Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (73 page)

Don Mauricio Fasabi Apuela, a shaman from Lamas in San Martin, is willing to take on young people as apprentices in ayahuasca shamanism. He has
had no takers. "I have no disciples here, just me," he says. "In the end they
prefer the girls." Shaman Casimiro Izurieta Cevallos explains, "Youngsters
today don't have the same curiosity." Don Mauricio agrees: "The youth of today don't want to learn."4 Don Guillermo Arrevala concurs: "To function in
this world of shamanism ... demands a certain measure of discipline, to live
within the rules. Young indigenous people in these times don't want to get
involved in these studies.... They prefer not to submit themselves to that type
of strenuous apprenticeship. "5 Young people do not even want to smoke mapacho, but only finos, says don Jose Curitima Sangama, a Cocama shaman.
"They only smoke fine red store-bought packs of tobacco," he says, "and
when they see us smoke black tobacco, they make fun of us, saying that that is
for dirty witches.i6

None of the four shamans with whom anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna
worked had a successor. They all told him that young people were not interested in or were unable to endure the diet and abstinence necessary for learning from the plant spirits. Their roles have been taken, they said, by charlatans
who do not possess any knowledge of the plants.?

Don Roberto has had apprentices in the past, and he believes that other
curanderos currently have apprentices, but, when pressed, he cannot name
any who do. Although his son Carlos is now his apprentice, no one else in
the local community is currently working with him or has asked to apprentice
with him. The interest of gringos in his work will have no effect on this, he
says; local people will either be interested or not regardless of what gringos
do. The gringos, he shrugs, come for a single experience; few come to learn
the ayahuasca path. But don Roberto is hopeful about the future of the type of
healing he practices. "The medicine will continue," he says. He believes that
more and more young people will take up the path once they understand the
fuerza, power, that it gives them.

Many mestizo shamans continue to have patients, especially in poorer urban areas, such as in Iquitos or Pucallpa. But few mestizo shamans nowadays
have apprentices. Without students, as one shaman put it, no hay futuro, there
is no future.' And then a thing of great beauty and power will be gone.