SANTA MARTA, Panama — Mauricio Martínez was convinced he was going to die. The year was 2021 and Martínez, gravely ill with COVID-19, struggled to breathe, walk and swallow food. As his condition deteriorated, he decided that instead of being intubated in a hospital in the nation’s capital of Panama City, he’d prefer to pass away at home among his family and friends in the small Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous village of Santa Marta. “I spent all the money I had left to get a private car to drive me nine hours from Panama City so that my family could see me alive one last time,” says Martínez, a tall man with thick black hair and a thin, trimmed beard. Martínez says that when he arrived in Santa Marta, his father, Mauricio Sr., a town shaman, gave him doses of traditional medicinal plants in the form of teas and liquid drops. Over the course of a few days, Martínez says his health stabilized, his breathing returned and he regained his ability to walk. “Thanks to traditional medicine, I survived,” the 44-year-old says. “I know I wouldn’t be here without it.” In Santa Marta, traditional medicine plants, remedies and rituals are sacred. In green jungled plots of land in the hills that overlook the tiny town of 500 residents near Panama’s Caribbean coast, local shamans have for generations used the area’s tropical vegetation, leaves, branches and stems to cure residents’ ailments and illnesses. There is a growing fear in Santa Marta, however, that…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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