“Here you have a stevia, that’s for diabetes," says Téodora, a sun-weathered snippet of a woman of around 50, proudly beginning a tour of her medicinal plant nursery. She points out the Paraguayan lemongrass, for nerves; and a plant with little purple flowers, called “forever alive”, which is excellent for the heart.” All told, her three-hectare plantation contains some 60 species of plants used in Paraguay for medicinal purposes. “The use of medicinal plants is very strongly anchored in Paraguayan culture,” explains Albino Portillo, representative of the Swiss Red Cross in Asunción.
Plants are usually mixed with herbs that are used for tereré, a sort of cold infusion which is drunk by almost all Paraguayans at any time of day. “Unfortunately, the traditions and the know-how are being lost little by little with the country’s deforestation,” says Portillo.
The environmental effects on such agricultural sources of medical cures has driven both the Swiss Red Cross and the Botanical Garden of Geneva to support the Paraguayan association Tesai Reka (“Seeking Health”) in its project aimed at increasing the use of these plants. Several medicinal nurseries have been established across the country in order to train farmers in their jobs and ensure sustainable production.
The young plants are given to farmers trained by the association, who are supposed to both plant them and spread the know-how to others in their village. Antonia, recently turned plant producer, shows off the alembic with which she distills her plants: “I made it myself with chimney pipes of various diameters. It works really well.”
In front of her house surrounded by lush vegetation, she displays the phials which she sells to her neighbours. “This one’s for nerves and this for stomach pain,” she explains, detailing the appropriate dose, “three drops in the morning and evening.”
If medicinal plants are part of the everyday lives of Paraguayans, it’s also thanks to Moises Bertoni, a Swiss botanist who came to settle in the country at the end of the 19th century. Born in the small village of Lottigna, Ticino, Bertoni studied botany at the University of Geneva before moving to Paraguay where he founded the Guillaume Tell colony, near the Iguazu Falls. He published 542 scientific articles and amassed a herbarium of more than 6000 plants; a collection kept at the Paraguayan Botanical Society, after having been completely restored by the Botanical Garden of Geneva.
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