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Ethnobotany of the Nahua People: Plant Use and Management in the Sierra Negra, Puebla, Mexico

2023; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-99357-3_19

2523-7497

José Juan Blancas Vázquez, Alejandro Casas, Hilda Ramírez-Monjaraz, Andrea Martínez‐Ballesté, Ignacio Torres-García, Itzel Abad-Fitz, Leonardo Beltrán-Rodríguez, Carolina Zequeira Larios, Aketzalli Olvera-Espinosa, Myriam A. Miranda-Gamboa, Elisa Lotero-Velásquez, Mariana Vallejo,

Indigenous Cultures and Socio-Education

The Sierra Negra region is a rich mosaic of ecosystems and cultures in interaction. There, people practice a pattern of multiple use and management of the different plant species and vegetation types occurring in their communitarian territories and, through interchange, those of other communities of the region. Due to a complex socio-ecological history, characterized by a relative isolation of the region for a long time, people inhabiting the area generated strategies of using the diverse environments to mitigate the sources of climate, social, and economic uncertainties. The strategies of risk management included creative forms to achieve food security (use of numerous species and ecosystems, different types of management of species, including cultivation and domestication, techniques for food conservation and storing, among others) and, in general, using their own resources to satisfy their basic subsistence needs without depending on external regions. Until the present, ethnobotanical studies by our research group have identified 496 plant species, which constitute the useful flora of the region, but more studies are still needed, and this cipher surely will increase. In the current inventory, the richest plant families providing useful species are Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Asparagaceae, Solanaceae, and Rosaceae, which are used, in order of importance, as ornamental, medicine, food, and fuel. We have also documented a strategy of multiple use of plant resources, each species having 1 to 16 uses (3.48 uses on average per species), and each vegetation type providing on average 161 useful species. Also, we have identified a pattern of eco-symbiotic complementarity among environments and vegetation types, which has been constructed through time as a response to uncertainty in the availability of resources due to ecological and socioeconomic factors. Strategies to deal with ecological and social uncertainty have been identified and documented to include management and incipient domestication of some species in forest and agroforestry systems, as well as interchange among communities living in different ecosystems. This research analyzes the deep knowledge of the regional people about ecological relations of plants, their properties associated with use, the management types operating on them, and requirements and consequences associated with management. We recognize the still limited research conducted in the area and the need of continuing ethnobotanical studies; we identify some priorities. The inventory of useful plants and their management is still limited while significant areas of diversity of ecosystems and cultures of the region remain unexplored. The Sierra Negra constitutes an important refuge of biocultural diversity that contributes valuable lessons on plant and ecosystem management. Such experience deserves to be understood for constructing sustainable forms of human-nature interactions for ensuring the future of new generations of local and regional people.