Curanderxs and Plants: A Holistic Archive of Healing

By Lourdes ‘Lou’ Parra Lazcano

University of Aberdeen

This project explores the longstanding relationship between traditional healers, curanderxs, and plants in Latin America, particularly within Mexican healing traditions. Curanderxs understand plants not as passive resources but as members of an extended ecological family. They care for them, communicate with them, and recognise them as active agents in health and healing. By placing plants at the centre of healing narratives, the project challenges dominant human-centred scientific paradigms and advocates for natureculture practices. The resulting archive seeks to foster cross-cultural dialogue around health, ecology, and decolonial knowledge, making these ways of knowing more accessible to a wider public.

Initially focused on Mexico, the project unfolded through a process shaped by relationality, patience, and trust (mirroring the very plant relationships it documents). Establishing contact with Mexican folk healers was complex. Outreach involved emails and phone calls, which some recipients distrusted. However, others resonated with the project’s intentions and agreed to participate. Funding from the AHGBI-WISPS Dorothy Sherman-Severin Research Fellowship enabled me to travel to Mexico, marking the beginning of an immersive, plant-centred research journey.

Fieldwork began in Cuernavaca at Mayahuellcalli, a medicine house where filming started in the medicinal garden. There, Marta Flores introduced me to hundreds of plants, sharing knowledge rooted in her lineage and collective memory. Her teachings revealed me how curanderxs knowledge precedes individual practitioners and is sustained through generations. Further interviews at the Centre for Human Development towards the Community (CEDEHC) highlighted the integration of herbal education, community markets, and daily plant care. Traditional healers and teachers demonstrated intimate knowledge of their plants, knowing their origins and names. These recordings unfolded the connection between plants and the people linked through their personal narratives.

The journey continued to Oaxaca, where Doña Enriqueta ‘Queta’ Contreras welcomed me into her medicinal home. Her apothecary contained hundreds of tinctures, herbs, and soaps, embodying decades of accumulated knowledge. Back in Mexico City, interviews with Mariana de Dios revealed how plants collected from her own backyard were used in temazcal [sweat lodge] ceremonies, reinforcing the spiritual and embodied dimensions of plant relationships. By the end of the interviewing and filming process in the hills of Portugal, hours of material reflected generations of care, reciprocity, and respect between traditional healers and plants.

Image 1. Graphic design of the author that include the names of people interviewed for the digital archiv: Dr Arturo Ornelas Lizardi, Enriqueta Contreras, Sofía Díaz Hernandez, Marta Flores, Mariana de Dios, Irene Cruz Sánchez and Rebeca Bernardino Gregorio next to the plants of their community and/or medicinal gardens.

The editing phase required attentiveness and time. Supported by the generous funding of the Society of Latin American Studies, the analysis identified three central themes: roots, seeds, flourishing, thorns, and essence. These topics structured the final documentary and archive. These themes were later shared through a workshop given at the WayWORD Festival in Aberdeen, where the audience connected the practices of curanderismo to other holistic traditions, such as Ayurvedic and Celtic ones, but also local practices.

Image 2. Graphic design of the author that includes a participant’s collage for the WayWORD Festival worshop and a nettle plant from a traditional healer’s garden.

The project culminated in the creation of a dedicated bilingual digital archive designed to keep plant care at its core (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/llmvc/disciplines/spanish/plant-guardians/). Each thematic entry bridges symbolic and natural realms, reinforcing the project’s collaborative nature between humans and plants. Ultimately, this work affirms that plant-centred knowledge systems are living, moving forces that continue to shape holistic health practices across cultures.

Image 3. Graphic design of the author that includes the six sections of the archive (roots, seeds, flourishing, thorns, essence, thanks). The images are microscopic photographs of plants on top of pictures of plants from the medicinal gardens.