Growing the Health: An History about Women and Phytomedicines on a MST's Settlement in São Paulo

• Autor(a) principal: Ferro, Giacomo
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Fitos
• Texto Completo: https://revistafitos.far.fiocruz.br/index.php/revista-fitos/article/view/203
• topic: fitomedicamentos; mulheres; saúde; MST; phytomedicines; women; health; MST

The path towards the innovation in the “medicines of biodiversity” is composed by different experiences, actors and social contexts that work together daily so as to create a more democratic health system based on new models of social and ecological development. To this end, the work conducted by RedesFito promotes the creation of a system of Local Productive Arrangements (APL) for the production and distribution of phytomedicines, aimed at the preservation and development both of biodiversity and of the local economic and social fabric. This paper reconstructs some of the milestones that marked the history of the Itapeva APL, in the South of the state of São Paulo, where a group of women of the Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra (MST) has been carrying ahead an important work of education, production and distribution of phytomedicines for over twenty years. The text reconstructs the most significant moments that have contributed towards the creation of a system of local knowledge and practices about natural remedies and at the same time, it reflects on the weight that the work with phytomedicines has had in the end, in this context, towards a political and social empowerment of women within the community.