Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

program that would involve the teachings of Don Elijio’s and perhaps of
other healers.
Later that afternoon, standing on one of the many hills at Ix Chel Farm,
I looked out over the rainforest, at the crystal-clear river, and at my
newfound friends. As it was obvious that we shared many of the same
goals, we agreed to build this small collaboration into something that could
affect many others, and somehow serve humanity at large. Thus was born
The Belize Ethnobotany Project, a decade-long survey of the relationship
between plants and people in Belize.
The rainforest I could see from the hill is, to me, one of the most
beautiful places on the planet. In general, the tropical rainforest is one of the
most spectacularly diverse habitats we have, containing nearly two-thirds of
all of the plant and animal species that exist. There are many types of
tropical forests, each with its own degree of diversity. Over four hundred
different species of trees have been noted on a single hectare of tropical
forest along the Atlantic Coast of Brazil, while a hectare of temperate forest
near my home in Westchester County, New York, might have only five or
six different tree species.
This diversity has extraordinary potential for human use. As Don Elijio
likes to say, “for every ailment or difficulty on earth, the Spirits have
provided a cure—you just have to find it.” Yet modern science has not yet
taken his advice. Fewer than one-half of 1 percent of the planet’s 250,000
species of higher plants have been exhaustively analyzed for their chemical
composition and medicinal properties. From that one-half of 1 percent,
some 25 percent of all our prescription pharmaceuticals have been
discovered.
In addition to medicines, tropical forests provide us with sources of
food, fuel, fiber, dyes, and construction material, as well as the basis for
numerous industries. But many benefits—such as diversity—cannot always
be analyzed by an economist’s pen. Maintaining diversity itself is a crucial
goal for the world today, because with the reduction in biological diversity
comes a total imbalance of the global ecosystem, which will eventually lead
to its degradation and collapse.
As an ethnobotanist I know that one of our most important goals is to
establish the value of the forest in a way that can be understood by modern
economists and policymakers, as well as small farmers. In previous times,
ethnobotanists focused on the production of lists of useful plants,