When Nature Goes

When NatureGoes  The Mexico cities, mostly Durango and Chihuahua, see many visitors hailing from the urban centers looking for therapeutic medications for diseases such as diabetes, flu and cancer among others. All stands in the market are full of therapeutic merchandise ranging from roots, flowers, bark, stems and leaves which are either sold dry or fresh. In those cities, these merchandises have lexicons such as gordolo-tos (cough) and heridas (wounds) which are embossed on the boxes and barrels containing them. Robert Bye, an ethno botanical investigator who has been in that field for over a decade, explains that when the buyers buys therapeutic remedies, they get the privilege to also buy the information regarding the preparation of the plant, where it is collected and when luck is on their side, the collectors. He soberly pipes it that, “market research is not necessarily hit-and-run endeavor, but rather a convenient jumping-off point for investigating complex flows of plants, knowledge, money and persons”( pg 126). To show the fame and effectiveness of the Mexican market herbal remedies, the quantity of the plants gathered for chemical analysis comprised approximately two thirds of those collected by the Latin America ICBG project. There are many sources where people can get health information and tips concerning their health and how they can stay healthy. One of them is naturista books which puts light into staying healthy by using garlic and lime, onion and honey. The second is radio programs that counsel on remedies for sexual dysfunction, fright or susto and also high blood pressure and also urging the listeners to set a little money aside for medical consultation (Cori, 2003). There are signs, blazing neon orange and green signs offering U.S.-manufactured vitamins and nutritional supplements whose products are derived from the plants namely: condition-specific teas and tinctures and shampoos and capsules. There was so much to be said about the teas from the residents of Mexico cities. Among the uses were calming fevers, repairing kidneys and the tinctures were prepared for church fundraisers or their grandmothers arthritis-soothing salves. Compared to the mass-produced goods and heterodox treatments which are proffer via the famous health movements, commercially-driven flows of both plants and information via regional market networks command much ethno botanical interest and respect than the latter. To support the effectiveness of the herbal remedies, it can be stated that the herbal therapeutics have been the results of generations of experimentation by the Mexican consumers, the gatherers and the attendants of those plants in the regions where they grow. To cap it all, Bye and his associates in the Faculty of Chemistry have for a long time been researching the compound constituents in the plant specimens. Even though the ethno botanists does a remarkable job by taking the personal details of the herbal therapeutic remedies: name, photo, work place and stand number, one UNAM ethnobotanist confided to the author of the article that they don’t gain from the royalty benefits since the plant vendors are vector s of transmission and not the sources. However later, Bye opined that the plant vendors aren’t worthy getting the compensation under the view that when one purchases the plants, with it comes the purchase of the information. To step up the field collections, the Arizona project director urges the plant collectors to lead them to the places that they collected and also to put the biodiversity to the location that it’s supposed to be in the. One trader at the market said that she preferred dried plants they had a longer shelf life and there weren’t demanding as in preservation. The plant vendors are selective and they choose the best and avoid the “ugly”: the term is taken to mean the plants which have lost their color, are dirty and (or) moldy which implies that they have been dried in the sun and supposedly lost some of the efficacy. On the roadside that line the two-lane Sierra-old access roads; by the ditches, fields, weedy patches and forests, there are plants that may be collected. However, it is not advised to collect by the roadside. Nevertheless, these roadside collections are criticized as “unrepresentative” in varying senses. One U.S researcher described roadside collection as, “taxonomy’s dirty little secret”. However, roadside collection may be noteworthy to some, for example, the people with their self complicated investments since the practice gives the practitioners fresh content. In so doing, the roadside collecting anthropologists are privileged because they rewrite the globalizing guarantees about nature and the understanding that immensely sets the course of global diversity policy and discourse. However, the research method of using the roadside, becomes a way via which a number of plants become objects of scientific knowledge and intervention but also don’t. Since the same plant researchers transverse the same places over and over again, there been the provision of roadmaps. Collection of the plants must also be authorized by the municipal authorities and the jurisdiction within which will be collected granted. Still on the same issue of roadside collection, this is done primarily for small-scale and habitual collections of herbal samples and for seed collection. Conclusion The roadside plant collections are undertaken on specific cases such as for seed collections, herbarium uses and (or) habitual collections. Seeing that even the plant vendors avoid the “ugly” plants for they are sundried can be ineffective, even the remedy patients should take that as a zap so as to purchase only the best of the plants in order to get their disease effectively treated. The plant therapeutic users should have confidence while taking the remedies since experimental tests have been carried out for many generations and knowing that the therapeutic remedies command more respect than the heterodox treatments. References Cori, H. (2003). When nature goes public: the making and unmaking of bioprospecting in Mexico. Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press.


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