Background:

The southeast of the Municipality of El Tambo, Cauca, Colombia it has an area of 34.68 km2 of Tropical Dry Forest (Bs-T), where 1,036 mestizos and Afro-descendants live, in a region of social, cultural, and economic complexity, who are cared for by specialists in traditional medicine, who use, manage and conserve medicinal plants, through traditional knowledge that adapts, transforms and dynamizes, through different practices.

Questions:

What are the practices of traditional medicine specialists who seek to conserve medicinal plants in the southeast of El Tambo, Cauca, Colombia?

Site and years of study:

southeast of El Tambo, Cauca-Colombia; January 2017 to August 2019.

Methods:

The research was carried out based on qualitative and quantitative ethnobotany, participatory-action-research-IAP, life histories, Jaccard's qualitative index, bibliographic review of states of extinction risk and provenance, consensual interviews, through the Delphi method for 101 species of medicinal plants used, managed and conserved by five specialists of traditional medicine.

Results:

101 species of medicinal plants were described in Bs-T from the southeast of El Tambo, used by midwives, sobanderos, herbalists, and traditional doctors, who conserve them through 13 practices of the local medical system.

Conclusions:

Traditional medicine specialists protect a memory of 13 traditional medical practices that have been inherited generationally, learned and revitalized, allowing the preservation of a diversity of 101 species of medicinal plants that treat 243 different physical and cultural diseases.

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