When Ayahuasca Becomes Business
The Golden Age of ayahuasca shamanism has begun. New prtactices are emerging thanks to alliances between local maestros and foreign therapists. It is a fascinating—and sometimes turbulent—world. The blend of spirituality and the millions of dollars that foreigners spend annually in Iquitos creates an explosive mix.
Ayahuasca has become an important tourist attraction in the city of Iquitos.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 205 of Cáñamo magazine, January 2015.
If you go to Iquitos, the same thing that happened to Sam and Harry, two Canadian financiers, could happen to you. Despite completing a satisfying seven-day ayahuasca retreat, they wanted to take it one last time before returning home. They were wandering along the tourist boardwalk when an indigenous man approached them, speaking calmly and fluently in English. He told them some jungle stories and showed a thick scar crossing his forearm. “It’s a caiman bite,” he said as if recounting a minor daily inconvenience. With his demeanor and easy speech, he gained the tourists’ trust. The conversation turned to ayahuasca. The man introduced himself as a great shaman; Sam and Harry needed no more persuasion to accept his tempting offer to take ayahuasca deep in the jungle. The experience would cost one hundred dollars per person. Expenses increased because they had to pay for transportation: first by motorized tricycle to the Nanay river port, then by boat to an indigenous community. From there, they ventured deeper into the jungle—to a first house and then further into the dense forest. The jungle’s darkness and a growing suspicion that they wouldn’t find anything remotely like the lodge they had just left weighed on them. The rough shelter with two hammocks without mosquito nets chilled their blood. Fear grew to terror when the man said he needed to fetch something at his house and left them alone. They waited a few minutes for his return, unanimously deciding to head back to the city. When he delayed, they decided to return alone—an error that could have cost them dearly. They were lucky to soon encounter the “great shaman” again and explained their decision. The man felt insulted; he wanted to prove his knowledge, but his anger softened when Harry and Sam gave him the agreed money.
It’s also possible that if you walk the streets branching off from the Plaza de Armas, a man standing at a travel agency door might scare you by shouting “ayahuasca tours,” as happened to me, and that in the next agency you see a sign advertising an “ayahuasca ceremony,” and decide to go inside. I entered, and the young man—an attentive, friendly Iquiteño—explained they have a hotel on the Amazon riverbank and that the ayahuasca ceremony is just one of many services offered, including canoe trips, Amazon navigation, adventure expeditions, and more. Traditional tourism businesses have caught onto the trend and want their share. You might feel some rejection that ayahuasca has become just another market product, but I recognize the young man spoke about the experience with respect (it has also healed him), and the sessions are well organized: ceremonies are conducted by a healer from a nearby village; participants are advised to diet the day of the ceremony; and they are clearly told that the experience will likely bring vomiting and diarrhea rather than extraordinary visions. “Ayahuasca is growing; demand keeps increasing. In the last five years, it’s spread through the internet and word of mouth. This year we have a group of sixty Italians coming for it. Hopefully, this keeps growing.” The interview ends with the key point: “The ayahuasca ceremony costs between one hundred and one hundred twenty dollars per person.”
For foreigners, the center of the entire ayahuasca system revolves around drinking ayahuasca. However, in a traditional context, it was primarily a tool for the healer to establish contact with allied spirits and, through their mediation, to heal. God is the doctor, and the songs are the medicine.
thousands and millions
Foreigners arrive by the thousands and leave millions. For them, specialized lodges proliferate, where therapies and therapists shine in their diversity. Hearing that a new establishment has been built on the Iquitos-Nauta road, on the Nanay River, or in the village of Tamshiyacu is as frequent as hearing that another one has closed: there are at least forty. In them, visitors participate in ayahuasca retreats (in Iquitos, ayahuasca speaks English, like many lodge owners). Generally, clients/patients stay in these centers for one or two weeks, follow a more or less strict dietary regimen, and take ayahuasca between two and five times a week. Prices range from two hundred dollars per day to twenty or thirty dollars in the more modest lodges, although the standard price is one hundred dollars.
It is difficult to give numbers but, conservatively estimated, about seven thousand foreigners take ayahuasca each year, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the total exceeds ten thousand or more, as retreat organizer Andy Metcalfe estimates, or that it already represents 25% of tourism in the city of Iquitos, as considers Gerald Mayeaux, a Texan living in Iquitos for several decades who was director of tourism in the city. “I have seen ayahuasca tourism go from one percent of total tourism, to five, ten, fifteen percent, and I think it could capture fifty percent of the city’s tourism.” It is hard to give exact figures, but the general impression is that the movement keeps growing, increasingly rapidly. Mayeaux, who currently owns one of the restaurants most frequented by tourists in the Plaza de Armas area, included twenty-five “ayahuasca diet” dishes on his menu a few years ago due to high demand. He says he served three thousand such meals last year. “Ayahuasca is becoming big business. Many gringos have gotten involved and that scares me because they are not shamans and may not know what to do if something goes wrong. But all places are full, and they’re doing well, and more people are getting involved, and they’re doing well.”
“Now we are in the money age, wherever you go. The other healers have confused natural medicine with business,” laments traditional doctor Juan Curico. “And those who are just entering this ayahuasca ceremony world, they speak well, they don’t talk about few resources, they speak well. They charge well too.” Of course, Juan, an honest man and healer for decades, also charges. There is no other way. Some consider it a profanation to turn this medical system into a business, where healing is considered a divine gift. It is true that formerly healers did not charge: their work was compensated with voluntary donations (food, tools, even money). But this is only partially true: the reciprocity mechanisms of Amazonian society conditioned that compensation would be given inevitably and generously; no one wanted to be labeled stingy. “Patients came to the healer… ‘Make him come up,’” Juan recalls. “He healed them. He didn’t ask for money first, but healed. When the patient was cured, they said: ‘How much do I owe you?’ ‘Well, I’ll charge you a chicken, maybe a pig…’ It’s like a gift that the patient gave the healer.”
There are many differences between that world and this one, and one is key: money was not necessary to live because fish were abundant in the river and meat in the forest, and there was land to farm, clean water, and building materials; now all of that (and everything else) requires money. Another difference is that foreigners do not sleep on the floor, nor are they content with plantain and fish, nor do they endure mosquitoes: they want to be comfortable. Also, they don’t bring chickens and, if given the chance, have the habit of leaving without paying (they dislike mixing spirit and matter). “We provide a place to stay, food, clean bathrooms, showers, so that people are more comfortable,” explains American family doctor Joe Tafur, who, together with an indigenous teacher and a Canadian painter, started Nihue Rao, a wonderful spiritual healing center. “We have eighteen workers from the village. And also we are trying to recover our investment. It wasn’t cheap to build this place.”
The lodges usually have a comfortable maloca where ceremonies and group therapies take place.
ABUSeS
The problem is not that the ayahuasca medical system is absorbed by the market economy; the problem is that the ayahuasca business (understandable, inexorable) turns into abuse, fraud, or worse, a health hazard. And all of that exists in Iquitos as well; it is not the rule, but it happens with enough frequency for Alan Shoemaker—one of the first “gringos” to set up a spiritual healing lodge and organizer of the annual international shamanism gathering in the city—to point it out. Alan recounts several cases. It is widely talked about in Iquitos that certain shamans, when they want to ensure the foreigner has a strong and visual experience, add to the remedy leaves of toé (Brugmansia sp.), which contains the dangerous scopolamine and can cause very unpleasant trips. According to Alan, scopolamine can be used for other purposes: he says that in a certain lodge they put chiric sanango (Brunfelsia grandiflora, which also contains scopolamine) in the food and drinks of patients. “And you have people in these complexes walking like zombies and following orders. And that typically means that if you were going to stay two weeks, you must stay two months. ‘I can work on your problem and make you a good ayahuasquero but you need to work with me and stay longer.’ Which means: ‘Give me your credit card because you can’t go to the city. I’ll use it, give me the code.’”
Indeed, blind trust in the maestro (often absurdly idealized as a noble and selfless person) makes newcomers susceptible to spiritual manipulation. Alan says that sometimes the ayahuasquero convinces one of his patients that he has a gift: “Last night I saw it in the ceremony. If you stay with me a year, I can teach you to be an ayahuasquero.” The foreigner, shaken by the experience and vulnerable, can radically change their life and embark on learning from a unscrupulous maestro whose greatest concern is the money he can extract. Sometimes, the enlightened risk substantial amounts of their personal assets to start lodges that never work.
Alan Shoemaker is one of the veteran “gringos” in the ayahuasca world in Iquitos. He arrived in the early ’90s and currently runs his own lodge. He warns that in recent years the economic boom of ayahuasca has attracted businessmen and scammers.
transformations
Despite some unpleasant episodes, it is precisely this encounter of two worlds that makes Iquitos a fascinating place to explore the world of ayahuasca shamanism—whether you are a therapist, researcher, patient, or simply curious. Ancient traditions merge with modern therapies to attend to a new kind of patient, with different problems and needs. From this complex interaction, the medical system changes, and ayahuasca is conceived and used differently.
It is no longer a means but an end. For healers, ayahuasca is not so much the medicine as the key to open the door to the spiritual world and connect with God and allied spirits, who determine what ailment afflicts the patient, prescribe a particular medicinal plant, and send the healing chant. Today, everything seems to revolve around the moment of drinking the bitter infusion, as it is in the ayahuasca, in its molecules, where Westerners believe the key lies.
It is no longer purge but vision. In the regional dialect, ayahuasca is also known as “the purge,” and more than to tackle a disease, it is used to cleanse the stomach and blood, expel bad energies, and attract good luck. But in the West, there is an obsession with vision: the supposed fantastic worlds it leads to take priority—supposed because the colorful visions that made Pablo Amaringo (and his disciples) famous are rarely attained. This difficulty in achieving visions is a cause of great frustration for many first-timers.
It is no longer war but love. Ayahuasca is taken in a state of spiritual warfare: healers are immersed in ruthless battles against envious witches. The healer’s work reaches its highest expression when attending a patient harmed by a sorcerer who has introduced the fearsome and painful virote (magical dart) into the patient’s body, or perhaps a dangerous animal gnawing inside. If the healer wins the battle, the disease turns against him with doubled energy; if not well prepared, he will die. Unaware of this spiritual war, foreigners see in the ayahuasca world a path toward love and self-knowledge (and many find it).
Ayahuasca, once abundant everywhere, has become a scarce commodity, found increasingly farther away and in smaller size.
overexploitation
Another major consequence is the overexploitation of the plant species used to prepare the remedy: ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) and chacruna (Psychotria viridis). Instead of working with their own plants, most lodges, especially the larger ones, buy the raw materials or the already prepared remedy, creating a complex network of cultivators, collectors, intermediaries, brewers, and sellers.
The American Ron Wheelock, besides being a dedicated ayahuasquero and owning his own lodge, is the largest producer of ayahuasca in the region. He sells the remedy to several of the most important centers in Iquitos and also to foreigners who share it in the United States or Europe. In his backyard, Ron processes about six or seven tons of ayahuasca annually. And it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive for him to find it. With Ron, I visit the house of Tripo Córdoba, an Iquitos native who specializes in bringing ayahuasca from the Marañón, Napo, or Ucayali rivers, searching in increasingly distant communities for mature ayahuasca at a good price. Tripo is on a business trip, looking for the vine. “Around Iquitos, there isn’t much left, and if you find it, it’s this size,” says Tripo’s daughter, pointing to a sack full of thin vines. “Most people who want to buy don’t want it like this; they want it thick. Very few people want it thin.” Ron needs it because he has an order to fulfill.
After buying it, we look for firewood; the usual supplier is a young man who neatly stacks thousands of sticks at his doorstep in a working-class neighborhood, just a few centimeters from noisy traffic. The wood is guacapurana, ideal for cooking. The young man has traveled several hours along the Nanay River and ventured deep into the forest, cutting down a huge tree and bringing it back. Paradoxically, the Nanay River is endemic for malaria, and the bark of the guacapurana, which is becoming scarce, is a remedy for fevers. The ayahuasca boom is adding extra pressure to the already battered Amazonian nature.
Healer Ron Wheelock is the largest ayahuasca producer in Iquitos. He uses it in his ceremonies but mainly at the request of some lodges in the area. Cooking ayahuasca requires large amounts of firewood, which adds extra pressure to the Amazonian environment.
the authentic
Just as Harry and Sam did at the beginning of this report, I enjoy the beautiful sunset over the Itaya River, on the tourist boardwalk of Iquitos. Suddenly, I sense an unsettling presence beside me; perhaps a thief, I suspect. I turn around and find a well-groomed man who inspires trust: perfectly styled black hair, white teeth, indigenous features, measured demeanor. He probably just wants to chat with a “gringo,” as foreigners are called in Iquitos. It doesn’t take long for him to reveal the purpose of his approach: he takes people into the jungle. “Adventure tourism,” he says. Then he adds with measured gravity that he also holds “the ayahuasca ceremony.” And he finishes with: “It’s not touristy, it’s authentic.”
I let him talk about the properties of ayahuasca: that it cures nerves, that when he takes it he receives visits from nature spirits, that the plants can cure any illness. His confidence is convincing. It occurs to me he might be a shaman worthy of a report, so I decide to ask a few questions to gauge his experience. “How did you learn?” For the first time, he hesitates. “My grandfather,” he finally says. A few seconds later, uneasy—perhaps thinking that’s not a convincing background—he claims he learned from an old Shipibo (Shipibo ayahuasqueros enjoy great acceptance). “In what community?” I ask, since I know the Shipibo territory well. Now his hesitation is more obvious. “San Francisco… de Asís, near Pucallpa,” he replies. But San Francisco de Asís doesn’t exist; he means San Francisco de Yarinacocha, and if he had been there, he wouldn’t have made that mistake. He continues with his spiel, knowing well the “gringo” psychology: he talks about alienation in big cities, environmental problems, visions, and spiritual revelations. But I am no longer interested in his offer. “This is my office,” he says, “in case you want to find me.” Before leaving to find another client, he looks at his watch to end the interview—and that’s when his wrist catches my attention. Not so much the wrist as the large scar crossing his forearm. He told Sam and Harry it was from a caiman bite, but by now one doesn’t know what to think.
