That's How We Healed: Aymara Indigenous Experiences with Medicinal Plants During the Global Health Crisis

Abstract

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aymara Indigenous communities in Tacna, Peru, revitalized their traditional knowledge in response to widespread distrust in biomedicine and the limitations of the formal health system. Medicinal plants became therapeutic, symbolic, and cultural tools for confronting the crisis.

Objective: To explore the lived experiences and meanings attributed to the use of traditional medicine by Indigenous communities during the global health emergency.

Methods: A qualitative study with a phenomenological-hermeneutic design was conducted. Ten Aymara participants from four highland communities were selected through theoretical sampling. In-depth interviews were carried out, transcribed, validated, and analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, under strict ethical and qualitative rigor standards.

Results: The analysis revealed four key categories: subjective and cultural experience, worldview and meaning, practical and ancestral knowledge, and integral community strategy. Plants were perceived as living entities with healing power and spiritual connection. Knowledge was transmitted across generations and adapted to the conditions of the home. Care practices were expressed as collective acts, infused with affection, reciprocity, and symbolic resistance in the face of the crisis.

Conclusion: The use of traditional medicine during the pandemic went beyond therapeutic function, becoming an expression of cultural affirmation, epistemic autonomy, and communal care. These practices sustained life and nurtured emotional, spiritual, and social balance among Aymara peoples amid adversity.