Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:11] Nicole Wines: We are at Raíces Cultural Center, 20 River Road in Highland Park with Angela Lugo doing an oral history interview for our Ancestral Herbal Narratives, oral history collections. Thank you so much for joining us today, Angela.

[0:24] Angela Lugo: Thank you for having me.

[0:27] Nicole: We look forward to hearing some of your stories. So I, I did say your name, but what is your full name?

[0:34] Angela: Angela Mariza Lugo Jimenez.

[0:37] Nicole: Where were you born and where are you now?

[0:40] Angela: I was born in the mountains of Puerto Rico, San Sebastián and I’m actually living in New Brunswick, New Jersey, so far away.

[0:52] Nicole: I’m gonna start with a big wide question and then narrow down into some more specific topics. What does healing mean to you?

[1:01] Angela: Healing means having a belief in that you can heal. That’s the first thing. And healing means that you have to synchronize the spirit and the body because you can have the best medicine in the world. And if those two are not in sync, either you don’t get healed or you become ill again.

[1:36] Nicole: In your lifetime, what connection have you had to herbalism and herbal healing traditions?

[1:44] Angela: I, I, you know, I, I don’t like the whole idea of herbalism because it’s become such a cliche in American society. You know, I’m not a certified herbalist, and I don’t believe in certification, not in my tradition. So, in my tradition, either you’re born with the gift of healing, understanding energy, understanding herbs in connection to the individual person that you’re dealing with. And this knowledge has been, even though it’s kind of dying out somewhat, passed from one generation to the other, or through apprenticeship. I did have some formal herbal education through a friend Gert Coleman, who is a certified herbalist. But it was more to try to figure out the connection between those of my roots and this new surgence of, of, of herbal, it’s not tradition, it’s it’s based on science, which I have nothing against, but science is good if you can bond it with the spirit, with instinct, with connection between the healer and the healed.

[3:24] Nicole: So you mentioned that in your learning that, or in general, these were traditions that were passed on through apprenticeships and from person to person, and that in, in your life that that’s the mostly the way that you’ve learned. Do you have any specific memories of members of your family or your community engaging in not just herbal healing, but any healing practices?

[3:49] Angela: Well, my grandmother was a, well-known healer in the mountains where I was born. I didn’t know how well known until one day when I was taking care of my mother who had Alzheimer’s. And I was at the, the local bakery getting some bread when some people came up to me and said, “Are you Sheila’s granddaughter?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they, they said, “You know, we are so grateful that she was in our community. She healed and saved so many people.” And, you know, she was, she was the, the doctor, but she was also the psychologist. So, because in her tradition, she had the healing, but she was also in espiritista, which meant that she got information from the souls that either from the, the sick person or her own who are trying to help her form a big picture. ‘Cause you can’t heal anybody, just like doctors do. Let me see the X-ray. Oh, you got a spot in your lung. Let me give you this pill, or let me do this surgery. So, espiritismo and curandera it has to be more symbiotic, more inclusive of the person as a whole. And I felt very proud, that my grandmother had such reputation. And for those of the old tradition, this was done without charging a dime. Alright. It, once I asked my grandmother, and she said, “If you are given a gift, how can you charge people for using that gift?” And so my grandmother, she lived in the middle of nowhere. My grandfather had a huge farm. She grew her own herbs. So she was able to provide the medicine for the people who come. And sometimes people come and, you know, what they would do is bring some candles or bring Florida water as payment, but not, it wasn’t a monetary exchange. So grandma, and, and unfortunately I wasn’t raised with my grandmother because I left Puerto Rico when I was less than a, a year old. But my grandfather, I’m sorry, my father, you know, he, he didn’t teach us, but he would deal with our conditions in a holistic way. So I remember one time in New York I had a really bad cold, and I was having trouble breathing and my father crushed, I don’t know what it was ’cause I was too young to, to even ask. And he made a poultice and, and he put it on my chest. And yeah, you know, it had, you know, Vicks mixed in with it and, and some other stuff. I remember a pink stuff. I don’t know what it was, but it worked. The next day I was breathing normally. And it wasn’t, you can’t call it psychosomatic, you can’t call it a placebo effect. ‘Cause I remember when I was, I wasn’t even in kindergarten, I remember that far back, and I was always having intestinal issues. And my mother would take me to the local hospital and they would check me out and they couldn’t find anything. So finally, the doctor said, you know, “It might be her appendix that is, starting to flare up. Why don’t we just take out her appendix?” And so there, I remember there was a date set for the surgery. And then one day before the surgery, my mother says, “Come on, we’re going to visit somebody.” And we went to this house. I didn’t know the lady, she wasn’t a friend, so I guess it must have been a recommendation, referral from the people in the neighborhood. And, and she, she told me, “Lie down on the bed.” And she did some prayers and it was almost like a deep tissue massage of the, the, you know, the, the plexus, the solar plexus that, that area there. Which later I found out that’s called a satinguo, and they had to cancel the appointment ’cause I never suffered from that ever again. I didn’t know I, I, you know, so it wasn’t like anybody talked to me and said, you’re gonna have this and therefore you’re gonna be cured. It- just don’t worry about it. Lie in bed. And, and that was it. So, throughout my life almost through osmosis, through my dad where I would see that he recommend to other people, things that they can use. Until one day I woke up and said, gee, you know, this is something that really interests me. That, you know, it, in many ways it’s better than the, the scientific medicine that we get because it doesn’t have side effects, you know, and you can get the silver bullet from the best specialist in the world. And if you don’t believe, and if you don’t know how to work with the inside of, of your mind and your spirit, that silver bullet is not gonna work anyway. But then you’re gonna die of the side effects. So, I, when I reached a certain age, I started reading and, and I would ask my dad, he was alive then, and we would talk and he would explain some of the things that my grandmother did. You know, so, and, and even spiritually. ‘Cause sometimes we have to understand that we’re all energy. And if the outside, the aura that we have is being impacted either by negative people that you are in contact with constantly or your own negative thoughts, your stress, your anger, your hate, that slowly, that starts going into the body and it manifests in a physical ailment. And, and if you do not treat the outer, the physical ailment can have sort a band aid. You can feel better, but it’s coming back, you know. I also remember when my father would say, you know, “You’ve been in contact with people with very negative energy,” and, and he would take herbs, you know, and, and usually it didn’t really matter what herbs we always had rue in, in, in the yard. So he would take rue but pretty much he would take mint. He would take any of the, the, the aromatic herbs and, and he would, not hit me. It’s, it’s sort of like shaking off and, and it would be throughout my whole body. And he says, “You have to lighten the aura so that you can feel better,” you know? And I used to think, oh my God, that is so superstitious. And, and then I started the the whole studying aromatherapy. And I was like, okay, this, this is exactly what my father and my grandmother sometimes talked about. And I thought it was just, you know, country, superstition, and ignorance. Little did I know that they were way ahead of their time. So yeah, I, the herbalism, the curandera, the espiritismo, as far back as I remember, it was always a, a part of my life.

[13:40] Nicole: Thank you for sharing. So, those are your ancestors, your father, your grandmother. And so that’s who you really did learn. Well, in reading the books that you read, they kind of confirmed what your ancestors had been showing you and teaching you, even if it wasn’t in a formal way.

[13:59] Angela: Yes.

[13:59] Nicole: Which is a lot of the times the case at, at this point in, in history, a lot of times we get kind of scientific confirmation of this indigenous and ancestral knowledge that, that, that people knew and thought of as superstitions, or some people thought of as superstitions. Science proves it later, so, so many times. So that’s really interesting. Was, is there anyone else who has impacted you greatly from your community or from your family, either on the island or here in the healing traditions?

[14:34] Angela: As I said before, you know, since we left Puerto Rico when I was a baby, and we settled in the Bronx and back in the fifties the Bronx was an enclave of, it, It, it wasn’t diverse the way it is today. It was an enclave of Puerto Ricans, you, you rarely found, but you had some like very Orthodox Jews. And we, and we got along. There was no problem between the two communities, but they sort of stuck to their traditions. We stuck to ours. And so a lot of those Puerto Rican migrants who came at that time were people from the hills, people from the rural areas. Okay. And so they brought traditions too. And so sometimes when, when something was awry, and my father, I guess because he fought his tradition, because my mother wasn’t much of a believer, and, and so I think he was sometimes uncomfortable in embracing it, but he didn’t stop looking and studying. So if he knew there was going to, A misa, which is a spiritual mass, with, with mediums and, and there you would have healing in many, many levels. You know, it’s not many people didn’t go to, a mass an espiritista mass just to have their fortune told. They were usually, and I was a little kid, and I would sit there and hear people talk. It was usually about some either physical ailment or what they thought might be a mental ailment or, or even a spiritual one. Alright? So I would see people who were, what we would call schizophrenic, alright, today, and maybe they were, but when they would go to the misa and, and at the time I remember the head curandera at the time was Doña Marta. And she was famous throughout the Bronx. And, and you would see people act out their mental issues. Their paranoia, their hearing of voices, you know, and, and then one of the, the, these mediums who were there would take over and, and talk and find out if it was a mental issue. And they would recommend, you need to go to the doctor, you need to be treated. Or if it was connected with either a past life, or just, a spiritual, block. And some people left the same way they came in, but I saw some people who were clearly, clearly disturbed. You would see the change come over them, and they would walk away, at least with some peace, which I, that’s healing for me. Alright. That’s healing. And no, sometimes they were told, this is, this is not gonna be your first visit. You gotta, you know, continue coming back so we can do some, they would do baths. Alright, so doing some baths that, which is similar to the aromatherapy, you know, with flowers, with herbs and, and prayers to clean the aura, to clean the negative attachments that are on your aura, which impact your mind, your spirit, and your body. So I saw a lot of that. And I would also see sometimes where somebody would go in and, and you would say, okay, write this down. And they would get a prescription. It it, you know, the prescription was on herbs and fruits, ’cause fruits were also included in that. And in, in the Bronx you can find any Puerto Rican fruit ’cause you had too many of us. And so you make your own community and, and, and it’s almost like you’re transporting your world into a different world. So yeah, I, I saw that on, on a pretty constant basis. So even coming to New York, while it was a different culture and it wasn’t okay, and so when we moved back to Puerto Rico I was 14 and, and, and my father got back into his tradition. My grandmother was still alive. And so I would see her still do some of her, not as much. She was getting old and she had, you know, a heart condition. So I would see her do more advising than actual work. Now my cousin who lived with, with her because my grandfather died, so they didn’t wanna leave her alone. He picked up a lot of the tradition. And so while he’s not an herbalist, he understands and tries to live close to nature because he knows that he has a lot of healing to do. ‘Cause like me, he, he’s like, oh, I don’t believe in that. And then you reach a certain age when you realize there’s something more than that magic bullet that the doctor gives me that then makes me sick in different ways. You know, and when his sister got breast cancer, he, started working with her and, and changing her diet, talking her to her about teas, talking to her about salves used to, to help the body regenerate. And thankfully she didn’t lose her breast and she’s cancer free for now. It doesn’t mean it won’t change because if you go back to the old ways, the stress, the, the, the, the bad food, the not believing in the healing, you’re gonna get it again. Alright. And sometimes, as you know, the sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce used to say when he went to diagnose somebody, sometimes he would come back from his trance and say, it’s his turn to die. And that is part of, of life, as my father used to say, you got two things that are definite. You were born and you’re gonna die. And, and it, you know, of course I used to laugh at my dad, but it makes total sense. It’s the only two things we know. So sometimes no matter how good the herbs and, and the healing and the healer, it is his time to move on.

[22:50] Nicole: How do you incorporate the things that you, so you mentioned that you didn’t receive formal training from your family, but it was all around you growing up and in different ways. So how did, how did you incorporate, how do you incorporate that into your practices of healing now?

[23:07] Angela: So, you know, I have a full library of herb books and, and, and I have collected books from different traditions. So I understand from, from the reading that I think the difference between one tradition and, and the other has to do with the cultural aspect of it, but also what herbs are available. So, you know, I can get stuff in Puerto Rico that I can use to, to help somebody that I can’t get here. Or if I get, if I get it here because, I don’t know, I’ll, I’ll get it sent from Puerto Rico. It’s not that fresh herb because it took a week or more to get to me. It still works. So I remember, I would say about 35 years ago of my husband, Frank, he was suffering from ulcers and, you know, he wouldn’t listen. So, you know, he had some sangria one day and, and we were driving from the restaurant and the pain hit him so bad that he actually took the seatbelt off and went into the, the, the well of the, of the, the car because he was, he had to bend over in pain. And, and he’s always hated, you know, the medical practices. So I, I told him, because my father always suffered from ulcers. And back in the day, ulcers were considered to be stress related. And now we know it’s, it’s, you, you take antibiotics for it. But back then it was drink a lot of milk. You know, he drank Maalox, but he also would make teas. Well, it wasn’t tea. He was juicing, from this herb that he called, pata gallina because the, the leaf looks like a chicken leg. So, which I think it’s, oh, I can’t, it, it’s, it’s lethal. If you take the berries, so the leaves cure, the berries will kill you. And so I, I said, “Why don’t you try that?” Because dad, whenever he got checked out, his gastroenterologist would always say, what is it that you’re doing? Because I see a lot of scarring, like, you have a lot of ulcers, but they’ve healed. And my father explained, hey, you know, it’s, it’s taking it’s juicing pata gallina and, and he would drink it in, fasting. So before he had breakfast. And so he healed himself. So when my husband Frank got that, really bad ulcer attack, I said, why don’t you let me ask my mother who was coming to visit to bring some, she brought some and I made the, I juiced it. And, and it, he hated it because he said, that tastes terrible. He drank it twice. He’s never, ever had an ulcer attack again. So it worked, of course. Then my mother was walking in the backyard and she goes, “Why’d you make me bring you some from Puerto Rico? You got that in your backyard. It’s a wheat.” What is it? It has the, I’m trying to remember. You get older and you forget things. It is not mulberry. It is, it has black little berries and it’ll come to me. But yeah, it, and it’s pretty much one of those things that grows everywhere, you know, but it, and it was just tying itself around the fence in my house, and I would pull it out. But, you know, I never saw, I never went with my dad to pick the, the, the, the herb or the weed, whatever you wanna call it. So I didn’t really recognize, I recognize it now. And I also understand that you have to know how you give that because you can kill somebody, you know? But my husband is still, you know, here, so I didn’t kill him. And he hasn’t had an ulcer problem since. One time I, I was in my backyard and I, my foot, I don’t know, I might have broke something really cracked and I didn’t wanna go to the hospital. And so what I did was I did a poultice, so I did castor oil. ‘Cause castor oil extracts from you know, your, your, your tissue. So if it has an inflammation, ’cause my foot got real swollen and I wrapped it with comfrey, which I had smashed and made into a mushy substance and wrapped my foot. I didn’t have to go to the doctor. So, you know, those are things that you forget and then all of a sudden when you need them, they come up. They come up. But it’s sad that, that we have come to a point where people now won’t, you won’t believe what you tell ’em unless you’re certified. And, and, and, and the certification is good. It’s always good to know what are the chemical compounds of, of whatever you’re taking. I’m not against that. I just think that by certifying you’ve taken away a huge component of healing, which is the mind, body and spirit connection and knowing something, getting the feel of the person you are dealing with. ‘Cause not everybody’s the same, even if they have the same symptoms and the same costs.

[30:15] Nicole: How have these practices changed and evolved in modern times? So I’ll ask, what other ways do you see that these practices have changed? Because you, in modern times over time, because you mentioned in moving from, from Puerto Rico to New York, that because you had a cultural community that, that you were within, people were still practicing these traditions.

[30:38] Angela:Yeah.

[30:39] Nicole: And so it didn’t change much. And you said that there were just the availability of the fruits and then the herbs, and then you mentioned that now it’s maybe not so much, even though we kind of feel like we have everything at our fingertips.

[30:50] Angela: We have to buy everything, you know? And I think one of the biggest changes, and I I see this sometimes in, in Puerto Rico too. If you go to the hills, if you go to the old time healers, it, it’s still the same mindset. It is a gift that you, that God has given you that you have nurtured and, and you don’t charge. And now it’s commercialized. You know, I cannot go to an herbalist and, and I don’t know how much they charge, but I know it’s not like, oh, bring me a candle and some Florida water. You know? Or even, you know, even, some, some old timers would get paid in bartering, you know, “Here I got chick, I got eggs, I’ll give you eggs,” you know, “No, you don’t need to pay me.” “No, let me give you eggs.” Because, country folk always like to feel they give back to whoever. But now it’s, it’s all commercial, you know, you have to pay an arm and a leg to be certified. And, and then that means that when you are dealing, you have to also you also have to, to charge for people to believe you. I did, I, I took, some classes on reiki that wasn’t certified technically. It’s just you had to go through three levels. So I went through two and, and you know, sometimes I would offer people to reiki and, and, and yet you have to, if you go to a reiki healer, it’s $65 to $75 for an hour of, of reiki. And, and so people would go to them versus I’m gonna do it for free. Or, or you can, I don’t know, help me out in some way. ‘Cause I feel very uncomfortable about charging people for any of the things that I do. That’s not the tradition I grew up in. So that’s one way you’re preserving what it was that you were taught or continuing to practice it the way that it was for you, the way that you saw it and witnessed it happening around you. My father thought that was a sin. And even in New York, back then, I don’t remember going to these misas, they would put a basket near the door and people would put some money if they had, you know, it was a poor working class community, but you would see the candles and you would see the, the Florida water, and anything else that they might, and, and that was it. Nobody ever asked for a dime. Okay. And, and this takes out, especially for those who do the healing, the herbs and the espiritismo, at the same time, it takes a lot out of them because being, and, and I know this sounds like superstition, but until you actually see it, and, and you know, being either possessed by a, a guiding spirit or an ancestor is a drain on, on the body. And, and even Edgar Cayce, even though he had, he was uncomfortable with the, the whole thing of, of being a channel, because he was a, a devout Christian. And, and he was told, if you do too many of these healings, your body is gonna give out, which it did, you know? So, but I never saw anybody complain this was something they felt that was part of, of who they were and what they’re supposed to give out. You know, so now it’s commercial and, and you can’t buy an herb. It costs you an arm to. If you find it, if you find it.

[35:16] Nicole: Do you feel that with these changes that you see happening and the different ways of practicing these traditions that, people engage in, in modern times, do you think that that in general we’re in danger of losing our connection to these practices? Or do you think that the knowledge is still being preserved and passed down just in different ways? Like which do you think and or both? And can you just like explain a little bit?

[35:45] Angela: Well, again, you know, now it’s, it’s a trend. So, so going back to Puerto Rico, right? So, I have family members who will not use anything that I might recommend because if the doctor doesn’t say, so, there is no way in hell that they’re gonna try something other. And then there others who should know. And somehow have lost the connection. So I had, she died recently, but, I was visiting her and, and she was, she always had stomach issues. And she was feeling nauseous. And I said,”Tia do you have any, any spearmint?” or hierbabuena, “and I’ll make you a tea.” And, and this was, and, and it really blew my mind that here’s a 90-year-old country woman. And she’s like, “What’s that?” I was like, what do you mean? What’s that? You know, I’m from the city now, and I know that hierbabuena is like the best that you can use when you have stomach issues. And actually they were, that was given to babies when they had colic. They, they would do, you know, a, a tea without sugar honey or anything. They cool it down and instead of giving the baby water, it would be either the chamomile or the hierbabuena. And, and she didn’t know. And there were a lot of people who are losing the connection unless you become like, well known. So we have this author, Benedetti, she’s written four books. And she did one on curanderas of the island. And so there was, she went from town to town to find the old healers and how they were doing and, and was there a, you know, a passing on of the, the knowledge. So after that, some people would then, not that they read the book, but you know, word of mouth, would then start finding, some of these curandera and everybody has their own specialty. So one of my cousins, his son blew his shoulder playing baseball. And he went to a specialist. He went to many specialists. They said they couldn’t do anything. Through the Benedetti book somebody told him of this, this, sort of curandero who only deals with bones. That was his specialty. And, and so he was telling me, you know, I went, it was about an hour away from my hometown. And, and he says, the man is a farmer, you know? So you get there at six o’clock in the morning, there’s already people waiting and, and they have to wait until a man comes in from the fields. And so at about 10 o’clock he comes in, he says hello to everybody, drinks some coffee, has something to eat.And then he starts seeing people. And my, my cousin said, I went in with my son, and, and he, he, he started laying the hands at not as healing, but as trying to diagnose, trying to feel. And, and he zeroed in on the shoulder. And, and my cousin goes, “I swear to you, when I see him touch my son, I hear a crack. He’s not pushing, digging anything. It’s just laying on the hands. And, and my son came out and he says,’Dad doesn’t hurt anymore.’” And years later, son still didn’t have any problems. The old man died. Did he pass on his knowledge? And can you, because with him, it’s not about knowing he had the gift. And, and that’s not something that you can learn. But I always heard that that runs its family so that when one healer dies, somebody, if they’re open, somebody in the family will inherit whatever gift. But sometimes you don’t wanna know and you don’t wanna see.

[40:52] Nicole: Why do you think it’s important to preserve these herbal and other ancestral healing knowledge traditions? And in what ways can you, if it can’t simply always be passed down, what are the ways people can work to preserve these traditions?

[41:06] Angela: What you’re doing? What Raíces is doing is one way. I mean, because you’re gonna have this accessible in the archives. And, and, and maybe ’cause it’s all about serendipity.You know, maybe somebody is bored looking through the archives, sees my interviews, one of the other’s interview and says, wow. And it wakes them up. Now the other thing that I think you need medical science. ‘Cause like when I’m sick, I’ll go to a doctor and I want the doctor to tell me you have something and what it is. And then I see if I can do it my way with the herbs, with, you know doing alcohols, doing tinctures, whatever. And I avoid the medicine that is going to cause other things now. Like I had a hip replacement, I was bone on bone, there was nothing else I can do. I’ll have the hip replacement. So I think it’s important that we don’t lose one for the other. Lose you, you should work in conjunction how to, first of all, all medicine comes from plants. They just make it synthetic, which is then what causes all those other problems because it’s not, and even nature, I mean, as I said, that that ulcer, herb have the berries, I’m gonna bury you, you know? But the leaves are, are the healers. So you need both, I think. And I think the, the, the herbalism, the tradition is that we don’t forget that, that we’re not just a body, you know, we’re energy, we are mind, we are a complex being and we gotta work all sides. I had a, a psych, an uncle who was a psychiatrist. He passed on, and he was an excellent psychiatrist. I always heard people rave about how much he’s helped him. And he said to me one day, you know, espiritista was an old time psychiatrist, they had to sit down, talk, really listen, so that they can get to the root of the problem. And, and that always stayed with me, you know, because here’s a man who had as many degrees as you can think of. He was a brilliant man, and he still understood that things were not black and white.

[44:19] Nicole: Last question. Do you have any, not favorite, but a, a plant or an herb that you work with the most closely that you most enjoy working with or that you’re, working with or learning about?

[44:35] Angela: Well, believe it or not, because I, I, my, my blood pressure, I know it has to do with other issues, I should take care of. Alright. But it fluctuates. And sometimes I can get high. So I did get into the hawthorne, but I’ve also been reading of so many other uses for hawthorne. And, and not only uses, but that it can be food. So, you know, it, it really, I like the versatility of the herbs. They’re not just for making medicine, but if you incorporate them into your diet, they are daily medicine. So, la hierbabuena, I, you know, I, I like to always have a, a pot with hierbabuena. I like making hierbabuena tea, especially when I can’t have coffee, on a winter night. It, it just gives me a lot of, I don’t know. It, it’s soothing in more than just a chemical way. It, it, it, I, you know, lime, I, when I get depressed, I cut a piece of lime and, and I, I smell it and it brings memories of my parents, of my, island of my childhood. So something as I can never cut a line without first just sniffing it. And I put it when I make when I make oatmeal or I make, you know, any of my, hot cereals, I always grate. Of course I take a, an organic one so I don’t kill myself with pesticide. And then I grate the, the, the rind to give it the taste. But now that food transports me to a time that also soothes me.

[46:41] Nicole: Right. Well, so thank you so much for sharing some of your experiences and stories with us.

[46:47] Angela: I’m very glad that you guys have done this. That Raíces says is trying to, push back a little from the technological, scientific and, and, and religious world that sometimes takes away from who we are as a human being. And you know, this is special. It’s something that’s very needed, and I thank you.

[47:21] Nicole: You’re very welcome. Look forward to speaking more.

[47:25] Angela: We will connect again.