Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:11] Nicole: My name is Nicole Wines, and we are at Raíces Cultural Center in Highland Park, New Jersey. I’m here with Francisco Gómez, the director of Raíces Cultural Center. He is taking part in our Herbal Ancestral Narratives, oral history project. Francisco, can you please introduce yourself? Tell us your full name and where you live.

[0:31] Francisco G. Gómez: Yes. My name is Francisco G. Gómez, and I live in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

[0:39] Nicole: Thank you for sharing some stories with us today.

[0:42] Francisco: You’re welcome.

[0:43] Nicole: I’m gonna start with a kind of bigger picture question and then go down into questions about more specific things about herbalism and herbal healing traditions. So I would like to start off by asking what does healing mean to you?

[0:59] Francisco: Healing means many things. It’s just not a question of the physic, which I call the physical body. Yes, human beings have all types of ailments that are physical. However, there are also many, many ailments that afflict us in terms of the mind, and that has something to do with the physic. But then there are also other maladies that affect the human body, and a lot of these have to do with the spirit, if not more so with the soul.

[1:45] Nicole: Thanks for sharing.

[1:46] Francisco: Sure.

[1:48] Nicole: In, can you tell us a little bit about your cultural background?

[1:53] Francisco: Sure, sure. I come from a mixed cultural background. My father was Cuban, my mother was Puerto Rican. God rest their souls. They’re now in the realm they call ara orun. And I have other mixtures within my whole scope as well of coming up from birth. I have Chinese, I have Jewish, and probably I have a whole bunch of other things that I don’t know about. But perhaps one day I may.

[2:41] Nicole: In your cultural tradition was there a connection growing up to herbs and herbalism within your cultural community?

[2:53] Francisco: Most definitely. My earliest remembrances of herbalism, not, not herbalism as we know it today as a science, but herbalism as a cultural tradition, go back all the way into the 1950s. I was born in 1952. I’m approaching 71 years of age now, just in a couple weeks, week and a half, I can remember back to the age of eight. And one of the most significant and profound beings that I’ve ever known in my entire life was my grandmother Hortensia Batha de Gómez born in Havana, Cuba. As a child, not knowing much about herbs or anything else in that realm. I only remember my grandmother wearing white clothes all the time. She would wear white clothes. And every time I would go to her house, especially, especially in that time, because I, I went frequently after school to eat at her house. On the table, there would always be herbs, all types of herbs and jars filled with things that I did not know about. I’d also see a lot of different types of fabrics, and I’d see a sewing machine. I, and I, I believe that, that, that is the first time or the first times in my life that I was exposed to what herbs really are. Again, not in the traditional sense because my grandmother, Hortensia had a deep, deep, deep faith in Ocha. She had a deep faith in Ocha. She was a devotee of San Lázaro, in English St. Lazarus, an African shapona. She had a deep faith. And there’s a story that goes along with that that I’ll probably tell you later, but right now I’d like to get back to the herbs. Right? So I would see all the varieties of, of herbs that I didn’t know, and I didn’t think of questioning my grandmother at that time. I was only a little boy. But I do remember asking her why she would make the, this particular talisman, which was red in color, and then she would hang a, a lanyard on it, a cord, and then she would fill it with different herbs, and then she would pray over them, and then she would seal them in that talisman. I found out later on in life when I really started to, to study herbs and, and traditions and cultural things that had to do with Ocha, which is a, the practice of Orishas, that that was a resguardo. A resguardo is a talisman for good luck, for good health and overall wellbeing, and also protection against things that might affect you out in the, in the, in the world. That is one of the most important things that I remember the resguardo always, because I had one, she made one for me. She made one for everybody in the family, and she’d make us wear it. Yep.

[7:03] Nicole: And you said at the time you didn’t really think to ask her much about it?

[7:07] Francisco: I did not think to ask her anything about the resguardos.

[7:11] Nicole: So you have no idea where she learned that from?

[7:15] Francisco: Oh, I do know where she learned that from growing up in, in Havana, Cuba, especially Regla, which is the port city of the Africans that were brought during the Transatlantic Slave Trade to that particular town that sits right across the bay from Havana proper. She was exposed to that. She, she grew up there in Havana, in, you know, in that Bay Area and of course in Regla. And she lived there for many years. And she had many friends as I would find out later, who were of the tradition of the Ocha tradition. And that’s where she learned all of that stuff. Although I don’t believe that my grandmother Hortensia was a, was consecrated in Ocha. I do know that spiritualism played a big part in her belief system. I don’t, I don’t think so. I can’t verify that.

[8:16] Nicole: I really don’t know. So it was, would you say that she basically, she learned it by being immersed in a community practice?

[8:28] Francisco: I believe so. I believe she was a very, very much immersed in, in the community. And it was a community that was basically Osha oriented. And of course, Catholicism. It’s part and parcel of the bigger picture, the synchronization of the Orisha with Catholic Saints.

[8:51] Nicole: And within that tradition, how are, are healing practices generally passed? Are they usually passed through formal education, through apprenticeship, through just being exposed to it in community practice?

[9:06] Francisco: In the 1950s when I was growing up, it was still an oral tradition. There were people that predate that, that that period, right? Of course, people like Fernando Ortiz who write, who wrote great books on the subject of Ocha. He was a lawyer in, in Havana in Cuba. And he was a big skeptic of Ocha. He was. Not only that, all African traditions until he really became what you would call a self-made anthropologist. And he started to dig way into the, the religious traditions seriously. And then he actually wrote all these wonderful books about Ocha, and he, in the end became a true believer of, of that spirituality. And, and I don’t know, praise Olofin for that because he was one of the first people who were, who was an academic, and he gave great credence to what we know today. As, as Ocha or Ifá.

[10:26] Nicole: Do you have memories of any other family members or your community engaging in healing practices?

[10:33] Francisco: I do, and I will talk to them, talk to that in a second. But I would, I want to get back to my, my grandmother, Hortensia. Sure. Because there’s a story I want to tell about her.

[10:43] Nicole: Oh, please share.

[10:46] Francisco: In 1950, before I was born, my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather were still in Cuba. And my father had come here to the United States

to find a new way to work and, and make a new life for me. I wasn’t even born yet, but for me and my sister, my older sister. My father comes here in the late forties and come 1950s, drafted into, to the military, into the army, the United States Army. And his place of service would be Korea. During the Korean War, when my mother found, out, my grandmother, excuse me, when my grandmother found out that he was going to go to Korea, she made a promise in the name of St. Lazarus. She said, and I know this story, I know this story well, because it, it’s been told to me by so many different people in my family. I never heard it from her, but I did hear from the people in my family, my uncles, my aunts, my father, my mother. And they say that she, she prayed to St. Lazarus, she asked him that if my father returned from the war whole in entirely whole, maybe not his mind, but his, his physical body, that if wearing white for the rest of her life would be suffice to seal that, that prayer that that plegaria, that we, we call it in Spanish. And as the story goes, my father came back from Korea whole. He wasn’t hurt in any kind of way except maybe sometimes his mind from what he had seen and what he had done in Korea. And as I’m told, again, as I’m told by my family, the promise required her to go on her knees from a mountain area in Regla all the way down the main road all the way to, to the cathedral. I, I, I, I, it looks to me to be a, as a church, it’s the church of Regla. I call it a cathedral ’cause it’s really big. And I visited it again in 2007 when I went to Cuba. But, she did that on her knees. By the time she got to the church, you can imagine what her knees looked like. There was no padding or anything. She did it on her knees. So she completed that promise that she, she would do, and she did it dressed in white. And from that time on, you’re talking, you’re talking about 1950, from that time on, she wore till her death in 1964. Yeah, I believe 1964 that she passed. To her dying day, she wore white, and she was a big devotee of Saint Lazarus. So that’s, that’s the story. This is not just a question of herbs and talisman, but it’s also of an individual having that faith to carry her forward and do that for her son. One of three sons and the only son that went to war. Yeah. That’s my, that’s the greatest remembrance I have in my beginning in herbology, because it wasn’t, it wasn’t just herbs. As I said, it also has a modicum and an element of spirituality in it.

[14:51] Nicole: Well, thank you for sharing.

[14:52] Francisco: Sure.

[14:54] Nicole: Can, it’s quite a story. Yeah

[14:58] Francisco: It is.

[14:59] Nicole: Yeah. Can you tell me more, you said that you do have other family members who you remember practicing healing traditions. Can you talk a little more about that?

[15:09] Francisco: Sure. Now, I’ll talk to you on my mother’s side. My mother, Juana. Juana Rivera Rodriguez. She had two great aunts, which were my great aunts. I remember, I remember these aunts very profoundly because being, being these great aunts, they had a lot of knowledge of herbs. My mother is from a town, Rio Grande de Loíza. That’s in the highlands, next to one of two, fluvial rainforests called El Yunque. My mother’s ancestral land and house resides up in that mountain. Well, these two aunts, Aunt Bertha, Berta, and Aunt Bije, the old ladies. And when I was still young, very, very old ladies. But I remember when I would go to their house from the moment you entered their courtyard, there were flowers and herbs and all kinds of things that, again, I didn’t really know of. I didn’t really know of. ‘Cause I was still young, more or less in the same time that all this was going on with my other grandmother. So these, these great aunts were such beautiful, beautiful souls, such beautiful people untainted by the times. And they lived through some really serious messed up times coming up in Puerto Rico and that poverty in the mountains of Puerto Rico. But what, what spirit, what, what soul? They, they had the, the, the wonderful, I don’t know, I, I don’t even know how to describe it. So filled with love that we would, we would come, we were coming from New York City up to the mountains, and we’d rarely saw them. Right? Rarely saw them.

And the love come in, sit down, come on. Can I make you something? Are you hungry? You want some fruit with, with an attentiveness that was incredible. And at the same time, you know, always with the idea of herbs, you know, Oh, you could take a little bit of this. This is good for you. This is good tea. Or you could take some of this other herb and that that’s good if you just, you know, rub it into your skin. That just, all these things that I remember, which are not really, not a lot because I never, again, never as a child, never had the idea of asking them, what, what are you giving me? But they’d always, they’d always, they’d always offer something up to us. And there were just such, again, just such beautiful people. So that was like an another little introduction that stirred the curiosity within the young boy, which later on when manifest in, in different things, maybe not as an herbologists, but definitely as a person who believes in spirit.

[18:34] Nicole: I was going to move on to asking you about your own practice or study. So, um, through the different people who we are speaking to in this program, some are herbalists, some consider themselves herbal healers. Many consider themselves students or, they use herbs in their daily practice, in their daily life, but they don’t consider themselves herbalists or herbal healers. Do you practice herbal traditions or do you study herbal traditions? And if so, where does your interest lie in your studies and practice?

[19:09] Francisco: I, I do believe in herbal traditions, although I have other vices. I say other vices because I see my herbs as, as vices too, because when I need them, they, they’re there. They satisfy something in me, right? My herbs, I do live in a house that has a backyard where I have a lot. It’s, it’s a pretty nice sizable plot of land. And I’ve learned to, to grow things there. I, I have basil, I have bay leaves, and I have rue and I have lemon grass, and a bunch of other things that grow that are not just herbs, but they’re also flowers to, to, to heal. What, what ails me inside mentally, I could look at these things sometimes go and just take a whiff of something and it helps me. And I also shared it with the community, and I have this friend, I have this friend that you know very well who taught me a lot about planting things, a lot of things about how, how to plant things. And, you know, in that process, being, being the rookie herbalist that I am, I learned, I learned many things that were beneficial to me and inclusive of the idea of, of doing little buggies that were good for me and good for the Earth and good for everybody else. I learned about honeybees, and that friend actually helped me out in creating that, that, that, that need, that want to develop the bees. Right? And, and you know, her, her, her name is Nicole Wines. So yeah, we have, we have not been so fruitful in that cultivation of our, our, our honeybees, as you well know. But we’re gonna try again now that we’re here at the, at the Ecological Center, the Eugene Young Ecological Center. We just found out that we have a space over here that’s being turned over to us by a, a a a beekeeper, very knowledgeable beekeeper, and he will be mentoring us further. So, you know, the love of the bees is going to manifest itself again here in our new home, at Raíces.

[21:50] Nicole: And speaking of bees and the ways that you can manifest healing, you mentioned spirit and you mentioned energy. How do you see these traditions, both the way that your ancestors practiced them, historically in the times and the locations that they were in, and in the ways that you practice and study now in a different time and place?

[22:16] Francisco: Yeah. If, if you look in retro and you go back to that period, and you’re looking at 60 plus years now. 60 plus years, that’s a long time. And in that period, there really wasn’t all this, this talk and, and this study of, of herbs, the way you see it today and how it’s bifurcated, trifurcated, you name it, it is just gone so many different ways with so many understandings, right? That come from different sectors of the planet and converge maybe into one place. So, so you have the Japanese tradition, you have the Chinese tradition, you have the, the Hispanic tradition. You have a number of traditions that come together in terms of studying herbs, herb biology, and everything that goes along with that. And then of course, what happens there is definitely I don’t know if, if you could call it cultural appropriation. Maybe you can, and that becomes cumbersome. It, it becomes a problem in many ways because now you start to question what is real and what isn’t real. You know, what’s true and what’s not true, and that in and of itself becomes a little problematic. But if you see the glass half full versus half empty, you understand that when you’re exposed to these different ways of thinking. And even if they’re appropriation, you could learn something from that because it could stir the mind. It’s no different than growing up with Roy Rogers, right? And Buck Evans, whatever her name was, or with Cochise and, and saying, whoa, cowboys and Indians. Oh, we don’t like the Indians. We don’t like the Indians. No, we’re for the cowboys. You know, later on we find out that the two spiritual people and people that were bringing us the veridic truths of this land and how to appreciate this land, were the First Nations people of, of this land. And so we changed our mind in some ways besides the, the incredible, incredible acceleration exponentially of medical science. We still have a lot of things that are, how would you say, kind of primitive, but they know how to heal things that medical science doesn’t know how to heal. So, yeah.

[25:19] Nicole: And what would you say is the, you, you mentioned it a few times, but what, can you talk a little bit more about the connection between healing and spirit and healing your energy?

[25:30] Francisco: Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah. Modern science looks at human beings through a scientific lens. Usually, you know, they only put band-aids on problems. Instead of digging deep into what, you know, what really, troubles a human being. They do it basically for the almighty dollar. That’s not only true of physicians in our society, that’s true of the, the biggest problem that we have is the pharmaceuticals, right? Everything, everything is a dollar, a dollar for this, a dollar for that. There’s no spirituality in that. When you can’t, when you can’t really see something in, in somebody that happens to be some type of malady or ailment and say, what’s at the root of that? And how, how do we address that? And instead, you say to yourself, you know, I could treat this with A, B, C, D, and God knows how many other drugs, and I could keep it at bay. I’ll never heal it, but I’ll keep it at bay, and in the process, I’ll make a ton of money. So there’s no spirituality in that. And somebody, a doctor, now they think, because a doctor sits with you for five minutes, that the doctor’s great. And most doctors go from room to room, like in seconds. There’s no spirituality in that. Again, I say to you, so when you have healers, when you have true healers in your society, in this modern society, and there still exist quite a few, not as many as before, but quite a few, and they’re, they’re trying, they’re attempting to pass on what they know, then, then you, you have a sense of spirituality. Because when you went, when you went to a, an herbalist, a healer that knew about herbs and knew how to heal spiritually, that healer would pray, that healer, that healer would use raw herbs, organic raw herbs to treat the maladies that you had. Those healers dealt with things that traditional scientific knowledge holds as taboos. Oh, that’s hocus pocus. It’s talking to, supposedly talking to some entity that he’s calling forth to help him or her with the resolution that’s, that’s needed to determine what that individual has as a malady, right? And so right away it’s seen as taboo. Those are quacks, you know, they’re, they’re just soothsayers trying to heal people. A lot of times the real healers don’t even charge you. There’s something called la obra. La obra means the work. And if you’re a true healer, you don’t charge for la obra. You don’t charge for the work. You do it because you’re sent to do that, and whatever’s around you, and it guides you, and believe me, that there are healers that are unbelievable the things that they can do, because they’re in very close connection with those entities of spirituality that have been manifest upon them by the big is by the big is, I mean, by source, I mean by God, I mean by Allah, I mean by Oneka Tonka, you, you name it, it’s all coming from the same place. It’s coming from the source. And there’s people that are attuned and in touch with that versus those that go to universities to study and copy what they learn, right? And in process, make tons of money and lead usually some such great material lives, not spiritual lives. Sorry, to be a little drawn out on that. That’s important to understand. And that’s where the spirituality comes in. And it’s important. That’s why these traditional healers, when people set upon them to find answers to their maladies, these healers go to the root of the problem. They don’t put bandaids on something that’s, that’s, that’s a sore. It’s broken. Did that answer your question?

[30:29] Nicole: Yes. It’s not long-winded. We’re here to hear what you think about these topics. You’re, it’s great to hear it. Thank you for sharing. Do you feel that we’re in danger of losing our connection to these healing practices and traditions?

[30:49] Francisco: I, I think as a, as a person of age, now, as a, as a real senior citizen, and knowing what I know now in my long life, I, I would say that we have become so modernized. We have become so Westernized. We have become so Americanized a lot of times that it is creating a problem. It’s creating a problem, because as I told you, these people are seen as quacks. They’re seen as people that, you know, they’re snake oil salesmen. You know what I’m saying? And that, that becomes problematic. However, there are, there are entities like Raíces, for example, that want to maintain that tradition, or should I say slash traditions of healing of the healing arts. And in many senses, the healing sciences, you don’t, you don’t need, you don’t need these, i I like to call ’em absurdi-fications, okay? Certifications, degrees from universities, you know, and, and letters behind your name for you to be bonifidi, right? To be bonafide healers. There’s healers who have none of that, and yet they’re some of the greatest healers. But I think by and large, yeah, we might be in a state of peril right now in the 21st century. However, there are people out there that are doing and practicing la obra, they’re doing the work. And in that process, it’s kind of been a combination between ancestral ways and new scientific ways. And I think science now today is learning that these, these, these traditional healers have something, they have something in that bag and that they need to, to tap into that. And I think that they’re doing that in a lot of different ways too. So, I don’t know, I just hope for the counterbalance, but I always ask that there be balance. When I, when, you know, when I do my things, I always, I always reach out to the universe and the cosmos, and I ask for that to possibly play out in the 21st century. And that we can meet, have a meeting of minds between those that actually rule in that domain. And yet people who really know about healing usually go back to the traditional healers when people cannot resolve their cancer. When people cannot resolve their AIDS or their Parkinson’s, or any of the other ailments that afflict people, high blood pressure, heart disease, which is a big one. They go back to that traditional healer because they did not have good fortune by going to so many doctors. They only treated the symptom. They didn’t, they didn’t treat the cause. And the healer, the ancestral healer knows how to deal with that.

[34:24] Nicole: How can we work to preserve and pass down these traditions and specifically the traditions of the ancestral healers and the community practice and cultural practices of healing?

[34:38] Francisco: Well, I think, you know, being the director of, one of the directors of Raíces Cultural Center we’ve attempted to do a lot of that through our almost 20 years of, of being Raíces. We have healers come in. We’re doing these types of interviews, not just with healers, but people who have memories of their contact with, with herbs and, and people who, who do herbs, right? People who are healers, curanderos, medicine men. That’s the way that we maintain the cultural traditions of healing, right? Of good health, right? And wellbeing. Doing all these types of things that we can do. Lectures, workshops, right? You name it. Whoever’s out there doing this, even even the ones that I call the si-si-la-poo-poo-ca-ca people, and I know that’s a little harsh, but hey, if, if you’re throwing something out there and telling somebody that this might help if you’re wise, you know, you’ll look into it before you consume anything. By consuming, I mean buying it or taking it internally, it’s no different than understanding. For example, Carlos Castaneda, right? He wrote a couple of books that dealt with the shrooms, and back in the day, oh my God, the shrooms are gonna damage your DNA and it’s gonna mess up your mind. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna go cuckoo right Now today, we understand that there are medical doctors out there that are actually studying the signs of, of mushrooms, and they understand that it might actually be a very good healing herb for many different maladies and ailments. So that’s the way we can maintain those cultural traditions, is by doing it, doing it, not being afraid, because medical science and the law is out there, you know, these, these traditions, they go back thousands and thousands of years. Medicine has only been practiced since when? I’ll at you be a judge of that. But I’ll tell you what, it’s not thousands and thousands of years the way it is practiced today.

[37:20] Nicole: You shared some of the ways how we can work to preserve it. Why do you think it’s important to do that work?

[37:29] Francisco: Oh, it’s important because I think that there’s a lot of people in our world today, we find them in our communities, we find them, even in sparse land areas in the mountains or on the plains. We find these people that have been indoctrinated to believe that, you know, traditional medical science has the remedies and, and the cures for all ailment. And that by and large is a big farce. So we need, we need those healers. We need the information and the education that they can afford us when they approach us or when we approach them. And they’re willing to share that information with us. And a lot of times, lemme tell you this, a lot of times they’re very reluctant to do that for fear of being prosecuted, hounded, whatever, because they’re doing something. Oh, you don’t have one of those certifications. So that’s very necessary, and it’s very necessary, again, for people who don’t have answers. They have not found solutions to their problems in traditional, modern 21st century medicine. However, they can go to one of the, these little old people who, who live very modestly, who look like they couldn’t, I don’t know, cure anything. And yet they go and they find a lot of times, cures and resolutions to their problems where they thought they would never find it. And you know, what I think is the key to all of that, that they work with spirituality versus these people who only think about science. And there there can be nothing else to healing other than what they’ve learned in, in, in school.

[39:42] Nicole: My last question, is there any particular herb that you are most interested in studying or working with right now?

[39:53] Francisco: I’ll tell you something. I have been as of late, messing around a lot with chamomile and cloves for stomach ailments. I’ve been doing this simply because I, I, I’ve always experienced problems with my stomach, but as you get older, even I think it, it even gets worse. But I’ve been, I’ve been looking at this, I’m trying to attempt of, you know, to look at, at ways that I might be able to grow these things. I don’t know. I, I don’t know as of yet how, because I’ve only been experimenting with this in a short time. I do know, I do know of a brief story that during World War II, in the, in the concentration camps, in the prisoner camps that were put together by the Japanese for English prisoners of war that suffered from things like dysentery and diarrhea and all these different stomach maladies, that cloves, they were given cloves. And this actually put a stop to all of these problems with that they had, that they were having experiencing at the time, dysentery being one of the most prevalent. Not only, not only in, in, in, you know, in the, the East theater, you know, that war theater, but also in, in Europe during the Second World War as well, or I should say the Pacific Theater for the people that were fighting the Japanese. And of course, you know, in Europe. Yeah, those two herbs are very much on my mind as of late. Yeah. And a bunch of other ones, but those two primarily you asked me, right? Yeah.

[41:54] Nicole: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today and sharing some of your stories and experiences. Is there anything you’d like to say before we finish our interview?

[42:05] Francisco: Yeah, I’d like, I’d like to say you’re doing a great job doing all of this work, and you asked me a question before, and I think it’s people like you that are making traditional stories that deal with herbs and herbology and healing the idea of the cure and above else. La obra, you’re doing a great service to that. And if you continue to do that, maybe, maybe we’ll raise the bar a little bit and we can balance it, like I was saying before, and that’s what’s important because that is la obra, and it is spiritual, and it manifests from the source. Thank you.

[42:54] Nicole: Thank you.