by Mary
Thursday, May 21
As my fellow travelers know, I have been (perhaps a little obsessively) interested in Oaxacan plants throughout the trip, stopping here and there to examine interesting weeds and trees that might belong to this or that family and marveling over the diversity of succulents and cacti so outside my usual range. Happily for me, today’s adventures centered on the plants of Oaxaca, from edibles and medicinals in the Botanical Garden to the possible emergence of a local “coffee culture” in the state. It was a shorter day than usual in preparation for our long drives on Friday and Saturday, but still a full and fun day. As a non-coffee drinker myself, I’ll focus most of my attention in this post on the Botanical Garden.
The Botanical Garden is a relatively new project, only opened in 1998. The physical site has an interesting history in itself, having been an exercise field for the Mexican army before its conversion to the garden. Before that, it was an orchard cultivated by the monks of Santo Domingo, who lived right next door. This older use left cisterns under the land which connect to a rainwater collection system, so the gardeners don’t have to buy water for their plants. Score!
Although we all expected to be impressed by the beauty of the carefully cultivated and well-manicured plants, I don’t know if any of us (save Dr. Goldberg and Florencio) realized that this garden represents not only the biodiversity of Oaxaca, but cultural history as well. Reflecting on my notes for the day, I realize that my comments on the characteristics of the plants are frequently interspersed with human uses and relationships to them, past and present. This, then, is the meaning of ethnobotany.
We had an excellent tour guide lead us through the sections of the garden, organized generally by ecological niches of the plants. There was also a nice agricultural section. We saw the Three Sisters (squash, beans, and corn) which are so important to many indigenous peoples across the Americas. Evidently, squash was first cultivated in Oaxaca for its seeds, which were roasted. Now, people here use not only the seeds and fruit, but also the stems and leaves in a tasty soup. There were also many varieties of peppers, and a stand of Teosinte, an ancestor of modern-day corn.
Maybe my favorite plant of the day was the Gringo Tree, so named because it has a skin that turns red and peels. Hehe. Apparently the tree has a similar name across other countries in Central America, many people finding humor in the moniker. The Gringo Tree, however, represents not only a good joke, but has a medicinal use. Mothers know that the tree’s red skin can be peeled off, gently heated in water, and applied to a child’s skin to ease the symptoms of chickenpox. In this one species, then, we see not only a neat biological feature, but cultural interaction and human ingenuity. Again—ethnobotany in action.
After our tour, we walked on over to the Nuevo Mundo coffee shop. Everybody really enjoyed the experience of fresh-brewed, high quality coffee varieties. (The room smelled heavenly, by the way.) Taken after our trip to the Botanical Garden, I can’t help but see the two as intricately connected. Coffee is, of course, an agricultural product, though it’s easy to forget that at 6am when you desperately need a pick-me-up.
The owners of Nuevo Mundo talked at length about their efforts to create a “coffee culture” in Oaxaca, a state that grows good coffee but mostly drinks instant NesCafe. Here, we can see yet another local movement in reaction to globalization, and the owners of this shop swimming against the dominant international currents of money and goods. With the rise of globalization, people all over the world have had their relationships to the food that sustains them and the plants that surround them change in dramatic ways. Generally speaking, we are becoming more detached from our immediate physical environments, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. Nuevo Mundo coffee and the Botanical Garden represent attempts to reclaim the best parts of the local environment for local use, enjoyment, and identity.
Today was a celebration of the ethnobotanical heritage of Oaxaca, including the tasty coffee and the lovely plants of the Garden. Today was also a day of awareness for the rapid shifts in our relationships to the plant world. An introduction to the ethnobotanical history of the region forces us to take a fresh look at the present, and the ways in which global trade and decentralized food, medicine, and other plant-based commodities fundamentally change our relationships with plants.
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