Don Pancho and Company
Restless girls, hurried tourists, mystical neighbors, and lively elders share one thing in common: the custom of taking ayahuasca with the most veteran master of the tri-border region. Don Pancho’s home is a healing center for locals and the favored destination for tourists seeking psychonautic experiences.
Shortly before beginning the ceremony, don Pancho blesses with icaros the small cup of ayahuasca that the girl will take. In Tabatinga, at the Triple Border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 168 of Cáñamo magazine, December 2011.
Amazonia: the virgin jungle that shelters isolated cultures, unchanged over the centuries, heirs to shamanic traditions practiced by selfless sages in exclusive esoteric circles… The cliché could go on, but a visit to the home of Don Pancho Cabral in the border town of Tabatinga is enough to understand the radical difference separating legend from the stark reality.
In Tabatinga, as in all Amazonian cities, the jungle has been replaced by urban sprawl: crumbling streets, unfinished buildings, dust and heat or mud and rain, motorcycles, sound systems, shops, schools… Over the last decade, the metastasis has worsened, and nature, passive, has retreated another step: why respect a tree if the land it shades is worth forty thousand reais? Don Pancho’s space is the exception: an oasis of cool greenery, maybe half a hectare of vegetation amid barren plots. In Don Pancho’s memory, his house was deep in the forest, a twenty-minute walk from what was then a small village. It’s hard to pinpoint when that was; his memory is vague, sometimes contradictory, though a brief biography might go like this: he was born over ninety years ago in a tiny village along a small Amazon tributary; his mother was an Indigenous Ticuna woman, born in Peru, and his father, a merchant, came from the Brazilian state of Ceará; after several adventures, Don Pancho arrived in Tabatinga at twenty-five to enlist in the army; at thirty-eight, he left to dedicate himself to plant medicine.
Today, Don Pancho’s patients fall into two categories. The first is neighbors who come to him for illness, like the very chubby baby carried by a young mother: a week ago, he began suffering from diarrhea and vomiting; at the hospital, after all kinds of tests, they were sent home with no solution. So they came to Don Pancho, who, after examining the baby, diagnosed a "stomach infection": the baby put a dirty hand in his mouth, and that’s how the sickness entered. He says the hospital doctors don’t know how to cure this because it’s not just about the remedy. "The best medicine in the world is useless without a proper diet," he declares firmly, pinching the baby’s nose and feeding him a spoonful of light brown herbal liquid. Then Don Pancho fills his pipe with tobacco, blows a melody over the bowl, lights it, smokes, and blows tobacco smoke over the baby’s belly again and again. With the resulting ash, he coats his hand and rubs it over the baby’s stomach, massaging gently. The consultation is over.
After blowing tobacco smoke over the sick baby, Don Pancho massages its belly with the tobacco ash.
pilgrim parishioners
Don Pancho is in excellent shape: lean, agile, lively. He recites the secret to his longevity: he walks everywhere; he doesn't drink alcohol; he avoids arguments with his wife; he eats little and avoids fats, coffee, meat. "That remedy we take—if you eat too much fat, it'll reject it. It likes our stomach clean." The remedy, of course, is ayahuasca. "Any sickness that comes trying to enter won't get in. The body stays closed."
In Don Pancho's maloca, the remedy is taken on Wednesdays and Saturdays, around eight in the evening. There, a motley and loyal congregation gathers. Take Erasmo, for example: smiling, plump, with round cheeks and hidden eyes, talkative. "I come to help Don Pancho sing, to tend to the patients," he explains as we wait for the ceremony to begin. He started drinking at thirty (he's now sixty-seven) because he fell ill, and the hospital couldn't help him. That's when he met maestro Ventura, who healed him and encouraged him to learn. Under his guidance, he followed the diet and began his path in shamanism. He recalls with a laugh: "It was scary to drink because so many evil spirits appeared." After letting the remedy work within him, "the cigarettes left, the drinking left," and now he doesn't even care about soccer. All that matters is "friendship, meeting people, conversation." He started drinking with Don Pancho twenty years ago... and the result? He married his daughter. Erasmo says: "Ayahuasca is a powerful remedy—it teaches all kinds of plant medicines. It shows the past and the future," and he launches into a speech about God, love, and the devil.
Then Klaus bursts in—German, burly, agitated—gulping compulsively from a water bottle. He looks around, greets everyone, and explains: he just arrived from Iquitos (a ten-hour speedboat ride) and flies to Bogotá tomorrow; he's heard about Don Pancho and wants to try ayahuasca. He debates aloud: he just broke up with his girlfriend three days ago and isn't feeling very stable. He asks my opinion. "Should I drink?" he asks between swigs. "That's up to you," I reply. Klaus, the indecisive tourist, belongs to the second category of Don Pancho's patients—those who don't consider themselves sick but seek the ayahuasca experience. The same goes for a young woman with a hippie vibe (at least in her dress), who shows up shortly after Klaus leaves. She holds the hand of an angelic child: golden curls, pale skin, rosy lips. Her son, around three years old, has already drunk three times. "This one is a taita (shaman)," she says of the boy. She's from Bogotá, came to cleanse herself, and is also heading back the next day.
Don Pancho claims the bark of the Brazil nut tree "cures cancer."
bad trips
Don Pancho Cabral is a professional in ayahuasca-based medicine: he charges for his services. It's been this way from the beginning, and now, with rampant global commercialization, even more so. He himself had to pay his teacher—"an Indian from Machu Picchu" who predicted he would have "a good path" in this knowledge and invited him to learn. Don Pancho, who at the time lived under his grandmother's care in Peru, accepted: "My grandmother paid that man. He took me into the jungle with five boys and five girls, all students. No one could enter there; only the teacher could leave to buy supplies. No one could look at outsiders, and no one could look at us." Isolation and strict diet. Salt, sugar, and bread were forbidden; they ate only green bananas and, very carefully, fish: "You couldn't break the fish's spine—you had to remove the meat with great care." Every day, they ingested a small dose of ayahuasca—not enough to induce intoxication but sufficient to open understanding. The teacher showed them how to recognize plant properties and prepare them as poultices, baths, infusions, or vapor treatments... Three times a week, ceremonies were held where ayahuasca facilitated communication with the "mothers" of the plants. If the student was diligent, these spirits would eventually deliver their message, their song, their healing power. "The fathers of ayahuasca are small. Their clothes are white, like a doctor’s in a hospital. In the ceremony, they come to tell me what illness a person has and what remedy is good for them. If there’s no cure, they tell me that too."
Don Pancho is a professional who charges, and Klaus is a tourist who pays. Though it might unsettle Klaus when, just before the ceremony begins—with everyone already seated around the shaman—Don Pancho casually gestures for "the money, because tomorrow morning I won’t be here, you’ll leave, and then you won’t pay." Klaus rummages through his pockets and scrapes together the amount. About a dozen people are present: Erasmo, Klaus, several women with their daughters (little girls with lollipops who also receive a small dose), and among them, the standout figure of Don Pancho’s brother-in-law and close collaborator: Chito Torres, a silent, elegant septuagenarian who never removes his sunglasses. Don Pancho pours the dose into a cup, blows a protective melody over it, and hands it to each patient in turn. Young Klaus is anxious: "How long until it takes effect?"
The lights go out; the first whistled melodies begin; the rhythmic shaking of the chacapa (a leaf fan); the whistles transition into songs that won’t stop for the entire ceremony, sung by Don Pancho or his assistants, whose help he calls on several times. But the most interesting part of the ceremony is the tourist’s reaction. His voice betrays distress when, as Don Pancho sings intently, he blurts out: "Can I drink water?" Erasmo whispers back: "Not now, wait until the visions pass." Klaus, agitated, insists: "But I’m really thirsty—can’t I have water?" Restless, he sits up, lies down, sits up again, sighs, and asks about the water again. He leans toward me and confesses he wants to vomit. He tries, sticking his head out the maloca’s small window, but fails. "If I had something in my stomach, I could throw up," he reasons, so he loudly asks for water again. I advise him to wait until the ceremony ends, to sit still and focus. But the German wants to go outside "to pee." I accompany him. "Can’t I drink a little water? Can’t we go to the kitchen?" Then, suddenly, a tormented confession: "I’m having bad thoughts," and he talks about his girlfriend and their breakup. Immediately after: "How long has it been? Two hours?"—though barely forty minutes have passed. He stumbles a few steps away to urinate, nearly falling; he gags but only produces guttural noises.
Don Pancho appears, having left the ceremony to get water. I pour him a glass. "Can I have another?" Klaus asks after downing it in one go. He drinks a full liter. "I’m going to try to vomit," he says, walking off; he sticks his fingers down his throat but fails again. Anxiety, distrust, disorientation, imbalance, dread, paranoia... This is how Klaus spends the hours. It’s no use when Don Pancho brings him back inside and sings beside him. "I’m having bad thoughts."
When the ceremony ends, the lights come on. The participants smile, grateful and relieved. Since they’re all locals, they prepare to walk home—all except Klaus, who seems genuinely frightened and stays behind to sleep alone in the maloca. No one pays much attention to his distress; some even joke about it.
The streets of Tabatinga are empty. I walk with Chito Torres, whose extraordinary sunglasses frame a beatific smile. He’s seventy-six and has been taking ayahuasca for thirty-five years. His outfit deserves description: sleek new black pants and shoes, a loose white shirt over his wiry frame. His hair is short, thinning but still covering his head, and jet-black—maybe dyed. He wears gold rings and a necklace. He admits he loves to dance and gives a playful demonstration, moving every joint. On Sundays at 1 PM, he meets up with some old friends to dance. "Dancing is very good for your health." He walks unsteadily, with an effusive naturalness that guarantees a night of ayahuasca.
Don Pancho pounds the ayahuasca with the help of one of his apprentices.
money in the city
A few days later, standing before a large metal pot of boiling water where ayahuasca and chacruna release their essence, the memory of Klaus's bad trip leads Don Pancho to reflect: "His body wasn't ready for the remedy; he was nervous... People like that need to come to me first: 'Don Pancho, I'm going through a hard time because of this and that...' If you're sick and go to the doctor, you explain your symptoms. But if you don't say anything, what can the doctor cure? They need to tell me what's happening. I'll blow on them, I'll fan them with leaves. Then they can drink because they'll be prepared." He criticizes Klaus's desire to stay outside the maloca: "That's more dangerous - outside there are many bad things. People can go out to urinate, but they must come right back in. Don't linger outside. Because inside I'm watching over everything, but outside I can't see what's happening."
Klaus's case perfectly illustrates what happens when a practice requiring concentration and respect gets reduced to a "trend," pursued as just another experience to collect on a tourist trip. Don Pancho insists he never calls or invites anyone to drink ayahuasca in his maloca; people seek him out from across five continents, and he shares his knowledge. In return, he asks for money - not just to support his large family, but also to buy the vines and chacruna leaves used to brew his remedy.
But money, always scarce, solves as many problems as it creates. Don Pancho's wife, Doña Celina, with whom I've barely spoken, sits down beside us. She must be over eighty and often drinks ayahuasca with her husband. Angrily, she interjects: "People come from all over the world - from Japan... Excuse me... But many have come here to take advantage of us two. Sometimes we go hungry here with so many people arriving - they take what they want and then leave forever without paying. Nobody leaves even a tip." Her anger is directed at me, the journalist. "Just like you're doing now with him - recording everything he says. When you leave here, you'll go make books and CDs and profit from it. This is our work, our profession. So many people come just to exploit him. They come here from the hospital. 'Señor Pancho, I sold my house to pay hospital doctors and never got better. With Pancho, two sessions and I'm cured.'"
Celina's anger passes like a storm, giving way to a sky-blue smile. Her complaint sounds familiar to me, and seems justified. It might paint an incomplete picture of this endearing couple if I didn't add what some Argentine travelers cleaning the garden told me: they asked for lodging in exchange for work and, without even hinting at it, have been fed generously. Don Pancho remained silent during Doña Celina's tirade, staring at his humble, forever half-built house. Around us, his granddaughters and great-granddaughters play, oblivious to the titanic battles their grandfather wages in those other worlds full of threats and opportunities: the spirit world, where he dives for energy and healing; and the market economy, to which all human activity on the planet inevitably submits.
