BioPark volunteers explain traditional healing plants
Lissa Knudsen | November 7It was a sunny autumn morning, just a few hours after the second freeze of the season. The leaves had started to change color but hadn’t yet fallen, and the ABQ Botanic Garden was especially quiet — the summer tourists had subsided for the season, and the mid-morning hour catered mostly to retirees and parents with small children. Some days, the docents explained, they have to go out into the park to cajole people into listening to their talk but, on this day, that wasn’t the case. Nine people, including a couple of cooing toddlers with their parents, a collection of retirees and a UNM graduate student listened to the docents as they made their way around the looped curandera garden path. The Spanish word curandera refers to a traditional healer that practices a combination of traditional Indigenous and Catholic remedies. Curanderas are called on to provide treatments for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual illnesses.



















