2023-10-07 09:55:52
During the armed conflict they were considered ‘witches’, the use of their medicinal plants was prohibited, as well as their ancestral rituals and they were persecuted, some threatened and others murdered.
During those fateful days, the seizure and domination of the territories belonging to these knowledgeable men and women by armed groups forced many to leave their lands, their families, their dreams.
The Bolívar San Andrés Territorial Unit for Victims, for the first time, brought together under the same roof a group of these women and men with valuable ancestral knowledge, inherited from their grandparents, during the first Meeting of Knowledge of Traditional Medicine of the Ethnic Peoples, which took place in Arjona, north of Bolívar.
They brought their plants, their herbs, their ointments, natural medicines and all their knowledge that has been transmitted from generation to generation and that the conflict caused great damage.
More than seventy directors and members of three Zenú indigenous councils and eleven Community Councils of Bolívar attended the space, developing the strategies framed in the route of collective comprehensive reparation and to accompany the process of recovery and recognition of this ancestral knowledge and practices. .
“I learned a lot regarding traditional medicine with my grandparents, but, unfortunately, today I have no territory, I have some plants in the patio where I live now, but it is very little space to grow crops,” said Juan Suárez, traditional doctor of the Gambote town council ( Arjona), who was displaced by illegal armed groups from the Montes de María.
The Unit proposed, with this unprecedented meeting, to promote traditional and complementary medicine and contribute to recognizing the importance and conservation of these experts, midwives, who suffered so much during the armed conflict.
“The Unit has been supporting the different processes related to collective reparation in Bolívar, including the ethnic collective groups that have suffered during the conflict. One of the population sectors that was most affected was the ethnic people, who suffered damage to their cultural and ancestral practices, their autonomy, their identity and their territory,” said Territorial Director Marta Luz Salazar.
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