Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (64 page)

GLOBAL MARKETING

Ayahuasca-both the ayahuasca drink and ayahuasca shamanism-has been
subject to the forces of globalization and modernity that have affected every
other aspect ofAmazonian life. The results of this encounter have been mixed,
on both sides-on the one hand, new forms of literature and art, new religious movements, experiments in religious organization; on the other hand,
oppression, exploitation, and the piracy of valuable traditional knowledge.

Dona Maria and don Roberto now perform their work within global currents. They are embedded in a world culture in which expansive markets,
mass media, technological change, and hegemonic ideologies are shapingand in turn are shaped by-their own local culture., Ayahuasca shamanism is
up for sale on the global market, promulgated through literature, art, and, of
course, the Internet. The visionary ayahuasca paintings of Pablo Cesar Amaringo are available to a world market in a sumptuous coffee-table book;2
international ayahuasca tourists exert a profound economic and cultural pull
on previously isolated local practitioners; ayahuasca shamanism, once the terrain of anthropologists, is now promoted in the New Age marketplace. Ayahuasca shamans, previously local and largely individual practitioners, have
themselves adopted the rationalizing devices of modernity, primarily those of
collective organization and professionalization.

Ayahuasca has been endorsed by international celebrities-Sting, Tori
Amos, Oliver Stone.3 Noted novelists-Isabel Allende, Peter Matthiessen,
Paul Theroux, Alice Walker-have written about the ayahuasca experience;4
Paul Simon has written a song about it.s Ayahuasca itself is now enmeshed in
two worldwide markets-one for medicinal plants and one for psychoactive substances-and in the attempts of national governments and international
agencies to control those markets, through mechanisms of patent law, international treaties, and criminal sanctions.

FIGURE 14. Medicine plants in the Belen market.

Don Roberto and dofia Maria now live in what has been called a community -
world.b In the presence of instantaneous communication, jet travel, migration, and the other hallmarks of global modernity, it is no longer realistic or
possible to imagine that their culture or religious practice can be bounded or
self-enclosed.? In the "mazelike condition" of global modernity, ayahuasca
shamanism has become porous.'

CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSE

The degree to which don Roberto and dona Maria have incorporated biomedical and other contemporary imagery into their practice is striking. The spirits
of many plants appear as doctors, often in surgical scrubs and masks. Dona
Maria's coronacion dream involved her initiation by doctors in pure white
surgical scrubs performing operations in a great hospital; when don Roberto
transcorporates, he journeys to huge hospitals, where he observes medical
procedures and operations in progress. Both dona Maria and don Roberto are
aided by doctores extraterrestreales, extraterrestrial doctors, or marcianos,
Martians, who speak in computer language; don Romulo Magin is helped in
exactly the same way by jefes, chiefs, who descend from the sky dressed as
Peruvian military officers.

The shamanism of the Upper Amazon is remarkably absorptive of such imagery. Amazonian shamans frequently have visions of great cities, often said
to be located on other planets.9 Sharanahua shamans sing of Peruvian spirits traveling up the Purus in a large boat filled with trade goods-metal pots,
shotgun shells, guns, suitcases, whiskey.'° One shaman living in Iquitos has
a jet fighter plane he uses when attacked by strong sorcerers;" a shaman in
Pucallpa receives magical keys in his visions, so that he can drive beautiful
cars and airplanes." One Shapra shaman, who lived in the jungle hundreds of
miles from Iquitos, told me that he had a spiritual x-ray machine with which
he diagnosed patients. When don Rodrigo Andi, a Canelos Quichua shaman,
sings, the spirits bring him healing machines-an x-ray machine, blood pressure apparatus, stethoscope, and surgical light. He carries a shield of medicine he buys in a spirit drugstore on the Napo River. He is protected by noisy
airplanes flying all around him-military planes, helicopters, cargo planes.
"Here I am," he sings, "a shaman sitting in the center of aviation control. 1113

Such importations are not new; an earlier generation of Amazonian shamans frequently adopted the language of electricity, magnetism, and radio.
Don Agustin Rivas, for example, has said that the yacuruna, water people,
live beneath the waters so that "they cannot be disturbed with the energy of
electrical technology" and that spirits are energies like radio waves.14 Campa shaman Cesar Zevallos Chinchuya says that the genio, plant spirit, places
a powerful magnet in his mouth, which attracts the atmdsfera or flemosidad
of the patient's disease. His sucking works through this magnet; plants and
mermaids bring him magnets with which to heal and harm; blowing tobacco
smoke on the body magnetizes it.' Don Emilio Andrade also described his
yachay, magical phlegm, as a sort of magnet, attracting the dart when he sucks at the place it is lodged.,' Icaros especially are assimilated to magnetism.
"Ximu sang icaros to them," writes poet Cesar Calvo, "magnetizing them and
empowering with precise and sufficient powers."17 Zevallos says that icaros
are "magnetic cures" and that protective icaros are "magnetic shielding.",'

Thirty years ago, too, don Cesar Zevallos communicated with the spirits
through radio waves, and was told where to find the proper cures in an invisible book. "Vomiting, diarrhea, fever. See book 72,001," the spirits tell him.
"Immediately ask the patient how long he has been taking the purgative....
Very good. Immediately look up page 42."19 At about the same time, a Sharanahua shaman sang this song of the radio: "Its Peruvian made it, the radio is
talking.... Its white antenna, its fiery antenna up in the air. Its owner is talking, its fiery antenna, its fire talks. 1120

More recently, Alberto Prohaflo, a Yagua shaman in a remote village where
a satellite telephone dish was recently installed, now talks with the spirits by
telephone, using the pot in which the ayahuasca is cooked as what he calls
a microreceiver. He blows tobacco smoke in the pot to clear the line, whistles, and puts his ear to the pot: "Hello! 1973, hello, 1-2-3-4-5.... Yes....
Over.... Operator? . . . Pepelucho needs help in business. We are going to
help him.... Over.... Yes, for business, you know.... He is here, do you
want to talk with him?" The shaman asks the spirits how much ayahuasca to
use: "The amount, we need to know the amount, approximately how many
centimeters? Two centimeters, okay. 1121

Contemporary technology-lasers, spaceships, biomedicine-similarly
pervades mestizo shamanism. The striking visionary paintings of Pablo Amaringo are filled with battleships protected by pyramid-shaped lasers; spaceships from the edge of the universe; spaceships from Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Ganymede; beings from distant galaxies with skin as white as paper;
electromagnetic boa constrictors; singing spaceships from the constellation
Kima; magnetizing mirrors; poisonous space snakes from Mars; a spaceship
of elves from Mars; and, of course, doctors and nurses performing spiritual
medical procedures.22

Flashlights have become a tool of sorcery. Pablo Amaringo tells how a person's eyes were harmed by a sorcerer shining a magic flashlight on them.23
Among the Tukano, it is believed that during the dry season, at noon, a white
foamy liquid exudes from small round holes in certain rock formations. This
liquid, when touched, has the power to drive people insane. A shaman can
protect himself from this liquid and, traditionally, would mix it with tobacco
to be offered to an enemy, or sprinkle it on the enemy's clothing or hammock. Now the shaman need only smear the liquid on the back of a flashlight and
shine its beam on the intended victim.24

Similarly remarkable is the degree to which Amazonian shamanism has
continued-voraciously-to absorb and transform outside philosophical influences, just as it has done with Catholicism. Medical anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios discusses ayahuasquero don Hildebrando, who runs a
clinic in Pucallpa and who combines indigenous shamanic practice both with
folk Catholicism-the Virgin Mary appeared to him when he began his career
as an ayahuasca healer-and with a new religious movement called Septrionism.25 The spirits depicted in Pablo Amaringo's visionary paintings include
Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, and "the great gurus ofIndia. iz6 The Indic word samadhi turns up in the name of Queen Samhadi the Illuminated.27

Mestizo shamanism is now in a similar process of absorbing New Age
terms and concepts. Typical of such syncretism is don Antonio Barrera
Banda, a young mestizo shaman well known in Iquitos and the surrounding Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo area in the Upper Amazon. Don Antonio is literate
in Spanish, and, when I first knew him, he was an insatiable and uncritical
reader of everything he could find on spiritual practices outside of Peru. Given
his relative isolation, the books he found were haphazard, and his knowledge
was an idiosyncratic mix heavy with yoga and the martial arts. At the outset,
his ceremonial practice was almost entirely traditional, although his explanations sometimes drew eclectically on his reading. Later, on his Web site, he
promoted ayahuasca tours during which visitors could "honor their sacred
being," "reach back in beyond ancestral common sharing," and "tap into the
green soul of Pachamama itself. 1121

TAROT CARDS

A small but interesting bit of cultural syncretism is the use of Tarot cards by
healers-to see whether a spouse is unfaithful and whether love magic is involved, to predict whether a proposed course of action will be fruitful, to find
the identity of a thief. Marlene Dobkin de Rios, who pioneered the study of
mestizo shamanism, tells a fascinating story of how she became a curiosa, a
Tarot card reader for dwellers in the slum community ofBelen in Iquitos. She
also provides an interesting statistic: given the number and meanings of the
cards, and the way they are dealt, almost go percent of the readings predict
misfortune, conflict, loss, or sickness. This is probably not inconsistent with
mestizo expectations.29 The practice has now spread from the mestizos to the Shuar.3° When some property of mine was stolen, one course of action to discover the thief was to consult a Tarot card expert.

AYAHUASCA VISIONS IN MODERN AMAZONIAN ART

Ayahuasca shamanism has also produced a distinct and highly influential
style of contemporary art, primarily by mestizo artists, which was brought
forcefully to the attention of European and American readers by the publication, in lavish reproductions and with detailed commentary, of the visionary
art of former shaman Pablo Amaringo.31 Entirely self-taught, Amaringo was
encouraged by anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna to expand his repertoire
from portraits and landscapes to include recollections of his ayahuasca journeys. "When painting his visions," Luna writes, "he often sings or whistles
some of the icaros he used during his time as a vegetalista. Then the visions
come again, as clear as if he were having the experience again. 1132