ZAVALETA REAPS 40-YEAR (+) MEDICINAL HERB WISDOM

By Juan Montoya

Thirty years ago, Dr. Antonio N. Zavaleta, then a medical anthropologist/associate professor at then-Texas Southmost College, was featured in an Aug. 15, 1982 article in the Brownsville Herald regarding his research into borderland medicinal plants.

Surrounded by glass vases full of plant samples from throughout the region, Zavaleta (then long-haired as the majority of us were back then), sat in his office at the college surrounded by the motifs of the region: A framed picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe above sombrero-clad Villistas revolutionaries under the dimmed glare of sunlight coming in through a venetian-shaded window of the historic brick building.

At the time, except for grandmothers, a few curanderos and herb-store owners and a sprinkling of Flower Children, scant few paid attention to the use of herbs in the border region. Even less were researching the use of native plants used in healing remedies and spiritual ceremonies on both sides of the river.

At the time, Tony told the interviewer that he was working on a book "due next year" based on his research based on his "travels throughout the length and breadth of the borderlands that (have taken him) from dusty villages in rural Mexico to the largest cities in the Southwest."

As promised (albeit a couple of decades in the works), Zavaleta has just published his medicinal plant opus through AuthorHouse Publishers in Bloomington, Ind. The 314-page compendium is as it's title claims: A Bilingual Resource Guide of the Borderlands, or Plantas Medicinales Fronterizas, Un Guia Bilingue.

Zavaleta says he started the journey some 40 years ago to this eventual publication when, as he studied curanderismo (folk healing), he realized that medicinal plants were an integral part of the native healing traditions.

"You can't study curanderismo without encountering the medicinal plants curandersistas use in their remedies, remedios," he writes on the "how-to use this book" preface to the tome. "For 40 years I have collected plants and researched their names and how they are used to treat illnesses."

He broke the book into five basic categories: English plant names, Spanish plant names, plant pharmacognosy properties; and which specific illnesses or condition the plant is believed to treat in the cultural realm.

All told, the book lists more than 600 plants and how they are used in the region all along the border. The author is very explicit on what he expects to achieve with his work.

"The information contained in this book is a virtual treasure trove for anyone who needs awareness of plant medicine or delivers health care to people who continue to utilize pre-pharmacy plant medicine," he writes. "This book provides information that guides both the serious enthusiast through the world of medicinal plants "plantas medicinales" and more finely detailed information by studying specific plants."

In the 1982 interview, Zavaleta told the Herald that "the use of botanical remedies in the contemporary America is part of the continued cultural Renaissance of man's awareness in his place in nature. This basic need is evidenced in a universal tradition of use that crosses continents, cultures and social status."

The illustration for the book's cover is by local artist Daniel Maldonado Nuñez titled "El Niño Fidencio Curando con Plantas," commissioned for the publication of Zavaleta's work.

You can purchase the book through Amazon.com, Barnes&Nobles.com and can be ordered through the UTB-TSC bookstore.