Ayoowiri
Words by Luiza Prado de O. Martins
On Monday, July 24th 2006, Dr. S. Allen Counter published an article on the first page of the Boston Globe’s Health and Science section, titled “Amazon Mystery: A medicine man understood the secrets of this plant long before we did. How?” He is talking about a plant called that responds to many names: ayoowiri, the peacock flower, Caesalpinia pulcherrima. In the article, Counter describes how years earlier, in a visit to Surinam, a medicine man named DaBuWan had told him about the plant’s uses for a series of ailments—from fever and cough, to chest pains and abortions. He was driven to write the article after encountering Western medical studies that confirmed the plant’s medical properties, just as described by DaBuWan. In his writing, he wonders—was this knowledge part of the pharmacological vocabulary of the indigenous peoples of the region, or did it arrive in the Americas carried by kidnapped and enslaved African peoples? The condescending tone of the headline and Counter’s fixation in finding a clear lineage to this knowledge irk me, stuck in my throat.
Ayoowiri is a trickster, you see. She stands at the crossroads, she is at once medicine and poison held within the same sphere. Its power hides between the cracks of words. In his compulsion to find purity in ayoowiri’s lineage, Counter refers to Maria Sibylla Merian, a Dutch naturalist and artist who was one of the first Europeans to document the existence and medicinal uses of the plant. On January 22nd 1700, she wrote:
The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of ayoowiri] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.
A couple times a year, the river is engulfed by flames.
The trees that line its margins erupt in a chaos of bright red and yellow flowers; when the time comes, their petals drop into the water and the pavement, adding to the constantly renovating mush covering the slowly flowing water: plant matter mixed with plastic bags, shampoo bottles, old clothes, food wrappers, bits of paper, broken glass, discarded magazines, metal tins, solitary plastic caps, and human waste.
The flaming trees are really two sister species: the royal poinciana and ayoowiri, so alike that they might confuse the untrained observer. Their small, oval, feather-like leaves grow on both sides of a common axis, in a formation reminiscent of ice crystals. Their flowers display similar shades of bright reds and yellows. The first flagrant difference among two young specimens is the bark: whilst the thick royal poincianas have a relatively smooth surface, ayoowiris grow large, sharp spikes throughout the length of their slim trunks. The two plants also establish vastly different relationships to the environment around them: while a royal poinciana grows to be a large, tall tree with invasive roots that destroy all pavement around it, ayoowiri is much smaller. Left to grow unattended, it will turn into a thick shrub — though it can be coaxed into the shape of a small tree with appropriate trimming. Official policy in Rio, as in many other towns and cities in Brazil, recommends ayoowiri as a plant for urban decoration.
Ayoowiri and royal poincianas grow along the Maracanã river in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. My neighbourhood, my hometown. Sometimes when walking from the bakery to the grocery store with my mother we’d pass through Maracanã Avenue. The river cuts right through the middle of the avenue, separating the vehicles going from south to north, from north to south of the city with its lazy flow.
I remember the feeling of walking under the lacy shadows offered by ayoowiri’s leaves — a feeble defense against the brutal summer sun of Rio. The sidewalks right next to the river, on both directions, are remarkably narrow, barely enough for one person. On our side of the avenue, residential buildings line the street; on the opposite side a large white wall dominates the block. Along the length of the enclosure, large olive green letters announce: “1. Battalion of the Army Police Marshal Zenóbio da Costa”.
The delicate shadows of ayoowiri leaves move like feathers on the rough texture of that wall, a dance of convoluted and painful entanglements. This complex was once headquarters to DOI-CODI, officially the intelligence and repression agency of the military dictatorship; in practice, it was a centre for the systematic torture and murder of political dissidents. Within the confines of those walls the regime took its sacrifices of blood and terror. Women in particular were targeted with unthinkable, monstrous forms of sexual violence by the agents of the State.
Though I passed the battalion countless times growing up, I was never able to see what lied past the tall, imposing barrier. I often imagine that the rough texture of those white walls is etched with every scream of those who dared to fight, and that the enclosurecontains nothing more than a massive pool of dark blood, thick from baking in the relentless sun. A mere crack in those walls could cause it to flood the entire neighborhood, a sticky wave drowning us, covering our bodies, entering our every orifice with no permission.
Under the shadow of the complex, the ayoowiri thrive. They don’t emanate quite the same sense of permanence and timelessness that large trees—like the royal poinciana—embody so well. Thin, thorny trunks, delicate leaves, fleshy fruits like bean pods, flamboyant flowers in a plant with a typical lifespan of roughly 25 years. Not that much older than many of those who disappeared forever behind the white walls of the battalion.
Ayoowiri is a shapeshifter, neither tree nor shrub; old for some, young for others. It responds to many names: krere-krere, flamboyant-mirim, sabinabloem, sidhakya, the bird of paradise, the peacock flower, flos pavonis, Caesalpinia pulcherrima. And it gives no indication of all that it can do; all that it has offered in the past, and continues to offer in the present. I wonder if it grows there on purpose; if the trees thriving along the river guard the spirits of those who were taken against their will through threshold of those white walls.