Plants used for reproductive health among the modern-day Nahua

The modern-day Nahua
Medicinal plants continue to be of great importance to the present-day Nahua, the linguistic descendants of the Aztecs. The Nahua primarily live in rural or peri-urban villages and towns (Pic 1). Many of them have also increasingly migrated to large cities in Mexico, and even north to the United States. It is impossible to generalize about the Nahua people of today, as they number around 1.5 million and live in most of the states of central Mexico. Even Nahuatl itself is a highly variable language, with regional variants existing across the area. The cultural practices of the Nahua are also very different around the country. The Nahua of the Huasteca (a culture-area that covers several states on the east of Mexico, see Pic 2), for instance, hold very particular beliefs about the body and also practice very pre-Hispanic influenced forms of folk Catholicism (Sandstrom 1991) than the Nahua of Guerrero (Pics 3-6). So in the interest of non-generalization, I will focus this work on the Nahua of the Huasteca.

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Alan Sandstrom (1991) carried out extensive research over many years on the traditional rituals and beliefs of the Nahua of the Huasteca. He saw how the treatment for illness among the Nahua consists of a series of techniques for removing the offending spirit from the patient’s body, which include complex rituals where a combination of prayers, invocations, medicinal plants, and paper cut into anthropomorphic figurines is used. An important part of the ritual is a barrida - ritual cleansing (literally: sweeping) - by which the body is cleansed of the disease-causing spirits (Pic 7). The healing specialist will restore the balance by removing the spirit from a person’s body. Offerings are made to the offending spirits who are coaxed from the body and exhorted to leave (Pic 8) (Gómez Martínez 2002).

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Use of medicinal plants
Healing specialists are very knowledgeable about the plants that can be used medicinally and they regularly use them in their healing techniques - applying this knowledge in prescribing and using the plants to heal. Plants are carefully chosen based on the symptoms and possible causation of the illness that the patient has brought. This knowledge is based on a complex, indigenous, Nahuatl classification system very similar to the Aztec taxonomy of medicinal plants (Gates 2000).
The Aztecs divided plants into four classes, according to their uses: edible, medicinal, ornamental, and economic. Within each of these larger classes, however, the plants were also described by the way the five senses (touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing) observed them; it was through these descriptions that the plant was then classified (Hernández 1942; Gates 2000). A very similar classification and taxonomy can still be observed among present-day Nahua that consists of four interrelated parts: (1) the type of plant it is, (2) its organoleptic property (its taste, smell, and/or texture), (3) its temporal quality (hot or cold - this refers to its humoral quality not its actual temperature), and (4) its shape. Each of these factors direct the healing specialist’s selection of a particular plant.

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There are many plants that are used among the Nahua for maintaining women’s reproductive health. The texture of the leaves, especially if they attach to people’s clothing or skin, is an important aspect in a plant’s classification. For instance, women who frequently miscarry are told to take an infusion of a “sticky plant” ( Priva lappulaceae (L.) Pers.), which adheres to people’s clothes and skin) in order to help the fetus continue to attach itself to the uterus and come to term at the appropriate time. Also, young women who menstruate heavily are given a tea of another “sticky” plant ( Tillandsia recurvata (L.) L.) to keep their blood inside and not menstruate as much (Smith-Oka 2008). Conversely, plants that are irritating are used to stop a woman’s fertility altogether so that she no longer has any children or even menstruates. Such is the case of xiloxochitl (Bombax ellipticum Kunth. - pronounced she-low-shoh-chi-tl), a plant that is also mentioned in the Florentine Codex (Sahagún 1963:206). (Pic 9)

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In the case of the midwives of the Huasteca, they use a mixture of cool plants to bathe the mother and the newborn so that the balance of hot and cool is once more restored. One of the plants that is included in this healing mixture is Tagetes erecta L., known in Nahuatl as sempoalxochitl (which translates as twenty-flower - pronounced sem-pual-show-chi-tl; it is known in English as marigold). This plant is also important in religious and healing rituals carried out by healing specialists; it is mentioned briefly in the Florentine Codex (Sahagún 1963:214). Corinne Burns shows us in her page on this site how important sempoalxochitl (also spelled cempoalxochitl) was among the Aztecs. Interestingly, its temporal property in the past was as a hot plant used to treat cold illnesses. Among the present-day Nahua of the Huasteca it is considered a cool plant, able to effectively counteract hot conditions. It is worth noting, however, how one of its uses among the Aztecs was as a uterine wash during labor, which could potentially be the precursor to its current-day usage as a post-partum wash (see Pic 10). Another plant in the bathing mixture used by modern-day Nahua midwives is Arundo donax L., which was also used by the Aztecs for excessive heat (Gates 2000:79).

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Necaxantle is also caused by imbalance, but this happens when a post-partum woman does not rest the sufficient amount of time (usually forty days) after giving birth and does not allow her body to recover. Her body begins to weaken and become wasted and thin, she loses interest in food, and experiences chills and body pain.
What is curious about both isihuayo and necaxantle is that if we really look closer at their causation we see that most of it has to do with women’s workload and lack of social support. Though most rural-living Nahua women work very hard cooking, washing clothes, collecting firewood and water, or tending farm animals, if they do not have additional hands to share the load (in the form of children, siblings, or parents) their work load becomes heavier and they are more likely to have a bodily imbalance due to exhaustion or weakness. In the case of isihuayo, a woman perhaps has no grown sons to carry heavy loads of water or firewood and no daughters to help with cooking and washing clothes. Thus the overwork leads to her weakness and, if during one day she happens to fall down, her uterus is most likely to become dislodged and displaced. The same is true for necaxantle, where if a woman gives birth but has no social support in the form of other women in the household to take on her chores, she has no choice but to begin working soon afterward. Her body thus has no time to recover and so becomes imbalanced.

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Necaxantle only has one plant treatment, which is Solanum wendlandii Hook, known in Nahuatl as necaxancuamecatl (literally: the liana that eats necaxantle - and pronounced neh-cah-shan-cua-meh-ca-tl). A woman who suffers from this condition must bathe with this plant that has previously been broken up and mixed with well water. She will only be considered to be completely cured once she has rested enough time and her body begins to gain equilibrium: she is stronger and begins to gain normal weight.

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