The Flower of Secrets
Canachiari, toé, borrachero, burundanga, angel’s trumpets, or little bells—these are some of the names given in the Americas to what Western science has classified as Brugmansia. Beneath the delicate beauty of its flower, this plant conceals extraordinary and unsettling properties.
The beautiful flower of the Brugmansia has inspired various names across South America: floripondio, toé, little bells, angel's trumpets. For the Shipibo: canachiari.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 140 of Cáñamo magazine, August 2009.
From the table in my little house without doors, open to anyone who wishes to enter, a pair of glasses and a USB drive have disappeared in my absence. After confirming the theft, I report it to the authorities of the Indigenous community where I live: Vencedor, a small village of the Shipibo people in the Peruvian Amazon. The incident sets off a chain of events that reveals the unique relationship the forest’s Indigenous people maintain with plants.
First, the neighbors express concern, and beneath their apparent calm, a strong desire to find the thief begins to stir. The first step is to call an extraordinary assembly, attended by nearly everyone in the community. The villagers discuss in their language how to resolve the problem of the theft. It’s striking to see them so concerned and yet so relaxed, without tension: some lying about lazily, others laughing at the speaker’s jokes. Only the authorities remain serious, moderating the discussion. They ask me to describe the stolen items. I explain that they are reading glasses that only work for me, but I stress that the important thing is the little device, where I’ve stored months of work.
After half an hour of speeches, the authorities leave the building. They pass by me in silence, solemn, upright. “They’ve gone to visit the doctor,” another villager beside me informs. “Don’t worry, Carlitos, because Pedro is going to take his canachiari and he’s going to find it.” The mention of canachiari—the name the Shipibo give to Brugmansia—causes amused excitement among the people. “We’re going to do some investigation! We’re definitely going to find it!”
Pedro Pérez and one of the ways to come into contact with the spirit of the plant, on the night of the “investigation.”
the doctor's investigation
Although very few Shipibos have experienced the mysterious world of the canachiari, everyone fully trusts that, thanks to the power of the plant, the stolen object will be found and the thief discovered. This is precisely one of the main traditional uses for which the doctors—that is, the sabedores, that is, shamans—of the Shipibo and other Amazonian ethnic groups have traditionally used Brugmansia. The doctor entrusted with the “investigation” is Pedro Pérez, a lean, small man with skin loosened by sixty years of life, forty-five of which he has devoted to learning from the master plants. With a distracted air, Pedro assures that “the canachiari is a trunk that knows a lot and teaches many things.” “If you are here and want to see your wife, who is far away, you take the canachiari and it takes you to see your wife. You see if she is cultivating, if she is cooking…” or if she is with another man—he forgets to say—but that is another typical use of Brugmansia: controlling infidelity.
After accepting the task of finding the thief, the doctor goes to his garden, where he grows two plants about four meters tall, although this shrub or small tree can reach up to ten meters. There he picks four large leaves about 30 or 40 centimeters long and about 15 centimeters wide. While doing so, he explains one of the most common ways to consume this powerful plant: an infusion made from two leaves, but he warns about the danger of taking it this way. “Just a little bit,” he says, marking a couple of centimeters between his thumb and forefinger over the imaginary wall of a glass. He assures that when a higher dose is needed, the dizziness can last up to three days. “You have to be very strong. Not everyone can endure it.”
I witness the second method of administration that same night. Pedro arrives at my house carrying his mosquito net and a bag from which he takes the four Brugmansia leaves. He asks me where I kept the things that were stolen. “On the little table.” After setting up the mosquito net, he sits next to the table and says, “Here I’m going to do my work.” Then he places two leaves on his forehead, two on the nape of his neck, and ties them to his head with a cord. “You put them on at seven in the evening, and at twelve the dizziness will come.” Then he leans his head on the table and begins a prayer in Shipibo. Afterward, he gets into the mosquito net and invites me to get into mine and remain silent. Just before dawn, I hear Pedro packing up and leaving.
The Shipibo maestro Roger López gathers canachiari leaves in San Francisco de Yarinacocha.
explorers and industry
The Brugmansia is a genus of six species in the nightshade family, native to the subtropical regions of South America. Initially, it was considered part of the genus Datura because it is closely related, although later it was classified in a separate genus. It is suspected that the indigenous discovery of Brugmansia’s properties comes from knowledge of its close relative, datura, which the Asian ancestors of Native Americans brought to the New World when they crossed the Bering Strait perhaps thirty thousand years ago. In South America, they noticed the similarity between datura and Brugmansia, tried it, and discovered it had similar properties.
European travelers and explorers reported its use since the 16th century. According to a 1589 report from Tunja — a city in the Colombian Andes — among the Muiscas: “When a chief died, he was accompanied to his hut by his wife and his slaves, who were buried in different layers of the earth, which contained gold. So that the wife and the poor slaves would not fear their death, before seeing their horrible tombs they were given a drink prepared with a mixture of intoxicating tobacco and the leaves of the tree we call borrachero — another name for Brugmansia — so that their senses would not perceive the harm that would soon befall them.” Other notable explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as De la Condamine, Von Humboldt, and Bonpland, also observed its use among various indigenous groups. An interesting description of the plant’s effects comes from the Swiss naturalist Johann Tschudi in Peru in 1846: “The native fell into a heavy stupor, fixed his expressionless eyes on the ground, his mouth remained convulsively closed, and his nostrils dilated. After fifteen minutes, his eyes began to roll, foam came from his mouth, and his whole body was seized by terrible convulsions. Once these violent symptoms passed, a deep sleep followed that lasted several hours. When the subject recovered, he recounted the details of the visit he made to his ancestors.”
Could that deep sleep described by the chronicler be what medical literature knows as coma? Because that is precisely one of the consequences that, according to pharmaceutical industry research, can result from a high dose of scopolamine, the most important active ingredient in Brugmansia. Overdose can even lead to death. Today, the pharmaceutical industry markets several medications based on scopolamine, and their indications are varied: to combat dizziness and vomiting typical of travel, as an antiparkinsonian and antispasmodic, when for various medical reasons it is necessary to reduce secretion by glands... And a curious indication: as an antidote for overdose of hallucinogenic mushrooms like Amanita muscaria.
Besides its healing and divinatory properties, the Brugmansia is one of the favorite plants in South American gardens. In the photo, a plant on a street in Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon.
the canachiari diet
“Long ago no shipibo would steal because they knew they would be discovered,” says the maestro from San Francisco de Yarinacocha, Roger López, whose grandfather was an expert in canachiari. “My grandfather smoked a lot to dream, to vision some problem. For example, we heard that a big storm was coming… He smoked and smoked… Oh, nothing is going to happen yet. Sometimes things he wanted to discover. For example, we heard it was thought that a certain relative had died or was lost. Then he would take some to look, and he said: No, there he is, he’s coming. He’s not dead.” Roger remembers the stories his grandfather passed on about how the ancient shipibos acquired this knowledge. “The Great Meraya – shipibo term for chamán, literally: the one who finds – took his ayahuasca one night and reached the sun, around which are the little birds of the sun. They invited him to continue to the center of the sun. There he contacted the cana birds, the spirits of the canachiari, beautiful birds of sky blue color. Later the little bird came down to earth and gave him the knowledge of the plant.”
In the back of his house, Roger has a canachiari plant, which is generally planted far from the comings and goings of humans, although in cities it is very common to find it in private gardens and public parks, floriculturists ignorant of its hallucinogenic properties. “It’s a plant with very strong energy, that’s why we don’t let children get close, because a child can have a shock: vomiting, diarrhea, at night they won’t be able to sleep, they feel like someone is coming. And a girl or woman with menstruation cannot pass near a plant because it can harm her. It is a sacred plant, not a joke. Much respect for everyone.” While gathering the leaves he sings the same song his grandfather used to sing: “Spirit of the canachiari, give me good dizziness. Make me know your world. Teach me your healing power.” The shipibos distinguish four types of canachiari, based on the flower color: white, yellow, pink, and purple. Academic botany, on the other hand, distinguishes six species within the genus Brugmansia.
The destination of the leaves Roger collects is the Suipino Center for Natural Medicine, which he himself founded four years ago. Every year, hundreds of people from all over the world pilgrimage to Suipino seeking either healing or the learning of shamanic healing techniques based on plants. Martin, a 28-year-old Slovak, has been learning for two months. The process requires respecting what the shipibos call “diet.” During the diet Martin has abstained from sexual relations, socially isolated himself, and maintained a strict diet that excludes alcohol, sugar, salt, oil, and certain meats and fish. At the same time, Martin has intensely related with a planta maestro, in his case the canachiari: he has smoked it, undergone vaporizations, and taken the powerful infusion about ten times. “I am a son of the canachiari,” he solemnly states. He describes how the dizziness is: “It lasted me two nights and one day. At first you feel pain in the body, a lot of tension, dry mouth. Then everything seems normal, it doesn’t seem like you’re dizzy, but you start having visions. People appear and disappear, the earth changes color, there are green men dancing inside the tree.”
Martin has lost eight kilos since being at Suipino due to the demanding regimen followed. “I dieted with canachiari for two months, I have been connected all the time.” At the end of this period, during a ceremony in which he was under the effects of ayahuasca, the spirit of the canachiari appeared to him and gave him a canto, that is, a medicine. Along with its spiritual dimension, the canachiari leaf is used in poultices to treat various pains, especially rheumatic. To be effective it is mixed with other plants. Well crushed it becomes a paste that is kept stuck to the head with a cloth. “It’s used when there are mental problems, or when someone has smoked a lot of marijuana, a lot of drugs,” says Roger while his aunt Nora Ramos places the poultice on the head of an Australian patient and bathes the head of a Japanese couple with the same mixture.
Martin, a 28-year-old Slovak apprentice chamán, in front of a Brugmansia or canachiari plant.
mistery and outcome
After the night of investigation, Doctor Pedro Pérez meets with the authorities of Vencedor, who call for a new assembly meeting. Pedro has pointed to one of my neighbors' sons, and the authorities announce it as such. The parents deny it, but the vast majority of the community members accept the divination as true. In the afternoon, the community as a whole, with the resigned acquiescence of those accused, proceeds to search the modest house. Nothing is found. “He must have thrown it somewhere,” argues Pedro. The community remains convinced that the young man was the perpetrator of the theft.
One night later, the school teacher, also Shipibo but originally from another community, unexpectedly shows up at my house and without further ado makes a request. “I want you to let me take the canachiari here, to see if I can find where he threw it.” Then he sets up his mosquito net and the scene repeats. “Once,” the teacher recalls before the effects start, “someone stole a hundred soles and the ID from my wife, and I took the canachiari and found it.” The next day, the teacher confirms before the authorities the authorship of the theft and says the objects were thrown under a pile of grass, although he cannot specify which one.
Days pass, and routine gradually erases the traces of an episode that shook the tranquility of this community, until one morning, one of the community members appears holding a USB memory stick. He claims to have found it in some latrines; the object is in perfect condition. The glasses never reappear, and doubt will remain—for me, not for them—whether the young man took the objects or not. What is proven is the extraordinary relationship of the jungle people with plants, and their unwavering faith in the powers of their shamans, intermediaries between the material and spiritual worlds, to whom they turn in search of knowledge and healing.
