by Susana Levy A.

"Medicine is like prayers: everything in threes. For example, if I'm going to apply a wormseed plant, I use three buds of wormseed. The same if I'm going to apply an avocado leaf. First I cut it in three and then I apply it," says Leontina, blesser and healer of stomach complaints, while some of the other women from the group, also rural women, speak about some other illness or simply sit in silence. Lucrecia raises her voice and adds that "To take an herb you must have faith, nothing else. It's like taking a medicine from a pharmacist. If you don't have faith in the herbs, what's the point of taking them? Herbs are more natural than pills."

This conversation takes place in Lo Ermita, only 35 km from Santiago. Some 700 km further south in the communities (reserves) of Coigue and Picuta, a group of Mapuche women also impart their knowledge on herbs, "kalkus" and remedies.

These are the voices of rural women, a year after the creation of the "Botiquin de Plantas Medicinales" experiment (Medicine Chest of Medicinal Plants). These are the words of a long-standing female practice which has not ceased in spite of systematic repression under a decree which makes this practice illegal for the sake of and as a result of modernization.

The understanding and practices of traditional or popular medicine continue to be applied today in Chile, with its continuity and breaks which modern society has imposed. Moreover, traditional medicine has, during these last few years, seen, a rise in popularity as an alternative and complementary resource for health, partially as a result of the restrictions and "desocialization" imposed by the military regime on the old National Health Service, from the privatization of most of the medical care in the country, and from the increasing impoverishment of the low-income sectors of society, among which are the rural inhabitants.

The Indigenous and Rural Women's Study and Training Programme (PEMCI), part of the Center for Women's Studies (CEM), has dealt with the task of rescuing "popular" medical knowledge since October 1983 as an alternative resource for health in its own right. Our work is based on the long-standing tradition of women's role in health care and the relationship of this role with rural people's way of life and being. Our work aims to improve the way of life of rural women and their families by promoting the use of herbal medicines, by community organization, and by recreating a sense of social and cultural identity.

The "Botiquin de Plantas Medicinales" experience has consisted in encouraging the creation of "botiquines" (medicine chests) of medicinal plants — as an additional health resource for the group and the community - and in simultaneously collecting the methods of use and meanings associated with these herbs with two groups of rural women:

• A group of rural Mapuche women from the Picut and Coigue communities managed by Juana Gallardo and coordinated by Ana Conejeros from PEMCI.
• A group of rural women from the Lo Ermita sector, managed by Leontina Leyton and coordinated by Susana Levy from PEMCI.

In order to make up these medicine chests, these groups have harvested dried and bottled medicinal plants (herbs, flowers, roots, bark, etc.) that are mostly used in their respective localities, and at the same time they have created a system of exchange of these herbs between groups.

This way, each group has managed to create a medicine chest of about 60 varieties, 40 of which correspond to herbs found in the actual locality and the rest to the products resulting from exchanges.

As additional activities, two "Talleres de Salud" (Health Workshops) have been set up in the groups:

• A First Aid, Nutrition and Family Garden Workshop with the Mapuche women of the Coigue-Picuta group.
• A Wholistic Health and Physical Work Workshop with the Lo Ermita group of women.

The latter have, in addition, begun to sell these medicine chests to finance their activities and supplement their family budgets.

A first publication on the "Botiquin de Plantas Medicinales" experience is found in the "Serie Mujer y Salud No. 1" (Woman and Health Series) CEMPEMCI: "Mujeres del Campo y Hierbas Medicinales: la tradicion en la curacion de enfermedades" (Rural Women and Herbal Medicines: a tradition in healing). This contains a summary of the "Lo Ermita" case and 40 herbal remedies for common complaints carried out by this group's own members and transcribed into their original language.

This collected material on the use of medicinal plants shows the validity and details of a way of understanding and treating complaints. It is also an indispensable tool for the use of the medicine cabinet itself.

The second volume will soon be published and will deal with the curative tradition and experience of the Mapuche women of Coigue and Picuta by Ana Conejeros and Sonia Montecino. It will also show and appraise the reality of rural women, in its multiple dimensions and expressions, through their own words.