Serra Malagueta

My name is Juvina Borges Tavares and I am president of the Serra Malagueta Cultural Association. I had two husbands, the first left the community six months after our marriage: at the time, as today, many young people left for Portugal, he did not return. The second one has been gone for twenty-two years. I have my children, my animals and my plants. In Serra Malagueta we are all farmers, the soil is very fertile and the vegetation is dense: we have banana, papaya, mango, passion fruit and guava trees. By working you can get everything: sweet potatoes and potatoes, cassava, pumpkin and carrots, zucchini and beans. Since we moved close to the road it has become much easier to sell the plants I grow, which I dedicate myself to as you can see here, at home, now I'm old and I no longer go down to take care of the animals and the fields.

At home I have marmulano, which is used to make ointments to treat burns, which is difficult to cultivate: the plant is very fragile when small, you have to be careful with what you put near it. Here I have tortolho, which has anti-inflammatory properties, and lingua-de-vaca, which is good for sleeping and treating flu. With the roots of purgueira, an oil is obtained with which rheumatism is cured and newborn babies are massaged. and alleviate the pain of childbirth. The Dragoeiro (dragon tree)? It is an endemic tree, in Serra Malagueta we have very tall trees, some reaching twenty meters. It grows slowly and the oldest are a thousand years old. Here we know how to obtain a healing serum, sangue draga : the red resin of the branches cures flu, fever, rheumatism.