THE POWER OF PLANTS OF POWER
Tobacco, coca, toé, and ayahuasca, beyond their use by indigenous healers in ceremonial rituals, play a fundamental role in the politics, economy, and society of Amazonian peoples. Thanks to this series of chronicles, originally published in Cáñamo magazine, we gain insight into the importance of these plants in local contexts and discover how their use is adapting to cultural changes.
The Doctors of Vencedor
In the small indigenous village of Vencedor, deep in the Peruvian jungle, no one knows anything about the international financial crisis. Days pass peacefully amid a prodigious nature that still nourishes, protects, and heals. Despite the relentless advance of the market economy and its pharmaceutical products, the villagers place blind trust in their healers—heirs to a sophisticated and ancestral knowledge—who use ayahuasca to ally themselves with spiritual forces and heal.
The Herborists of the Forest
The Shipibo women of the Peruvian rainforest have, over centuries, accumulated vast knowledge about the therapeutic powers of plants. From childhood, they learn to identify, cultivate, and use hundreds of plants: anti-inflammatories, painkillers, fever reducers, relaxants, stimulants, and many more — inspiring chemical-pharmaceutical laboratories. A cruel paradox: now the pill replaces the plant.
Her Sacred Excellency, Queen Tobacco
In the New World — by antonomasia the land of herbal remedies and altered states of consciousness — one psychoactive plant stands above all others. Spread throughout the Americas at the arrival of Europeans like no other, used in countless contexts and administered in innumerable forms, tobacco — one of the most potent plant toxins known — has been used for millennia to contact the gods, to heal, or simply for the pleasure it provides.
Mambe, from the Maloca to the University
Powdered coca leaf and ash make up mambe, the way indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon consume coca. Used to establish communication, promote healing, facilitate work, and enliven celebrations, the many properties of mambe have paved its way from the jungle to the cities. A mild stimulant with minimal cocaine content, numerous researchers advocate its healing potential for, among other things, treating cocaine addiction.
Two Worlds, One Alliance
In the desolate heart of the Peruvian jungle, a Shipibo healer and two Chilean entrepreneurs embody a hope: that ancestral knowledge has a place in the market economy, that the battle against deforestation can be won, and that natural medicine holds remedies for modern ailments.
An Absurd Theft and a Surreal Investigation
During fieldwork in the Shipibo community of Vencedor in the Peruvian Amazon, an ethnographic researcher's glasses and USB memory disappeared. This triggered a shamanic investigation, revealing the importance of plants like toé and ayahuasca in attaining knowledge.
The Disenchantment of an Apprentice
A middle-aged Westerner in search of spiritual answers comes across ayahuasca by chance, and the experience awakens in him a new conception of himself and the world. So, he leaves everything behind, moves to a community in the Amazon, and places himself under the tutelage of a shaman. The rest is history.
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.