Maria Leyva stared out the window. She was quiet, pensive. She could feel and hear her sister, Dolores A. Flores, who passed away eight years ago.
βMy sister always had a desire to help people,β Leyva said as her eyes welled with tears of memory. βI still get emotional.β
Flores was a healer, a herbalist. In her community, the Yoeme, she was a cuandera, a wise woman who knew the healing powers of herbs, roots and plants.
Flores learned the old ways from her mother, who learned from her mother. And Flores also learned from the ways of Western medicine.
For her work in the Yaqui communities, the alternative-medicine clinic at New Pascua on South Camino de Oeste will be named after Flores on Thursday. It is a fitting tribute for a woman who labored to improve the physical and mental health of those in her community.
Floresβ daughter, Rosa Mendoza, a senior analyst in the Pascua Yaqui Health Department, said her mother was largely responsible for creating the alternative-medicine program. The Yoeme in Southern Arizona, largely separated from the Yoeme in Sonora, Mexico, had over the decades lost their traditional ways.
Flores changed that.
βShe was determined. She was focused,β said Mendoza of her mother, who died two days shy of her 65th birthday in 2006.
Her motherβs education began as a child, growing up with her four siblings in a Yaqui enclave in Barrio Libre in South Tucson. She attended Ochoa Elementary School and at home she acquired the tried and true healing methods from her mother and her paternal grandmother, Maria Carlota Alvarez Tapia, who was called βhaaka,β Yoeme for βgrandmother.β
Haaka was born in the Yuma area in the 1800s. She was of many Yoeme who had fled Mexico because of the persecution of the Yaquis. In addition to being a cuandera, Floresβ haaka was a licensed midwife who delivered more than 50 babies here, said Mendoza.
Flores accompanied her haaka, who went to the homes of people who were ill or giving birth. Flores observed. She listened. She assisted.
By the time Flores was in high school, she left to work to help support the family. She worked as a domestic. Later her children were born. While she struggled as a young mother raising a family, Flores eventually took her children to Phoenix, where she enrolled in a nursing program. Flores understood the importance of health. In her early 30s, she was diagnosed with lupus and later developed arthritis, her daughter said.
Regardless of her economic or health challenges, Mendoza said, her mother put everyone ahead of herself.
She was a tough cookie,β said Floresβ sister.
After nursing school, Flores and her children returned to Tucson. She earned her high-school-equivalency diploma and enrolled in Pima Community College.
Flores was still in search of her calling.
Five years after her beloved haaka died at the age of 94 in 1992, Flores went to work at the Pascua Yaqui Health Department. She joined the alternative-medicine program.
Flores would use thousands of years of knowledge to bring holistic remedies and relief to many. She would apply ointments or distill herbs in water to drink. She used oils and mixtures passed on by her haaka.
She also treated her patients with words, educating people how to improve their diets with native plants and foods. Flores also traveled to Sonora to consult with other healers and over time returned with the cuanderos and cuanderas to Pascua to heal and pass on the knowledge.
Mendoza said her mother, despite her own illness, rarely missed a day at the clinic.
Her mother, who was recognized nationally and internationally, was also diligent in documenting her knowledge and work, hoping that others will learn and continue the work inspired over centuries.
Despite her diligence, Leyva β who taught Yoeme for nine years at Pima College, initiated the Language Development program for the Pascua nation and served as the former health director β said her sister disdained bringing attention to herself.
βThatβs a true Yaqui,β said Leyva.
