Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

“Why do you burn?” I asked.
“To prepare the land and make it ready for corn. My father did that, his
father did that, and his grandfather did that. That is our way.”
Belize still had over 50 percent of its old growth rainforest intact, more
than any other country in Central or South America. But things were
changing rapidly. The main culprits were land developers and commercial
cattle and citrus companies, who were clearing thousands of acres at a time.
Small farmers like Don Antonio only exacerbated the problem. They
practiced “swidden” or “slash and burn” agriculture, a method used in
Mesoamerica for more than five thousand years. Once efficient, the ritual
burning had become a threat.
As I looked across the chopping block at Don Antonio’s wizened
countenance, I found it hard to think of him as a rainforest plunderer. Over
the last months, I had seen that Don Antonio was one of Don Elijio’s major
herb gatherers. He routinely collected the medicinal plants on his land.
Some he sold to Don Elijio, others he and his wife Doña Juana reserved for
their own use. Like many elderly Maya, they were familiar with healing
plants and respected their ability to cure. When they had raised their fifteen
children, plants had been their only medicines.
As we talked, we saw Panti’s small frame walk toward the huts. Don
Antonio jumped up before I could to remove the heavy sack of bush
medicine.
Don Elijio peered over at the patients that were sitting on the bench
outside the door and remarked casually, “Ah, Rosita, you come again.”
I was thrilled. At last he remembered me. I felt as though I had reached
a mountaintop.
He and Don Antonio spoke in Mayan and I listened intently, but all I
could understand were the occasional Spanish words mixed in. Despite the
fame of the ancient Maya for numbers, mathematical concepts, and intricate
calendars, the modern Maya use Mayan words for numbers one through
five and Spanish for all others. Mayan speakers also use Spanish for the
time, the days of the week, and the months.
Panti then went into his dark cement house to wait for his atole and to
rest, leaving Don Antonio and me to keep each other company. I chopped
with him. He told me that he used the Billy Webb bark to treat his wife’s
diabetes. She drank a tea made from the bitter bark for three months until
she recovered. I listened excitedly, hungry for any tales about special plants