Against discrimination, racism and lack of support, Virginia Flores has made a place for herself in Tarija as heir to an exclusive line of ancestral traditional medicine.
“Do you want to live or do you want to die?” is the first question that Virginia Flores Espilito asks those who come to her looking for her famous general treatment. The positive answer implies that they must follow all her instructions. “If I tell you ‘stand on your head’, you must stand up. Here there is no I can’t, I don’t want to, I don’t like it. I’m not going to cut off your foot, I’m not going to touch anything, we’re just going to take medicine. If I’m going to give you an enema, if I bathe in a sauna, if I wash your hair. We started with that rule.”
If the answer is negative, there will only be regret instead of healing. “It hurts me, it hurts the person, it hurts her environment. Instead of their families doing their thing, they are paying attention, and seeing that they do not comply is a great disservice.” For Virginia, that attitude is similar to that of an alcoholic who can’t stop drinking. “What can you do? Between the one who wants to live and the one who doesn’t want to, there is a great distance”.
“Do you want to live or do you want to die?”
In the general treatment, for four weeks the person should change eating habits and take 12 to 18 herbal medicines, according to their state of health. It is a process of inflammation reduction, detoxification and digestive cleansing, change, growth and maturation of the microbial flora, and cell regeneration. Virginia attends to people of all ages, but ensures that the majority are escaping from an operation. “As we don’t like to die, they come to natural medicine.”
Cheaper than surgery, with 2,200 bolivianos the patient obtains the preparations, training on how to eat and drink water, sauna bath sessions, cupping, massages, fixing the rib cage, and also hips if she is a woman, head washing and, above all, responsible monitoring. Its effectiveness has made some people pay up to double. “They told me that it is very good, that its cost should increase. Why upload if I can help with that level? I dont need”.
“Between those who want to live and those who do not want to, there is a great distance”
The biggest cost is the responsibility to finish it, since it implies a complete transformation of the lifestyle. In the first days, the Virginia preparations will remove “everything that has been stored since the 6 months you started eating until the age you are”, in order to work detoxifying the liver, kidneys, prostate, womb, pancreas, nerves, respiratory area and circulatory system. “Depending on the complexity, some start with a sauna, others with a digestive cleanse. If they come with low pressure, we give something to regulate and we start ”.
Virginia previously requests the clinical studies and the prescriptions that are being taken. “You have to know what we are curing. But each patient teaches you how she is, what she does, what she doesn’t do, whether she sleeps or doesn’t sleep. These gray hairs that I have are from not sleeping. But it also runs in the family. We went to bed at 1 in the morning and woke up at 4 because we had to start working to get to class on time. It was the way of living,” she recalls.
“In the city, everyone wants to be in the office and they don’t want to see the reality of their ancestors”
Virginia has lived in Tarija for 38 years, but was born into a mining family from San Luis Potosí that migrated due to relocation. “In the mines, a calmer, more dynamic childhood. If we wanted candy, we had to produce it, line up for the product, bring water. In the city, everyone wants to be in the office and they don’t want to see the reality of their ancestors.”
At 15 years old, Virginia did not understand that the new economic policy had put her family out of work in exchange for a diffuse compensation. “Those who had more family asked to leave. We are 8 brothers. My father said, ‘we’re leaving!’ We arrived directly at Tabladita, with boxes and boxes of money, but what they gave him was 3000, to say the least. He used everything to buy the land. We have been many years in tents. It has been hard to build, but we have stayed there”.
The reception was also harsh. “The residents of Tabladita did not want us here. ‘You miners have tuberculosis, go away, make your school on the top of the hill where you won’t contaminate Tarija!’ they told us. The Juan Pablo II school was built by our mining parents with the help of the municipality. Now the people of Tarija leave there, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who have rejected us”, says Virginia. In addition to school, the learning from those years was that hard-working people don’t give up easily. “They have not made us give a foot back, we continue forward.”
“You miners have tuberculosis, go away, make your school on the top of the hill where you won’t contaminate Tarija!”
Over the years, he was learning the trade of healing. “From family we come with natural medicine. On my father’s side, my grandparents have been healers. My dad knew a lot. He worked in a pharmacy at the hospital. My mom is a midwife. Coming to the city, we have specialized and become naturists.” Thus, Virginia keeps the vast knowledge of her in the family to avoid excessive dissemination that becomes pure profit. The general treatment, for example, was known to her father, a healer from Bermejo and another from Potosí. “All three have passed away. I am a descendant of one. Of the other people, I don’t know if there will be anyone else left. I think I’m the only one doing all this.”
However, he found out that a person sells a formula similar to the strongest syrup for his treatment in the fleets for 300 bolivianos. “No matter the cost. Health does not have to be politics or business. It’s health, it’s helping others. But they haven’t been told how to take care of themselves and now these people are coming here with the onset of digestive cancer.” This situation has made him become more demanding with his patients, as well as with his preparation processes.
Casa Naturista is the family business with which Virginia prepares her medicines. The raw material comes from producers from different parts of Bolivia. “In the markets we talk about who can provide products. Rosemary comes from La Paz, it is more concentrated due to the cold. Green tea is produced in Peru and we bag it here. There are plants that are not produced in Bolivia. We have so much land, but our people do not know how to produce. We have onion, but the onion salt is brought from Spain. We need to industrialize our products, be more ambitious for knowledge. I don’t know what our rulers are seeing, but it is unfortunate that we think about improving without doing anything”.
Virginia began to serve in the Tabladita neighborhood, November 10th street in front of the Juan Pablo II School, offering treatments with medicinal plants and alternative therapies for girls, boys, women and men. A couple of years ago, she was given a management position at the Ex Terminal where she has over 100 plants for sale, and just as many not on display.
“We have been undergoing treatment for 10 days and he is fine, eating well, sleeping, with the family. If he dies, he will have a dignified death.”
Before arriving there, she had to face harassment from the mayor’s office and the police who, during the pandemic, prevented her from selling her preparations due to the lack of a document authorizing the sale of natural medicine. “However, there was the matico, the ginger, the chamomile being sold on the street. I was not going to leave, I deserve to earn a peso to take home,” recalls Virginia, who also celebrates the resurgence of natural medicine and the interest in ancestral culture that covid-19 brought.
In the Ex Terminal, it has a different dynamic. Part of its clients are travelers who stay in nearby accommodation, or people who pass by, of all ages, from the interior and the department, people who know what they are looking for, and people who ask and drink. Virginia offers sporadic, simple treatment. “Generally, you have to work the digestive area first. There is no point in giving for the kidneys if you have not cleaned the stomach. In the body there are three motors, brain, heart, and digestive. Whenever there is a health problem, we have to have a good current in the digestive area. The rest works accordingly.”
It also treats respiratory ailments, to raise defenses, or to treat nerves, anxiety and depression, complexities that she saw coming 10 years ago. “Now we come to that instance. Even children have that problem. It is what they eat, what they live, how is their relationship with the family”. In Virginia’s perspective, it is important to know how a person is doing in order to help them heal, to know their reality, both emotionally and physically. “Why guess if we can be wrong. The ailments can be a reflection of another side, and to know we need a general medical check-up ”.
“Life is beautiful, you have to follow it and be a little more human”
Their other offering is general treatment. With it, Virginia has saved children from death, children facing misdiagnosis by allopathic doctors who had prescribed useless drugs for their true conditions. She has also reduced the drug bombardment of a person with lung cancer who used to take 8 pills a day and today takes a quarter of a pain reliever only when she needs it. “In the hospital they have evicted her, they have told her that she is looking for alternative medicine. We have been undergoing treatment for 10 days and she is fine, eating well, sleeping, with her family. If she dies, she will have a dignified death.”
Virginia has fostered and witnessed transformations. “There are people who come with everything very low, but with the treatment they have improved, they have established their family, their economy, they have thought of great things and they have achieved them. You just have to be loyal to the cause and to life, and not lose faith. Life is beautiful, you have to follow it and be a little more human. We must not lose humanity, neither with our peers nor with our environment. We are part of nature, God’s creation. You don’t have to lose faith.”
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