Raízes da cura: os saberes e as experiências dos usos de plantas medicinais pelas Meizinheiras do Cariri cearense

Abstract

The present research takes course through cure practices that were performed in the territory of the Cariri, of Ceará state. A zone of clearing and valley that welcomes the Araripe National Forest of a wide biodiversity of flora and fauna and that possesses particularities for the construction of therapeutic knowledge created in the confluence of indigenous, European and African matrices. This study seeks to know the strategies in reference of health practices developed by the group of the women, Meizinheiras do pé da serra, located in Chico Gomes' community in Crato, county that belongs to the region of the cearense Cariri. The Meizinheiras materialize the knowledge on healing plants and accomplish an alchemy of homemade medicines which are used in the care of their bodies, their families and the community. This way, in everyday activities they reconstruct a knowledge that has been passed through generations over the years. For the analysis of this process is proposed a qualitative research conducted in fieldwork in which were realized photographic, audio and video records, and also interviews that had the intention of collecting the narratives of the lives of the group and the participation in their daily activities. From the immersion on these processes and reflections, it was possible to comprehend the experience on the cultivation and useof healing plants and in which ways that reverberatesin the lives of the participants. The analytical categories that run through the research are: territory, health and memory. The material and immaterial territory echoes in the life of these people, at the same time that they imprint their marks in the territory composing the scenery of it. Thesewomen construct a conception of health from the confluence of physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions. They elaborate therapeutic alternatives to biomedicine which is not always available to attend the demand of the local health. This way, to understand the processes through which these particular conceptions of health are elaborated by the meizinheiras, they present to us a definitive element for a reflection about the intimate relation they establish with the territory. The therapeutic knowledge which they carry presents themselves as a symbol of individual and collective memory and mainly of the local popular knowledge, that is gathered and passed on from generation to generation. The encounters of the group strengthen a political, cultural and environmental conscience generating empowerment against the lived relations in the space, especially in their context of farmer women, and amplify the conceptions of their world. However in order to create deeper roots is needed a more effective dialog with the young people, for them to carry on the propagation of these legacies; an approach to the health system and the strength of the meetings of Chico Gomes’ meizinheiras with others meizinheiras from the region, so that together they construct a network that enables debates and reflections, perfecting the knowledge and processes of diffusion, therefore making more contemporary the traditional practices of health.