The Perfumes of the Grandmother
For sixty years she has waged war against the spirits that bring sickness. Her shamanic wisdom is a mixture of the rainforest, the Andean highlands, and even the fervor of evangelism. After an extraordinary odyssey, she found her place in Leticia, where she planted the seeds of a new healing tradition—one unknown in these lands until her arrival: the art of the perfumeros.
Doña Angélica Vásquez with her son Juan, shortly before beginning a "concentration."
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally publishedin issue 166 of Cáñamo magazine, October 2011.
It's five in the afternoon; the sun is setting; consultation time begins at Doña Angélica's house in the indigenous community of San José, on the outskirts of Leticia. In the kitchen with wooden walls and a palm-leaf roof, windowless, a dim orange light bulb faintly illuminates the scene: at a rustic table, Doña Angélica anoints the swollen foot of a young mestiza woman with Florida Water, an essential perfume in her healing rituals.
"Did you hit yourself?" I ask the young woman. She timidly shakes her head; the woman accompanying her, perhaps her mother, explains: "That wasn't from hitting anything. That's mal de gente (evil from people)." "Did you take her to the hospital?" "The doctor gave her medicine, but she got worse. That's mal de gente—hospitals can't cure it. You have to come to these healers, but not all know how. Only a few are good," she declares.
When she finishes massaging the foot, Doña Angélica cradles the young woman's head in her hands and murmurs a prayer.
The massage with Florida Water and the prayer are recurring elements in Doña Angélica's battle against illness.
spiritual war
Though in recent years she has gained fame for her ayahuasca ceremonies, Doña Angélica is much more than that: a healer who battles illness spirits using various methods, among which ayahuasca is the most powerful. The girl with the swollen foot didn't need it: one afternoon, while playing in the street, she felt as if a thorn had pierced her foot; the swelling spread to her knee; pills proved useless; following a neighbor's advice, they came to Doña Angélica. After the first consultation, Doña Angélica identified the illness in her dreams. "Sometimes there are evil spirits," she explains, gesturing around as if they were present. "The elders said they spit, and if you step on it, that kind of pain enters you. I removed that thorn in my dream."
Dreams and ayahuasca visions: two realms where shamans meet their allied spirits to receive diagnoses and remedies. "I work with good spirits; I don't work with evil spirits. I must pray: Mother of... All plants have mothers; it's the mothers of plants who heal you. Sometimes in your dreams they tell you what medicine is good for the sick: 'Give them this to drink.'" The mothers of plants: the healing beings inhabiting that other world beyond the five senses. This other world where cures are sought is also populated by aggressive spirits, allies of evil sorcerers.
It's curious that for Doña Angélica, the boa and the jaguar (which in most indigenous traditions appear as protective deities) symbolize negative forces. "They're evil. You think the boa is good... The boa is evil: it eats you, swallows you. That tiger is worse: it hunts you. Sorcerers summon those evil spirits. In other words: that's witchcraft." And she recalls an occasion when she confronted these envoys of evil. "I fell seriously ill. I barely ate for five days." So she took ayahuasca alone, as she always does when illness threatens. "The visions hit me hard. But I didn't vomit; I sang. I wasn't afraid because I felt people beside me, watching over me. Damn! And then it came and stood there. Its eyes, how they shone! I was looking: a black puma. So I shot something like a lightning bolt at it, it just jumped up and left. I said: Who wants to harm me? Then a devil came through the door. And it says: You act like a man but woman can't equal man. I said: Oh really? And what do you want? You want to kill me? Go ahead, kill me. I'm a woman, but a woman with man's blood. A woman is very treacherous: she caresses you, kisses you, then sticks a knife or gun in you. You want me to do you? It says: Forgive me ma'am, I won't bother you again. It wanted to harm me; but couldn't. From that day to this."
Doña Angélica Vásquez claims to be eighty years old.
An unorthodox path
That Doña Angélica, an Amazonian indigenous woman, identifies jaguar and boa spirits as evil becomes less surprising when we know her unusual life story, which exposed her to disparate influences. Her ancestors had been displaced from Colombia to the Ampiyacu River in Peru by rubber barons ("patrones") during the unpunished and forgotten genocide, when these "employers" relocated their workers during the 1930s Colombia-Peru conflict. Her people were the Ocaina, a coca and tobacco culture, not ayahuasca practitioners. Yet at eight years old, missionary women from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) arrived at her community of Puerto Isango. This U.S. evangelical organization had been tasked by the Peruvian government with establishing bilingual schools and training native teachers. To achieve this, their missionary-linguists needed to learn indigenous languages, relying on bright individuals like young Angélica. Like they did with youths from all ethnic groups, they took her to SIL's headquarters at Yarinacocha Lagoon near the jungle city of Pucallpa. There, Angélica taught the American women her language while learning Spanish, machine sewing, and spreading "the Word of God"—unsurprisingly, Jesus Christ became one of the forces Doña Angélica now invokes in her healings.
Yarinacocha stood in the ancestral territory of the Shipibo, an ethnicity with deep ayahuasca traditions. One afternoon while out evangelizing... "A woman told us: My grandfather is brewing medicine. We went to look." The old man explained: "Here you discover all that is good spirit and bad spirit. You can see your future. If you want, drink with me." A few nights later came her first visionary experience: "He brought me a star. Then passed a beautiful little woman—the mother of yagé. Next came an old woman and an old man: they're doctors. They're the ones who see, and if you're sick, they heal you. There was a long log, and a ladder that rose until I saw tiny people walking far below. Then we descended again, and I saw a gorgeous garden with all kinds of flowers. When it ended, the old man asked: What did you see in your future? I saw only good things—no jaguar or evil spirit. 'Ah good, little daughter, this medicine likes you, perhaps you'll become a healer someday.'"
"This perfume is pure flower. It makes you see a garden, and in your visions you behold beautiful flowers."
learning with the "INCA"
Doña Angélica unearths these memories as she pounds ayahuasca branches with a hammer. It's six in the morning, and she prepares to cook more "purga" (purge, a synonym for ayahuasca) for the patients she receives in the small maloca in her garden, where she now works surrounded by medicinal plants. She's a thin woman with wiry, vigorous limbs. She claims to be eighty years old; by my calculations, it's a few less, but her elastic agility is still surprising. When I ask her the secret to her physical condition, she answers without hesitation: "The diet." She habitually eats little, and her profession demands she frequently follow strict diets to maintain her healing power: no salt, sugar, fats, or spices; only some fish and green plantains. "This way we don't age, we stay strong. If I feel sick, I fast for half a day, and only then do I eat lunch. I never have breakfast. I've gotten used to it..."
Talking about the diet reminds her of her training period. After her experience with the Shipibo, Doña Angélica met several ayahuasqueros in Iquitos, where she had moved. One stood out as the most powerful: Antonio Alebra, an "Inca" maestro who took in dozens of apprentices. The legendary diet was brutal: "Thinner than I am now. He didn't feed us well." In exchange, they had to work relentlessly for the maestro: "We'd get up without breakfast to farm, plantains, corn. We never stayed home. Work. Until you'd sweat the smell of ayahuasca. We'd rest at eleven: our breakfast. Then back to work until three in the afternoon. No lazing around!" In the afternoons, in shifts, the apprentices cooked ayahuasca: "Four people. One splitting firewood, another stoking the fire, another hauling water. That's how he taught us to brew it." Then, at night, the ceremonies—five times a week.
Doña Angélica interrupts her story with a sigh: "This is young people's work!" and momentarily stops pounding the "yellow" ayahuasca, her preferred kind, the one her maestro used. In her garden, she grows other varieties: the "black," used by Indigenous people in Peru and the strongest; the "rosaria," favored in Colombia; the "cielo," used by Brazilians but which she dislikes because "it makes you shit and vomit too much; it sends you straight to the bathroom."
Then she stands and gathers chacruna leaves from nearby bushes. She places both ingredients in a pot, adds water, and sets it to boil—it will simmer for hours as Doña Angélica keeps reminiscing. With Antonio Alebra, she endured a harsh year. At the "graduation," during a ceremony, the maestro sat before each apprentice and took their hand. "To give us his strength, his power. It enters right here," she demonstrates how the energy flowed from the maestro and flooded each disciple's body. "That energy empowers you to heal. Then he taught us prayers and advised: 'You won’t be a woman who just drinks. You must take care—you’ll have children or husbands, look after them.'" The next day, before farewell: "That’s when you pay him. I paid with a sewing machine. One man paid with a shotgun. That’s why I say my training cost me. It wasn’t free. I studied, I suffered."
At twenty, she became a professional healer, charging for her work—money or whatever the patient could offer: game meat, fish, plantains... And she gained a husband: she reunited with another apprentice; their union lasted until his death.
Doña Angélica removes the plant remnants from the pot; the brew must still boil for a long time to "refine" it, to concentrate it. Then she adds a few basil leaves and drops of Tabú perfume, bought in Leticia—the same kind her maestro used decades ago. "The Incas themselves used this at its origin, so we do too... This perfume is pure flower. It shows you a garden, and in your visions, you see beautiful flowers."
Doña Angélica in her garden, pounding ayahuasca vines for brewing.
two tourists shitting
On a small table rest several bottles of perfume, a small pot with ayahuasca, a couple of seed rattles, a fan of dried leaves (the chacapa), and several candles illuminating the interior of the small maloca. It's eight o'clock on Tuesday night—ceremony time. Among the attendees: a university professor, an Indigenous neighbor from the community, and two tourists—one from Bogotá and a British man of Indian origin—both drinking for the first time. The professor pulls a couple of perfume bottles and bundles of plants from her backpack. She's a patient of Juan (Doña Angélica's son and apprentice), who plucks the leaves and places them in a large pot of water: he's preparing a spiritual cleansing bath. According to Juan, the perfumes mixed with plants can serve various purposes beyond healing—from securing a business deal to attracting love.
Doña Angélica remains silent, seated on the floor with her back straight. She pulls out several white handkerchiefs from somewhere and hands them to us. "Put this on your head," she instructs. Then she draws the small pot toward herself, fills a small totuma (gourd cup), brings it close to her lips, and prays. I catch my name and a few words: "Protect him, heal him, enlighten him." She hands me the totuma, and I down the contents—maybe ten or fifteen centiliters. She repeats the same ritual for everyone present before drinking herself. Juan approaches each attendee with a bottle of Florida Water, spraying our hands, heads, and necks. Then he extinguishes the two candles and asks everyone to "concentrate in the heart." Silence.
Soon, the singing begins, accompanied by the rhythm of rattles—the same songs of Maestro Antonio Alebra that, half a century later, still resonate and heal within these walls. They remain here: Doña Angélica doesn’t want these words recorded on paper. The vomiting doesn’t take long—the nausea, the heaviness in the stomach, the certainty of a deep intestinal purge. Then the numbness, the strange heat spreading through veins to distant capillaries, the ringing in the ears, the yawning, the tearing eyes... The tourists clumsily stumble out of the room toward the bathroom; Doña Angélica has to turn on a flashlight to guide them. When one returns, he exclaims: "Disgusting!"
The "concentration," as Doña Angélica calls it, lasts three hours. Then the lights come on, and the attendees prepare to sleep right there. I ask the tourists how it went. The British man, visibly shaken, manages to say he had no visions—just vomiting. He seems disappointed; many first-timers, obsessed with visions, dismiss the benefits of physical purging. The tourist from Bogotá, still dazed, replies: "Very good," though his answer feels incomplete, as if there's more left to explain.
I warmly bid farewell to everyone—after drinking, affection comes more easily. Doña Angélica walks me out and asks with a smile: "Did you get dizzy?" "I was cleansing until the last moment," I reply, mimicking vomiting. We laugh and say goodbye.
