Ethnobotany in Mexico: History, Development, and Perspectives

Abstract

Ethnobotany is defined as the study of the traditional botanical knowledge of different cultures, the techniques utilized in the use and management of plant resources, and the place they have in their cultural Cosmo vision. This study aimed to review the development and perspectives of ethnobotany in Mexico, based on an extensive review of all ethnobotanical studies showed at the Mexican Botanical Congress (MBC), the main forum of ethnobotanical studies in Mexico, between 1963 and 2010. We systematized a total of 897 works, identifying their progressive increase in the generation of investigative papers up until 1990, then a decrease until 1995 and a new increase from 1995 to the present. The main Mexican institutions studying ethnobotany are the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Universidad Autonoma Chapingo, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, and the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, which produced nearly half of all the studies recorded. The best represented cultural groups studied were the Maya, Nahua, Otomi, Totonac, and Mixtec, studied under the predominant approach of descriptive ethnobotany. Ethnobotany in Mexico is in a stage of growth and therefore in the phase of consolidating its approaches, particularly in the areas of ecological, economic, quantitative, and evolutionary ethnobotany. In order to achieve the development of sustainable management strategies of plant resources, it is of the highest priority to consolidate ethnobotanical research and direct it towards the analysis of environmental degradation and solutions.