Ethnobotany approach taperas of maroon communities of Alcântara, Maranhão, Brazil

Abstract

Introduction The town of Alcántara has the second oldest city in the state of Maranhão, which had its splendor even at the time of colonial Brazil, when it emerged as a major producer of sugar cane and cotton. The agrarian history of the city is old, dating back more than three centuries. Founded in 1648, was an important Maranhão region because besides the production of sugar cane and cotton producing cattle , salt, and food crops, mainly cassava, maize, rice and beans, reaching its best productive time in the mid-nineteenth century. 1,2 After the golden age, established the plantation system of the crisis in Brazil, weakening the local economy and affecting the agricultural system. As a result of non-recovery of this production system, which had in its slave labor force majeure, blacks were abandoned on the land where once were enslaved, verifying the formation of a peasantry marked by tracts of land transfer to former slaves , setting