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“The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island

BACKGROUND: Cultural and religious practices of African origin have decisively influenced traditional health practices in the Americas since the African diaspora. Plants are core elements in the religions of African origin. Compared with other parts of Brazil where the Afro-Brazilian presence is wid...

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Autores principales: Pagnocca, Tiago Santos, Zank, Sofia, Hanazaki, Natalia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7183622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32334606
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00372-6
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author Pagnocca, Tiago Santos
Zank, Sofia
Hanazaki, Natalia
author_facet Pagnocca, Tiago Santos
Zank, Sofia
Hanazaki, Natalia
author_sort Pagnocca, Tiago Santos
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Cultural and religious practices of African origin have decisively influenced traditional health practices in the Americas since the African diaspora. Plants are core elements in the religions of African origin. Compared with other parts of Brazil where the Afro-Brazilian presence is widely recognized, in Southern Brazil, these cultural practices are often socially invisible. Yet, there are several terreiros of three Afro-Brazilian religions: Candomblé, Umbanda, and Ritual deAlmas e Angola. We hypothesize that the importance of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions is linked not only to spiritual and magical issues but also to the medicinal properties of these plants. We seek to answer the following questions: (a) Which plants are used in the terreiros and what are their indications for use?; (b) Are there plants that stand out culturally in these religious groups?; and (c) What is the importance of the adaptive maintenance and replacement process in the use of plants in these religions, considering the Neotropical and African plants? METHODS: We performed a census of the existing terreiros on the Island of Santa Catarina to collect information on the knowledge and use of plants. In all terreiros that consented to participate in the research, we collected data through semi-structured interviews, guided tours for plant collection, and participant observation. We identified the botanical species through expert consultations and botanical literature. RESULTS: We interviewed 27 spiritual leaders, who cited 93 plants belonging to 86 botanical species. We identified 14 categories of use, with emphasis on liturgical ritual use (59%), general and unspecified diseases (32%), and digestive diseases (27%). In most liturgics uses, direct contact between plant and patient occurs, as in the case of bathing and the cleansing use of smoke. Sixteen plants were cited in all terreiros, configuring a set of species that can be considered as culturally important plants for these religious groups. CONCLUSIONS: These groups have extensive knowledge about a highly consensual set of therapeutic plants that should be further investigated pharmacologically to understand the effect of their external use. Also, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and valuing this ancestral Afro-Brazilian knowledge and learning also from these people about their broader vision of health which also adds more spirituality in health care.
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spelling pubmed-71836222020-04-29 “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island Pagnocca, Tiago Santos Zank, Sofia Hanazaki, Natalia J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research BACKGROUND: Cultural and religious practices of African origin have decisively influenced traditional health practices in the Americas since the African diaspora. Plants are core elements in the religions of African origin. Compared with other parts of Brazil where the Afro-Brazilian presence is widely recognized, in Southern Brazil, these cultural practices are often socially invisible. Yet, there are several terreiros of three Afro-Brazilian religions: Candomblé, Umbanda, and Ritual deAlmas e Angola. We hypothesize that the importance of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions is linked not only to spiritual and magical issues but also to the medicinal properties of these plants. We seek to answer the following questions: (a) Which plants are used in the terreiros and what are their indications for use?; (b) Are there plants that stand out culturally in these religious groups?; and (c) What is the importance of the adaptive maintenance and replacement process in the use of plants in these religions, considering the Neotropical and African plants? METHODS: We performed a census of the existing terreiros on the Island of Santa Catarina to collect information on the knowledge and use of plants. In all terreiros that consented to participate in the research, we collected data through semi-structured interviews, guided tours for plant collection, and participant observation. We identified the botanical species through expert consultations and botanical literature. RESULTS: We interviewed 27 spiritual leaders, who cited 93 plants belonging to 86 botanical species. We identified 14 categories of use, with emphasis on liturgical ritual use (59%), general and unspecified diseases (32%), and digestive diseases (27%). In most liturgics uses, direct contact between plant and patient occurs, as in the case of bathing and the cleansing use of smoke. Sixteen plants were cited in all terreiros, configuring a set of species that can be considered as culturally important plants for these religious groups. CONCLUSIONS: These groups have extensive knowledge about a highly consensual set of therapeutic plants that should be further investigated pharmacologically to understand the effect of their external use. Also, we emphasize the importance of recognizing and valuing this ancestral Afro-Brazilian knowledge and learning also from these people about their broader vision of health which also adds more spirituality in health care. BioMed Central 2020-04-25 /pmc/articles/PMC7183622/ /pubmed/32334606 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00372-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Pagnocca, Tiago Santos
Zank, Sofia
Hanazaki, Natalia
“The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title_full “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title_fullStr “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title_full_unstemmed “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title_short “The plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island
title_sort “the plants have axé”: investigating the use of plants in afro-brazilian religions of santa catarina island
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7183622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32334606
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00372-6
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