Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

In today's conversation with Antonia Pérez of Herban Cura, we explore a world that embodies care, through our relationship with plant life. If you've ever been enchanted by a flower, held by a tree, or nourished by a vegetable, fruit, or herb, which honestly is all of us, then this episode is for you.

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: We're in a very plant centric time.

People are really excited about the plants, you know, but  we need to be so conscious of how we are in our relationship with plants. Especially if we're coming into herbalism and we're really excited about bringing more plants into our life. Just because they're [00:01:00] herbs they're not immune to exploitation. 

It's not just about how the herb is going to help me, but how can I also be in service to this plant? It's not like, "Oh yeah, nettles are good for me, red clover. We're just going to be ordering these plants from, Lithuania and Albania," it's like, "wait, we can grow red clover over right here and we can harvest it right here.," and, "how through growing the red clover, it's not just supporting my hormones, but I'm also helping to bring nitrogen into the soil."

I continue to see such a big gap in that, in the world of herbalism, as it becomes more and more commodified and more and more people are interested.

And I've seen that in the past five years. When I came onto Instagram, it was me and a few other people in New York that we were talking about herbs and all of a sudden it's like everyone is an herbalist and herbalism is everywhere. There's a beauty in that freedom that the world of herbalism has. And [00:02:00] it's really important for us to learn from people that have a deep respect to the earth and not just about all the uses of the herbs. But like, how are we actually in relationship to the plants?

 It's like practicing any kind of relationship that we want to create is one of respect and one of reciprocity. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Our guest, Antonia Estela Perez, is a Chilean American clinical herbalist, a gardener, educator, community organizer, and a co founder of Urban Cura, which is an organization committed to creating access to ancestral wisdom through the rematriation of indigenous lifeways, through their knowledge shares, immersions, and herbal remedies.

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: I am a diasporic being. I grew up in New York city, first generation. both my parents are from Chile,. My parents were displaced from Chile due to political reasons—United [00:03:00] States imperialism, which was post the coup of the first democratically elected socialist president, in South America. 

I was politicized since I was born by my parents. And also that has been this ongoing question,, being a diasporic being, of, "okay, where do I come from?"

it's not so easy to say, "I'm from this place, and there's so much to decipher and parse through in understanding my lineage and all the ways that the processes of colonization, such as assimilation, and the ways that often Mestizo peoples, that have both Indigenous colonizer blood forget who they are.

Through that opening of questions, I just became really curious. And I think this may be something that a lot of first generation people experience, because it does take a lot of energy and intention to [00:04:00] maintain the cultures from the lands that people were displaced from in a completely different culture and society. 

A big part of you know, understanding myself and coming into myself was through the plants, which were also a part of my life growing up, and that's something that my parents brought with them as part of their life.

If they're sick, turning to the plants. Having trouble sleeping, chamomile tea. That connection and that deep relationship to the earth and sensitivity, is something that my parents taught me. 

From a really young age, I was super curious about learning the plants that were growing around me. It helped me feel more at home. And it continues to help me feel more at home because as I learn about the plants and I learn about the animals, I'm becoming more part of the ecology and learning about the history of that land through the plants.

That practice [00:05:00] has opened up for me the ability to learn and connect to plants and territory wherever I go. Especially when I return back to Chile and getting to know the plants there and familiarizing myself more.

Emily Race-Newmark: There is this really beautiful parallel I see in, kind of your own diasporic identity and journey to the plants that you met along the way. And I think often that plants also have been displaced through colonization and whatnot. I just think it's so interesting that there is this shared story of displacement and, who are we? And where are we really from? That I think many people can relate to in some way. These are big questions of our time, for sure. 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: That's something that has become a really big focus of Herban Cura, but learning the plants was also a way of me learning about colonization and transatlantic slave trade and just how central plants have [00:06:00] been to the unfolding of our economy and globalization, and how they continue to be so central to that reality, and how that's also impacted all this human movement too. And the ways that we brought plants with us in that movement.

Through that migration of plants, we can trace back so much of what's happened. I always say we can learn world history through our spice cabinet. How we can have nutmeg and cardamom and all these spices that were once so rare to obtain and that wars were fought over. 

It's easy to take for granted now because we don't know those stories. 

Herban Cura aims to trace these stories by inviting people who have either deep relationship to these plants, through different territories, through either their lineage or their personal experience or research or academic work. And [00:07:00] to offer an opportunity for us to learn these plants beyond their commodified form. 

For example, chocolate, we might just be relating to cacao through a chocolate bar, but we don't know cacao as the plant. Or corn, maize. Maybe it's like corn on the cob or like corn syrup that is interlaced i  n everything. And it's extracting so much water and water resources.

How plants have been distorted and exploited through capitalism and colonization has also made these plants the villain. Versus like, how are these plants also being victim of this exploitation?

What are those parallel histories that exist beyond the commodified history? What has been the cultural relationship that people have had the plants and the ways that people have co evolved with these plants and how much there is to learn about how to [00:08:00] be in reciprocal relationship to the plants that are around us, and how plants have shaped who we are as humans.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, I was really feeling that, and then you voiced it, that these plants also have been exploited, and yet when you mentioned that they've been characterized as villains in some instances.

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: It doesn't go without pain and processing all of the trauma that's existed in relationship to land and in relationship to these plants, because the plants have been the vehicle of exploitation or the reason for economic exploitation. 

For myself, but I see that in my community, there is this rejection or fear towards being close to the land and rightfully so. For a lot of the work that I do, especially with youth and my community where I grew up in Washington Heights is to remind us that everyone in our lineage, and [00:09:00] usually very close in our lineage, has been in relationship to the earth. That knowing and wisdom of the earth is what's allowed us to be here today.

 That knowledge of knowing how to grow food, knowing what plants are medicine are so important for our liberation. Finding the ways back to our right to be in relationship with the earth as a means of taking back that power and that relationship that we have to our ancestors.

Emily Race-Newmark: So with the work that Herban Cura is doing, like I'm assuming it's storytelling in nature—it's collective, communal. And it must also have this healing element that threads through it. 

 How else would you describe the spaces that you're holding and what emerges in those? 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: We do a lot of the storytelling through our online classes, which we call knowledge shares. And then we also have these knowledge shares in person. 

So for example, we had an in person [00:10:00] class this past summer on fermentation. and then we had another in person class on Fapqua, which is an ancestral fermented maize drink from Colombia. 

The online is also so powerful, but the in person time is this extra powerful in being able to practice being in relationship with the plants with their hands getting to meet one another, getting to share stories with one another.

There's so many moments when maybe I'll encounter people that came to an Herban Cura workshop at another workshop or just on the street and they're hanging out with someone that they had met at Herban Cura workshop and they're like best friends now. That's a really important piece. 

 How Herban Cura started was having these knowledge shares in my living room, in friends living rooms, in New York City, and people just started showing up and being like, "wow, this is what I've been missing—like [00:11:00] a place to learn with other people that are interested in learning these skills and getting to share stories together."

 Another way that we do this work is a project that we have called Plants to the People, that happens mainly in New York City and Washington Heights, where we distribute herbs that we've grown or that we've harvested from neighboring farms and gardens, and we occupy a plaza. We don't have a permit. We have our buckets full of herbs, tea that we've made, and wait for folks to come up because people will just naturally come towards where we are because they've smelled the Tulsi, or they saw the green, or they smelled the rue or the oregano, and they're so curious, and so excited, and so trusting of the plants and of what we're doing [00:12:00] and ready to receive the herbs. 

The response has been this incredibly affirming that this work is important. 

So many folks come back every time and say how it's been supporting their digestion, or it's been supporting their stress or their asthma. 

I'll never forget someone that was just coming from a chemo session, and that's not my expertise, but he was just so grateful for getting to touch the plants. Something that would help support his nervous system in this time. 

Having the conversations with people that are both new to herbs, or people who know so much about plants, there's this beautiful experience of reciprocity and getting to learn together. And people who maybe have distanced themselves a little bit from that, but once they see the plants all these [00:13:00] memories start returning of their grandmothers, their grandparents, of their homelands.

And so it's this beautiful moment of bringing plants [Laughter] to this plaza and just seeing how people recognize the plants, whether or not they know where that recognition is coming from, there's this draw that happens and deep curiosity, and knowing that, like, "I need this." 

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Emily Race-Newmark: when I am engaging in relationship with a plant, it is a full sensorial experience. [Laughter] 

You're describing some of those touch points. And then there's also almost, beyond the five senses, that memory piece, that piece that we can't really describe. It's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. 

 so now tell us, if you could wave a magic wand and have the world that you would like to experience as it is, what would that feel like? How would you experience that?

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: Another way that I think of this question is like, if I had one superpower, what would it be? [Laughter] 

Making as many gardens as possible. [00:14:00] All that stretch of green and the highways, all the lawns, turning all of that into food and medicine. No lawn left untouched. [Laughter] so much would change just from that. Like Everyone has food because we're growing all the food that we need. And all that abundance of food is bringing us to preserve all that food. That means we need to then come together and learn these skills for preserving.

 That means we need to come together to tend to the land. All of the resources and all the seeds and beautiful soil is available so we can do it and we have the time to do it and money for jobs are going towards that. Everyone is growing food and medicine, not just for ourselves, but for all the pollinators and all the animals. And we're spending our time restoring and tending to the ecology. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Oh my gosh, I'm, I love it. [Laughter] I'm so happy. [00:15:00] I can see it. Oh my gosh. 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: Yeah, no, it's that when you're talking about more jobs on the market, why can't we just create the important jobs [Laughter] that are actually bringing healing?

Emily Race-Newmark: Totally. If I had to summarize what you just said, it starts with the plants. Because like, if those gardens were there, then you're basically describing a shift in our orientation to what matters and how we work to one another. 

You're already starting to answer my second question, which is, in your vision, what does our relationship look like with plants and with one another as other humans?

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: They're intertwined with everything—f rom the cup of coffee that someone might be having in the morning to piece of toast, that's the wheat. It comes from just our own personal relationship of beginning to notice the ways that the plants are existing in our life.

Not just outside or for beauty, but how we're taking in plants through our food. Recognizing the plants that are growing [00:16:00] through the concrete, all of those expressions of nature—j the plants are connected to everything else.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah. In practical terms, how do you actually engage in that relationship? 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: I've spent a lot of time making gardens, and the first thing that I look at is the soil. I'm like, "oh, this is just rock so I'm going to spend time growing the soil and planting plants that are good for the soil and thinking about all the microorganisms that are there."

That's been such an exciting experience for me of getting to tend to the plants because they're growing themselves, but create the conditions. right? Being in that practice invites me into listening, and I've seen the ways that in coming to that relationship from a place of listening and tending, plans start appearing —even that I didn't plant. 

I'll never forget, at my parents, my brother and I spent two [00:17:00] years setting up these terrace beds— an homage to our ancestors and terracing. This was just a lawn before, and how ramps just started to return. Like a trillium disappeared. It felt like these native plants felt like they could return to this land because they would be safe there, and they could be in their full expression there. 

What's so interesting in that response, too, is it's again reminding us of the interconnection of things. You're not looking at the individual plant per se, but the overall environment—the conditions, all those other relationships that support that with the plant. It's a whole mindset shift. 

How would you describe your vision for wellness, health? What would that look like in your ideal world? 

My brother one day was like, "it should be as easy as getting a pack of cigarettes or a beer at the corner store to be able to get some herbs."

That is [00:18:00] one of the motivations behind Plants to the People. Part of the vision is more accessibility for the plants, more accessibility and resources going towards growing herbs and urban environments and putting that power and responsibility in people's hands who actually know how to grow these herbs and know how to make medicine from them. 

More accessibility to receiving and being able to access plants that are culturally recognizable to us. When I say us, immigrant communities.

Emily Race-Newmark: It's interesting back to your first thread of this vision with the gardens everywhere. I was loving this vision. I was living there, and then I got this contrasting flash of all of the medical industrial complex, basically, and all the components of that and all the ways in which we've related to health through the lens of what capitalism has basically created through that lens.

 Part of your vision is there's so much freedom and access there and we've detached that from [00:19:00] the hands of capitalism itself, and this idea that you have to even have a certain amount of money to have such access. The contrast is really insane. 

What is your vision for community within all of this? [Laughter] 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: I'm really thinking about that right now, because I have so many communities that exist in different moments in different places. 

Right now I've been thinking a lot about community from a zip code perspective.

Who are my neighbors? Who are they? What are their names? What are we aligned with? What are we not aligned with? How can we support each other even if we're not aligned with certain values. What are the resources we have that we're open to sharing?

You don't all need to have a snowplow in upstate New York. 

I'm in that space of being really curious of what that looks like, especially living rurally right now and you need to drive everywhere, and really feeling that isolation—especially in [00:20:00] the winter time.

My vision that I'm feeling is important right now is, knowing who the people I live around are and strengthening that and being in conversation and in that process. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Yep, I share that reflection. And I also, just bring it to the local street that I live on, because to your point, I may not share values, like each of us who share a street, but how can we still be in relationship with one another? 

The initial response to that, what I heard from you, especially because of Herban Cura, I'm assuming is you have these communities all over the world, even spread out geographically.

And that is also such a beautiful resourcing thing in the way that we can connect virtually now, but it can be limiting if it further isolates us in our own backyard. So,

If people could take an immediate action in this moment, as they end this podcast, what would that be? 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: For folks who are looking to find where to orient, there's so many problems in the world [00:21:00] and so many people and issues that need tending to. And going back to the zip code piece is looking to our immediate community. What is happening around us? What is needed right now?

And what are the ways that we can give our attention and our time and resources to addressing injustices that are happening right in front of us? 

 There's often this tendency to look outside to other countries, to other places, and all the overwhelm that that creates. That's happening right here.

What can we do within our capacity, within the resources that we have? And what can we give our attention to that's going to be consistent? It's also going to be coming from this both humble and authentic place.

Emily Race-Newmark: Well, I really appreciate your time and just who you are, and how you're leading in your life. Thank you so much for everything that you shared with us today.

I wish we had more time. It was so beautiful to get this snippet of your [00:22:00] vision and how you're already planting seeds for that now. 

Antonia Estela Pérez, Herban Cura: Thank you so much. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. 

If Antonia's messages spoke to you and you want to dive deeper, here's a couple of ways to do so. 

You can sign up for the, This Is How We Care newsletter, where each week you will receive practices and prompts in your inbox from Antonia and our other guests, all with the intention of making it accessible to start embodying this world that Antonia is dreaming of today. 

You can also work directly with Herban Cura by checking out their website, HerbanCura.com, you can also visit them on social media. All of this is linked under the show notes for this episode at this www.thisishowwecare.Com.

 Please consider sharing this episode with the folks in your life that you think it would resonate with, or those who would be inspired by this conversation. Through sharing, you are helping to connect more people to what they care about, to see a vision for what's possible, and to take small steps to embodying what truly matters to them, aligning their life with their values.

Through this, we are co creating a world that embodies [00:23:00] collective care.

episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Anne, with editing from Andrew Salamone, and music by Eric Weisberg.