The Legacy of Father Sun
Joyful, humble, and wise, the last Cocama ayahuasquero of the Colombian Amazon has no one to inherit his path: neither his children nor grandchildren have wanted to learn. Faithful to his grandfather’s teachings, he prepares his remedy without chacruna, the visionary companion to ayahuasca. “I’m interested in healing, not hallucination.” Will another original expression of Indigenous knowledge vanish with him?
Rogelio Carihuasari was baptized with ayahuasca by his grandfather; however, he has not passed this knowledge on to his descendants.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 169 of Cáñamo magazine, January 2012.
In the darkness of the maloca, Don Rogelio Carihuasari and his patient talk about pain and remedies. The mareación (dizziness) has subsided; it has left them open to communication. They recall other visitors and their illnesses, fears, reactions, gratitude. I remain lying down, regaining sobriety, uncomfortable with something that remains inside me and hasn’t come out: a bad thought, a residue in my digestive system. Night sounds: toads, crickets, birds. Don Rogelio: “Plants aren’t like Western medicine, where this one is for your kidney, this one for your brain… And in the end, if this one is for your brain, suddenly it can harm your heart or your vision or whatever. But ayahuasca, which I really like, you don’t know how far it heals: if your bone hurts it heals, if you have swollen glands it heals… The plant heals your whole body and you function, in other words, well. It’s the hand of the creator in your body.”
A final chant to close the ceremony. “If anything’s left over we’ll vomit again. But just a little. The dizziness has passed.” Movement of the chacapa (a rattle made of dry leaves); melodic whistle; humming; and…
Thank you, grandpa,
for being here.
Chuma medicine,
chuma, chuma.
Ayahuasca is being taken.
Take medicine,
take, take medicine.
Here comes the light,
let’s go from here.
Here comes the light,
let’s go from here.
for being here.
Chuma medicine,
chuma, chuma.
Ayahuasca is being taken.
Take medicine,
take, take medicine.
Here comes the light,
let’s go from here.
Here comes the light,
let’s go from here.
None of the elements of this sophisticated healing knowledge is folkloric or ornamental: the moment the master begins to sing, to the rhythm of the chacapa, the mareación (which had subsided) returns to my body, provoking intense yawning and nausea. How can music trigger the purge? I vomit what remained inside, release some ill feeling. The music stops; I hear: “Oh, grandpa! Thank you, grandpa!” The voice sounds like a lament.
Next to her patient, Anitalia Pijachi, in the moments before the ceremony, lighting a cigarette. Tobacco is present throughout the healing process.
ressist to dispossesion
Regret for lost splendor: in mythical times the Cocama lived with Father Sun, who taught them to hunt, fish, build houses, plant… to live. After this, he left, leaving them his wife, the sentimental Yuratamia, always crying, Mother of Water (Life), in the form of an Anaconda; and their daughter, Panisita, kind mediator in disputes, transformed into Ayahuasca, remedy for ailments, teacher of healers. With the protection of these divinities and the knowledge acquired, the ancient Cocama dominated the upper course of the Amazon River for centuries.
Then colonization, the disaster. “They killed our grandparents and took our children. The first thing they did was to finish off the sages, because the elders were the ones holding the war: you have to kill those elders, take the children and put them in a training place to overturn the culture.” Is Don Rogelio talking about the conquest (genocide), the missionaries (agents), their reductions (concentration camps) and their evangelization (indoctrination), the punitive expeditions (massacres)? As if he spoke of today’s state schools (flags, anthems, constitutions), modern society of excited professionals, the discrediting of the old wise men (useless).
Don Rogelio’s children, although they took ayahuasca from a young age, did not want to learn the mysteries. “None of them. They want nothing. They just want to watch TV. Sometimes, since I have a little work, I have a group… I ask: ‘Who will participate? Because your mom is a little tired and I want someone…’ ‘I don’t want to.’ What can we do? It’s not mandatory.” It’s not mandatory; it demands sacrifice and renunciation, sincere commitment. The knowledge is lost, resignation: “Everything that happens is divine work. God has not wanted that knowledge to flow so that… for what, perhaps?”
Nostalgic memories: the grandfather’s maloca, somewhere on the Amazon River between Iquitos and Leticia, 1940s, 20th century. “At that time we were all baptized with ayahuasca. They make the ayahuasca sing, and they hold it and put it on the forehead, on the sole of the foot, on the hand, and on the chest.” A self-sufficient way of life, already threatened by the market economy and its goods: axes, cloth, needles, shotguns were common… The bosses with their businesses: extract (destroy), money, enslave, displace, disintegrate. The missionaries doing their thing: repress, convert.
But the grandfather still walked among the family houses, healing: “Over there the firewood was missing, over there the fish, the meat… Over there an argument with the sister. They already wanted to say anything to him. Then he said: ‘No. An evil spirit entered. We have to fix this.’ And he would go get his ayahuasca.” He prepared the remedy, called the whole family to the maloca, spoke: “Life is bad because we are forgetting our god. There is an evil spirit. Father Sun sent the ayahuasca so that when the maloca is like this, everything is fixed in that way.” And he gave it to old women and babies, children and adults. “He started moving his little leaf… During the time the drink was working, he didn’t stop moving his leaf, singing. Why? Because that leaf is enchanted, it is a little broom that is cleaning everyone’s body, that’s why they vomit and expel everything. And he sings and sings and sings. Until everyone has vomited, he stops singing, grabs his tobacco, smokes, takes care of his people. He blows, blows, blows.” Magical-religious? Everyday-prosaic? “That was to keep the people in good condition without problems. That’s why the old elders took it and gave it to the people.”
Don Rogelio lives on the Colombian shore of the Amazon River, near the community of Santa Sofía.
And the boy Rogelio: baptized with ayahuasca, cured and, one day, isolated in the chagra (plantation): he couldn't speak, he couldn't relate to anyone but his grandfather, he couldn't eat so many foods! Dieting, learning to heal, taking ayahuasca, dreaming: "The mother of ayahuasca has no comparison. When she shows you her face, her body, her beauty, you can't even look. I kept taking ayahuasca with my grandfather. 'It will come to you, keep dieting.' 'What will that ayahuasca be like?' Then I took a dose and the ayahuasca opened the hallucination for me: I was standing on the shore of a calm sea and I realized that a speedboat was coming, with tremendous speed. When it reached the beach it stopped and that unknown fairy formed. I cannot compare her beauty. She walked and arrived and touched my head. She looked at me... I know she laughed because I couldn't manage to look, because I couldn't bear it. And she left me. The second day I told my grandfather. 'It has come to you, son. When she touched your head she came to give you your gift, but you must not heal yet.'"
Despite the gift, the little boy did not continue with his preparation: protected by the plant (attractive); shaken by the anxieties of puberty (tempted). "One wants the girls and when your body is well protected, how the women come! They caress you... Old women. Young girls. Oh, I don't know what! Your body is attractive and one at eleven years old... Damn, gosh! It's another life already. You're entering adolescence, you need more outlets. Already the man... That's why as an adult you can't learn. You can be stuck six months in those conditions but in five minutes you fall apart."
He turned his back on his grandfather the day a woman took him to the chagra... The girls and the old women looked for him at bath time... One afternoon they "found him, but they found him, hahahaha"... And the little boy (unwilling seducer), didn't think about diets or plants, he copulated and copulated: pregnancies here, furious husbands there. Ayahuasca, radical aphrodisiac: "You stay like the rooster. You stay like a viagra, damn. Superior to viagra because viagra is for a while and ayahuasca moves your whole body and you start to stay... Damn! To work all night long." And of course: he left (expelled) from his town. He moved: the jungle in multiple dimensions: rivers, cities, countries... Seventeen years experimenting, maturing; then the return to the family town, and stability: a woman, children, chagras, jobs, money.
Don Rogelio and his wife, having fish soup for breakfast.
discovery
With the birth of his children, don Rogelio, who had not taken ayahuasca since he separated from his grandfather, reconnected with the remedy. "Any little illness, I would cure them. When the little boy cried. Damn! Your tobacco! Brrrrr! Tatatatatata! The medicine that comes." For decades, the remedy remained restricted to the family circle, until in the late nineties a European traveler stayed at don Rogelio's house for several days. One night, don Rogelio cured his son; the woman discovered the ceremony; she asked; she requested to take it... She left happy, communicated her discovery to friends, there were more visits, always "by referral." And regularly, from Australia, Catalonia, Argentina or Japan, people began arriving at the community of Santa Sofía asking for don Rogelio. This unexpected influx resulted in an attempt to set up a tourist business, with infrastructure, laws and records (and folkloric performances). Today the "complex" is deteriorated and don Rogelio humbly offers his house and his kitchen, his daily work.
Don Rogelio's energy is surprising, as he has already passed seventy: muscular limbs, tireless work, perpetual good humor. Every summer he continues making a new chagra to feed the family: clearing forest, letting it dry, burning, planting... He likes to work without clothes, just with rubber boots and underwear (loincloth). "When I got a woman and had my children, since then I have to make chagra, feed them. That's why I plant my fruit trees, so that when I'm gone something remains for them." The land around his house is very fertile: várzea soils that the Amazon river floods for a couple of months in winter, enriching the earth with the sediments it carries from the Andes. He has several hectares in production: cassava, corn, rice...
Also ayahuasca: in search of it we walk through his fallows (old chagras). We find a tree in the thicket embraced by a vine, not so thick nor so old. Don Rogelio looks at it attentively, searching for the adequate piece. I photograph. He is concentrated, hieratic. He lights a cigarette: "Ayahuasca cannot be resorted to in vain. One cannot call these beings without a good reason. It cannot be a mockery." He blows smoke again: "Tobacco is a gift to the plant." He buries the butt at the foot of the tree. We don't cut from there, we continue searching. More lands formerly worked by Rogelio; he came to have up to fifty hectares in production. Another tree, another vine embraces it: the cigarette, the blowings. This time he does harvest, a thin and not very long piece; enough for the ceremony we are going to celebrate.
“Tobacco is a gift to the plant,” says Don Rogelio after blowing the smoke.
healing, not hallucinating
The pounding begins at five in the morning: the hammer against the vine on the anvil. “To work on this here, you must have no interruptions at all. You sleep peacefully, the day breaks, five in the morning, you take your tobacco, blow it up your nose, and start pounding. You don’t need boys yelling: ‘Ah, damn! Get out of here!’ ‘Hey, woman! Why don’t you watch where…?’ Nothing, nothing… You’re working with your noble heart, hoping that this remedy… How many people might take it? But it’s a hope that when they take it, things will go well, not badly. I always say what my grandfather said: ‘The spirit is right, we are bad. And if we’re going to ask for that divine power to come close, hopefully your heart is noble, happy, joyful, open to receive that power.’”
In the pot: crushed cigarettes on the bottom, crushed ropes, rainwater. Fire. One ingredient missing: chacruna, carrier of the magical DMT molecule. For Don Rogelio (as for his grandfather), it is of lesser importance: “Chacruna is the perfume of ayahuasca; it’s a little purge that accompanies it to give it something… in a noble way. I don’t add it. My ayahuasca alone. What interests me is only healing, and chacruna is something to hallucinate; but you hallucinate gently. It also heals, it’s a little remedy. But the leader is the ayahuasca.”
The infusion cooks; the plant remains are removed with a strainer; it is put back on the fire. The remedy acquires its characteristic thickness and color. Don Rogelio remains absorbed until suddenly he breaks his silence with a cheerful: “How beautiful! Thank you very much!” Then: “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!” He sits by the fire, smokes a cigarette, blows the smoke over the mouth of the pot. Then he traces circles with both arms above it. Finally, he whistles a melody. “How beautiful!”
The preparation of the drink requires calmness, good spirits, and a whole series of ritual gestures.
The day passes, light meal, night arrives. At seven we sit around don Rogelio. He has the habit of conversing with his patients until nine, when the generator of the nearby community goes silent. The taking requires silence, darkness. It's a full moon but the maloca without windows protects us from the light. Don Rogelio, seated on the ground, with crossed legs, eyes closed and solemn tone, thanks his grandfather, the divinity, and relativizes his merit: "In the world they say I am the master, the shaman...", he lets out a little laugh. "My poor knowledge has reached a point I didn't expect but I thank this deeply... It must be for something: someone has felt good, has acquired something they needed. But I am not the one who controls, because the plant always controls you; sincerely we don't cure, it's the plant, the spirit."
He earnestly asks us to prioritize, to concentrate on one problem: "Of so many needs we have there is one that is superior that prevents us from being happy. That is what you have to say: 'That is my problem.' And with great force I warn you: you overcome that priority problem that doesn't let you be happy in life and of the rest there are no more problems because by overcoming that difficulty you have overcome all your problems." He emphasizes gravely that the treatment's efficacy depends on the patient's commitment: dietary restrictions in the following days and three weeks of sexual abstinence. "Any person who takes this and doesn't comply with it becomes even leprous, and go get yourself cured! Please, if you have doubts don't do it. He who has doubts does it mocking the plant. His mockery doesn't go well for him, it's damage he's causing himself. If you fail, don't diet well, spots break out on you, you become allergic, it can cause any damage to your body. That is very bad." His warnings prepare the spirit.
The time arrives. He pours ayahuasca into a small glass: tobacco blowings, songs. "One minute of total silence, of rest for our mind, to be able to deliver our problem into the hand of our creator, to thus be free of everything and do what we are doing: to be able to take this substance from that blessed plant that our father left." The decisive moment: "Don't make a mistake. We are not playing. Many people have come to see us. What I want is to ask you if you are truly going to take it. It's very important that you say it. Yes or no?"
Yes.
The taking.
The song.
The cleansing.
And the lament: "Oh, grandpa! Thank you, grandpa!"
