LatinX botanical epistemologies

Abstract

How is the field of Latina/o Studies concerning itself with “botanical epistemologies” in light of what scholar Claudia Milian has described as “environmental forecasts and new forms of LatinX displacements and transitions”? How have botanical epistemologies been associated with LatinX populations in the United States and its territories? How is the present-day “order of things” bringing social, economic, cultural, and ideological pressures to bear upon these epistemologies? As Chipper Wichman, Director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, explains, “plants hold the answer to mitigating climate change, feeding the hungry, providing cures for diseases, and much more” and “80 percent or more of the planet’s biodiversity exists in the tropics and approximately one third of all tropical plants are threatened with extinction.” Plants provide living creatures with food and medicines and are responsible for producing the oxygen that makes life possible. However, “the loss of biodiversity-based cultural knowledge [of plants] is widely reported, globally as well as at the level of communities and individuals.” Specifically, LatinXs have not received credit for their botanical knowledge or its practices. This essay unearths how Latina/o Studies can help us to think through the relations among “LatinX,” botany, and the crossroads of survival and extinction—what the author proposes as “LatinX botanical epistemologies.”