, se revelan como un ejemplo posible de buenas prácticas socio-espaciales emergentes en la gestión de recursos naturales ecoturísticos que hasta cierto punto, y
partiendo de una emergente alianza estratégica de saberes locales indígenas campesinos y conocimientos científicos-técnicos o expertos para la colaboración social intercultural, contribuyen a avanzar en la construcción de un modelo de desarrollo alternativo con capacidad de contribuir a la lucha por mejorar la precaria realidad –ecológica, demográfica, económica y sociocultural- de los territorios tropicales mesoamericanos y de las poblaciones indígenas campesinas que ancestralmente los habitan.

Seeking to generate a deeper methodological and theoretical dialogue between botanical science and anthropology, this paper summarizes interdisciplinary approaches to human-plant interactions we have described as “sensory ecology” and “phytoethnography,” applying these concepts to vital questions about human-plant relations in Amazonia. Building on this work, we broaden the scope of our investigations by considering their relevance to the field of historical ecology. In particular, we discuss Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of “multinaturalism” and explore how it can be applied to understanding indigenous management and domestication of forest landscapes in Amazonia.

Note: Book review (2001) uploaded here as a 2nd file.

Beni Biological Station Biosphere Reserve (1,353 km²) in north-central tropical lowland Bolivia includes three major biogeographic regions: mostly Amazon, and Cerrado and Chaco. About 70% is flooded seasonally. In a heterogeneous mosaic, 89% is forest (high dense, or riparian, or swamp); 2% open woodlands; 1% dry savanna and thorn scrub; and 8% wetlands. The rich biodiversity includes some 2,000 species of vascular plants, 100 spp. of mammals, 480 spp. of birds, 50+ spp. of reptiles and amphibians, and 210 spp. of fishes. Some 2,000 people (indigenous and immigrant) living in or adjacent to the BBR depend on the natural resources for hunting, fishing, gathering, craft production, subsistence agriculture, and cattle-ranching.

This book presents main work since the BBS was established in 1982 (becoming a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1986), including scientific research and general information, on vegetation, wildlife (mostly vertebrates, butterflies), ecology, indigenous and immigrant peoples, ethnobiology and ethnoecology, resource management and conservation. The five sections comprise 12 chapters in Spanish, 9 in English, with Spanish and English abstracts: (1) History and introduction to BBR, including overview of the area’s ecology and a book-integrating review for management; (2 & 3) Fundamental and/or applied research on soils, vegetation, floristics and fauna of the BBR and nearby areas; (4) Uses and management of resources by local communities; (5) Conservation: Biogeographic analyses and context of BBR and historical administrative review and summary of BBS and BBR projects.

Subjects in detail: (1) Evaluation and monitoring for adaptive management, with integration of all chapters; (2) BBS and BBR characteristics, history in context, and management; (3) Soils in BBR area; (4) Vegetation mapping from satellite data for habitat studies in Amazon lowlands, with new vegetation map of BBR; (5) BBR’s 27 vegetation formations, and their conservation importance; (6) Floristic composition and diversity of forested habitats in BBR; (7) Ecology and biogeography of BBR’s 12 palm species; (8) Fishes in BBR; (9) Amphibians and reptiles in BBR and Beni Dept.; (10) Ecology, biogeography and conservation of BBR forest-island faunas (mainly birds, butterflies); (11) Birds of nearby Sabana de Espíritu – diversity and ecology; (12) Wildlife diversity with selective logging of bigleaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) in nearby Bosque Chimanes; (13) Consequences of subsistence hunting in BBR (especially reducing white-lipped peccary [Tayassu pecari] and black-faced black spider monkey [Ateles chamek]); (14) Census and conservation of Endangered Ateles chamek in BBR; (15) Forest regeneration after slash-and-burn agriculture at BBR; (16) Experimental pre-Hispanic-style raised-field cultivation, a better alternative to slash-and-burn; (17) Indigenous (Tsimane/Chimane) agriculture, hunting and fishing; (18) Traditional (indigenous and immigrant) knowledge of useful plants; (19) Biogeographic analyses and administrative development of BBR, and implications for protected area management and frontier regional planning.

Medicinal plant therapy is a total sensory experience among the Matsigenka and the Yora (Yaminahua) of Amazonian Peru.  Cues thought to indicate plant efficacy are sensed through multiple modes:  taste, odor, irritation, and vision as well as body/mind sensations induced by emetic, psychoactive, and stimulating plants.  Though occupying adjacent territories, the Matsigenka and Yora belong to different cultural-linguistic families and did not interact until recently.  A comparative study documented criteria used by both groups to evaluate the healing power of plants.  Odor is significant in both groups’ cultural constructions of illness and therapy.  Both value plants with red juice for blood-related conditions.  For the most part, Matsigenka ethnomedicine is allopathic, as medicines act through opposition.  Many plants are selected for toxic properties (bitterness, pungency, causticity) that overpower and expel illness.  Bitterness is the most frequently encountered medicinal property, and many remedies are administered orally.  Yora ethnomedicine is homeopathic in the sense that “like treats like.”  Medicinal plants are classified according to visible signatures:  spiny plants for sharp pains, pink leaves for pinkeye, plants with watery latex for watery diarrhea, etc..  Medicines are rarely taken internally, but rather applied externally as warm compresses.  Bitterness, crucial in Matsigenka models of efficacy, is of little importance in Yora medicine.  Different efficacy models appear consistent with different individual and social responses to pain in the two groups.  Both groups have suffered severe health consequences and other negative impacts of Western
contact in recent decades.  Differences in traditional pharmacognosy contribute to different perceptions of Western pharmaceuticals in the two groups.  Despite cultural differences, there are major ecological and taxonomic similarities in the two pharmacopoeia.  Sixteen botanical families, mostly understory shrubs and herbs, account for more than 65% of all medicines encountered.  Regression analysis demonstrates a statistically significant correlation between the two medicinal flora.  This study of comparative ethnopharmacology reveals neither strict cultural nor environmental determinism in medicinal plant selection, but rather a complex interweaving of cultural and ecological adaptations.  Medicines, whether natural or synthetic, indigenous or globally distributed, are at the same time empirically active agents and potent symbols of healing power.

This chapter is an ethnographic case study of the fermentation of cassava beer among the indigenous Makushi people of southern Guyana. The chapter constitutes the first in-depth anthropological study of parakari, a unique kind of cassava beer fermented via the cultivation of a domesticated species of saprotrophic fungus (Rhizopus sp.). Herein, I explore Makushi theories and practices of fermentation, and, more broadly, the ways in which alcoholic drinks operate as catalysts for processes of social and cosmic reproduction and transformation in indigenous Amazonia. For the Makushi, as I argue, the production and consumption of cassava beer is understood as a more- than-human process of person-making, harnessing the vibrant agency of a diversity of vegetal, animal, microbial, and spiritual entities and forces. Fermentation, in this frame, is treated both as a socio-technical system and a cosmo-ecological system.

The present investigation is an attempt to an ethnomedicinal plants survey carried out in Sirumalai Hills of Eastern Ghats, Dindigul district of Tamilnadu. The indigenous information of the village dwellers, tribal people, village herbalists, herbal practitioners and other traditional healers and the indigenous plants used for medicinal worthiness were collected through personal interviewes and questionnaire during field trips. The exploration revealed some unknown medical uses of medicinal plants. The locals use 44 medicinal plants for the treatment of several diseases either in single or in combination with some other ingredients. The information on correct botanical identities with family, vernacular name (Tamil), part used and traditional practice of 44 species, 40 genera and 28 families of angiosperms are discussed here for the treatment of various illnesses viz., asthma, snake bite, anthelmintic, promote coolness antipyretic, jaundice, diarrhoea, dysentery, leprosy, diuretic, diabetes, stomachache problems, paralysis and skin diseases. The dicotyledons are represented by 41 species of 37 genera and 25 families while monocotyledons are represented by 3 species of 3 genera and 3 families. The plant parts are used in the form of juice, extract, powder and paste. These uses are noteworthy for further investigation on recent scientific manner. The present study concluded that the abundance of natural ethnomedicinal information of medicinal plants may also points to a excellent potential for investigation in the discovery new medicines to fight ailments and other new uses. Get the full articles at: http://www.innspub.net/ijb-january-2012/

Introducción y objetivos: Desde la década de 1990, en Argentina se aprecia un proceso de visibilización y resurgimiento de grupos aborígenes que se creían extintos por parte de la historia oficial. Este es el caso del Pueblo Comechingón en la provincia de Córdoba. En otro sentido, se sabe que la recolección de plantas silvestres alimenticias es una práctica ancestral que contribuye a la subsistencia de muchas comunidades indígenas del país. En el marco de la soberanía alimentaria y la etnobiología, se planteó realizar una primera indagación sobre el uso de plantas silvestres comestibles por parte de pobladores que se auto-identifican pertenecientes al pueblo comechingón de San Marcos Sierras (Córdoba).
M&M: Se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas, listados libres y la observación de un muestrario fotográfico guía, a un referente de cada comunidad comechingona de la localidad.
Resultados: Los entrevistados reconocieron 34 etnoespecies silvestres, correspondientes a 32 taxones botánicos. El 85% fueron nativas y el resto exóticas. Los “algarrobos” (Prosopis spp.) presentaron la mayor cantidad de partes utilizadas y formas de consumo registradas. Las estructuras vegetales más citadas fueron los frutos, seguido de las flores, hojas, cladodios, órganos subterráneos y resinas. Estas dos últimas, junto con las hojas de árboles no habían sido reportadas anteriormente para la región. Asimismo, se aludió a diferentes modos de colecta, conservación y productos culinarios.
Conclusiones: Las comunidades comechingonas conocen y consumen una amplia variedad de plantas comestibles. Se espera contribuir a la visibilización de la cultura comechingón y a la consolidación de sistemas de alimentación soberanos

This study investigates the changing role of the domesticated sedge waste (Cyperus spp.) among the indigenous Shipibo-Konibo who live in Ucayali river basin in the Peruvian Amazon. Waste is known as piripiri in Spanish and is associated with cultivated plants in the Cyperaceae or sedge family, commonly infected with a fungi. Many indigenous groups in the Amazon are familiar with a large number of piripiri names and uses, however these are associated with only a very small number of botanical taxa. The uses for the grated or mashed tubers of the Cyperus spp. ranges from the treatment of symptoms of physical disease to magical uses that can change state of mind or behaviour. This study offers an analysis of the many folk species of waste that have been used throughout the decades in Shipibo-Konibo culture. The Shipibo-Konibo are known for their medicinal plant knowledge and intricate ken  designs, which are closely related with ken  waste in particular. A literature analysis, unpublished field data and semi-structured interviews in collaboration with the grassroots organisation Alianza Arkana
provided the data for this study. The results show that Shipibo-Konibo culture is deeply intertwined with the wisdom of the plants spirits and the ancestors. However, their culture is rapidly changing due to influences of western education and urbanisation. The changing uses of waste seem to reflect at least to some extent both persistent and new behaviours and values in Shipibo-Konibo society. The rich connections between linguistics, culture and biology make this an illustrative case study for the concept of biocultural diversity.