Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (65 page)

One such vision directed don Pablo to use his artwork to speak of the
spirit world and the difficult times faced by humanity. As a result, in 1988, he
founded the Usko-Ayar Amazonian School of Painting in Pucallpa, dedicated
to documenting the ways of life in the Amazon. The school's mission is the
education of local youth in the care and preservation of the Amazon ecosystem. They are taught to visualize internally what they are going to paint-in
other words, to regulate their attention in an attempt to evoke visions that can
be shared with others.33 The school has been made the subject of a short film
directed by Luna.34

Important as well is Francisco Montes Shuna, another self-taught artist
and a practicing shaman associated with the Sachamama Ethnobotanical
Garden, which he founded in 1ggo, about 18 kilometers outside Iquitos. Unlike other art in this genre, his work employs natural pigments on bark, in the
traditional indigenous manner. In 1999, his works appeared alongside those
of Pablo Amaringo, Yando Rios, and Elvis Luna at an exhibition at the October
Gallery in London.35

In contrast with the abstract patterns in indigenous ayahuasca-inspired
art, the work of these mostly mestizo artists is characterized by detailed and
realistic depictions of the substantive content of their ayahuasca visions-the
spirits, trees, and animals they have seen, as well as the shamans, patients,
and audience of the healing ceremony. This art almost paradigmatically falls
within what has now come to be called outsider art, sometimes naive art, and
sometimes visionary art. It is "direct, intense, content-laden, eschatological,
expressive, and formally inventive, and it offers glimpses of other modes of perception.1136 The colors are bright and nonnaturalistic; the perspective is
nonscientific and two-dimensional.37 The founding artists were almost entirely self-taught, drew on folk art traditions, used local and indigenous art
materials, and produced works that were enormously detailed, personal, idiosyncratic, and visionary. The work of the Usko-Ayar school has been extremely influential, creating both a recognizable style and an international market
for Amazonian shamanic art.

Traditional ayahuasca art and, especially, the new art of Pablo Amaringo,
the Usko-Ayar school, and such independent practitioners as Elvis Luna and
Francisco Montes Shufla have become accessible to a global audience through
exhibits, both academic and commercial, and through the handsome publication of Pablo Amaringo's paintings.38 The work of such painters is finding its
way into the North American art market as well, at galleries and through the
Internet. This accessibility has in turn created a strong interest in ayahuasca
visions generally, stimulated ayahuasca tourism, and created local markets in
Iquitos and Pucallpa for paintings in the Amaringo visionary style. As such
depictions of ayahuasca experiences become normative, it may be that, rather than the experience prescribing the art, the art may begin to prescribe the
experience.

ICAROS MODERNIZED

Icaros, the sacred songs of the Amazonian shamans, are traditionally sung
either unaccompanied or with the rhythmic shaking of the shacapa, the leafbundle rattle. Recently, however, there has been some experimentation with
additional instrumentation. Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez, for example, sings
his icaros using a variety of drums, panpipes, maracas, a harmonica, and a
stringed instrument of his own devising, as well as a variety of singing styles,
some sounding very much like Peruvian popular music.39 Flautist Tito La Rosa
has backed the singing of Shipibo shamans Amelia Panduro, her son Milke
Sinuiri, and Jose Campos with traditional Peruvian instruments-bone flutes,
panpipes, conch shells, rattles, and whistling vessels-as well as contemporary percussion, violin, charango, and keyboard.4° Similarly, musician Alonso
Del Rio served as an apprentice to don Benito Arevalo, a renowned Shipibo
shaman, for three years, and now sings his own icaros accompanied by his
guitar-and sometimes traditional Peruvian wind and string instruments-in
a style close to folk music.4'

North American musicians, too, have discovered icaros and have adapted
them in a variety ofways. Dada World Data-consisting ofJim Sanders, Andre Clement, and Dustin Leader-has put the icaros of Ashaninka shaman don
Juan Flores Salazar into jazz-inflected settings, using guitar, drums, bass, and
keyboard, as part of a live multimedia performance project they call Maestro
Ayahuasquero and as part of a series of films they are producing about don
Juan, ayahuasca, and plant medicine.42 Guitarist Bill Kopper has similarly
backed, with guitar, sitar, bass, piano, and background vocals, the icaros of
an Amazonian singer he identifies only as Cristina.43

Tulku is a group with constantly shifting membership gathered around
musician and producer Jim Wilson. Wilson has worked with many of the most
important figures in contemporary Native American music-Robbie Robertson, the Little Wolf Band, Walela, Joanne Shenandoah, and Primeaux and
Mike. Much of Wilson's work has centered on cross-cultural musical collaborations-with Russian psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi on Siberian shamanism,
with Consuelo Luz on ancient Sephardic prayers and traditional love songs
in Ladino, with James Twyman on peace prayers from world religious traditions. Tulku has been part of this same collaborative process, mixing technobeat, trance-ambient, and global musical traditions and voices; albums have
included collaborations with Jai Uttal, Krishna Das, Primeaux and Mike, and
Mamek Khadem. Now icaros have been added to the mix: the album A Universe
to Come brought back original members Jai Uttal and Geoffrey Gordon, along
with Consuelo Luz, Gina Sala, Sita Jamieson, and Shipibo shaman Benjamin
Mahua.aa

NEW SYNCRETISMS

As we have seen, mestizo shamanism is insatiably syncretistic. Potential
sources of innovation in the future include contact with the Native American
Church, the needs and presuppositions of gringo clients, and an expanding
pharmacopeia of psychoactive plants.

Eagle and Condor

An interesting and unforeseen consequence of globalization is that there
has been increasing contact among indigenous peoples of North and South
America. These contacts have sometimes been grounded in a prophetic belief
that, after five hundred years of oppression, the eagle and the condor-that is,
North and South American indigenous peoples-will fly in the sky together.45
In many ways, these contacts have followed established pan-Indian routes.
For example, the Sun Dance has become a ritual symbol of Indian unity for
many North American Indians. This symbolism goes back a long ways; in 1941, for example, Crow elders from Montana sought out Sun Dance leaders
of the Wind River Shoshone in Wyoming for help in reconstructing their own
Sun Dance, which they had abandoned in 1875 under pressure from missionaries and the federal government.46

Now the indigenous people of South America are also seeking access to
this powerful symbolism. A group of Mexican Indians danced with Leonard
Crow Dog in South Dakota in the ig8os, and they brought the Lakota-style
dance back home. Crow Dog's father had a vision of tipis lined up from South
Dakota to Mexico.47 Indigenous people in Colombia and Chile too are seeking
ways to bring Sun Dance traditions south to their own communities. As Sun
Dancer Tomas Ramirez told me, "Nowadays it is a great and a huge motivation to see Mapuche people from Chile, Nasa from Colombia, and Mexicas
dancing next to Lakota, Dine, or Ojibwe warriors."

In addition, there have been a number of contact points between shamanism in the Upper Amazon and the Native American Church (NAC). Some of
these contacts have been personal: Valerio Cohaila, for example, an Aymara ayahuasquero from Tacna, Peru, is also a road chief in the NAC. Institutionally, there have been a number of conferences of NAG elders and South
American indigenous healers, focusing on shared peyote and ayahuasca ceremonies, under such rubrics as Encuentro de Naciones Condor-Aguila. The
Iglesia Nativa in Ecuador has done combined sacred pipe and ayahuasca ceremonies with Shuar shamans under the auspices of the Associacion Tsunki,
an association within the Federacion Shuar.48

Not all such attempts at syncretism have gone well. Anthropologist Marie Perruchon, an initiated Shuar shaman, reports that NAC teachers at one
such ceremony attempted to force uncongenial practices on the Shuar-imposing lower status on the women participants, excluding menstruating
women from touching the sacred pipe, and interpreting the status of the condor in Shuar culture as like that of the eagle in indigenous North American
cultures.49 A recent Condor-Eagle Gathering of Nations held near Popaydn,
Colombia, was intended to bring together respected Colombian shamans and
NAG elders; but it was so costly that indigenous Colombians could not attend
and was instead filled with wealthier European tourists who, as one NAC participant put it, "were there just for the medicine."

New Psychoactives

Don Roberto and dona Maria have not had, as far as I know, any contact
with Andean shamans, nor has there been, to my knowledge, any organized
attempt to bring Andean and Amazonian shamans or healers together to discuss topics of mutual interest. Neither don Roberto nor dona Maria-nor,
as far as I know, any other mestizo shamans in significant numbers-has
shown any interest in joining any of the newly formed shaman organizations,
perhaps due to the traditional individualism of these practitioners, and perhaps due to concerns about envidia, professional jealousy, and the stealing of
professional secrets.

Interestingly, where interaction with Andean shamanism has occurred, it
has been through the medium of huachuma-the San Pedro cactus, Trichocereus pachanaoi, rich in mescaline, close kin to the peyote cactus, and widely used
by shamans in northern Peru.5° This is consistent with the traditional Amazonian approach to learning: don Roberto and dona Maria are learning huachuma in the same way that they have learned the other healing plants-not
from human teachers, but in dialogue with the plant itself.

Dona Maria had drunk huachuma twice when I first met her, and she drank
it once more when I was with her. It was given to her by the owner of the lodge
where she performed ayahuasca healing ceremonies for tourists. He in turn
had learned huachuma from don Eduardo Calderon, a traditional Andean
shaman who had developed a large North American clientele. 5,

"Oh bonita!" dona Maria said when I asked her about huachuma. "How
wonderful!" The first time she drank it, she purged heavily, like a paliza, she
said, like being beaten with a stick; it made her body shake and tremble and
warmed her bones inside. The second time, the effect was not so drastic; it did
not immobilize her. She said she had been afraid to drink huachuma, which I
found remarkable from a person who had ingested such a tremendous variety
of psychoactive substances; now she was eager to drink it again.

Huachuma, she told me, has much poder, power; note the use of the term
poder, power of God, instead offuerza, shamanic power. Dona Maria categorized huachuma as arriba, relating to heaven, in opposition to ayahuasca,
which she categorized as tierra, relating to the earth. Huachuma visions are
mas espiritual, more spiritual, she told me, than those of ayahuasca; it is medicina de Dios, medicine of God, a bendicion de Dios, a blessing of God, like communion. Note here too how this opposes el dios, the masculine God, to la diosa,
the goddess, the feminine ayahuasca. Huachuma, she told me, showed her
primarily angelic spirits.

Don Roberto had drunk huachuma three times by the time I met him. He
says that the vision of huachuma is very different from that of ayahuasca-it
brings one less in contact with the spirits of the jungle, he says, and more
in contact with santos, the saints; these santos he sees with huachuma are different from the genios, spirits, he meets with ayahuasca. With ayahuasca
he meets persons; with huachuma he sees things differently. For example,
one of the participants at the huachuma session turned into another person,
glowing and luminous, with a long black beard. But don Roberto also understands the effect of setting on his experiences; his huachuma experience
might be very different if he drank huachuma during an ayahuasca ceremony.
It is, he says, an experiment to be tried.

When I drank huachuma with don Roberto and dona Maria, don Roberto's
son Carlos, his shamanic apprentice, drank huachuma with us, for the first
time; don Roberto wanted to show him what huachuma was like. Each time
don Roberto drinks huachuma, he says, he learns more. The experience will
have an effect on his work as a curandero; it is providing him with an additional source of fuerza, shamanic power, for his healing.

Both doha Maria and don Roberto are trying to incorporate this new experience into their own established cognitive sets. Dona Maria had a metaphysics well prepared to accommodate the experience of mescaline; it fit easily
into her distinction between things that are arriba and things that are tierra.
Don Roberto sees huachuma more as an additional source of his fuerza,
whose diminution with age and eventual transmission to his son Carlos he is
beginning to contemplate.

Gringo Tourists

The term gringo is not used pejoratively in Peru, as it is in, say, Mexico. The
word means essentially a stranger or foreigner, not necessarily a norteamericano; to an Amazonian mestizo, someone from as exotic a place as Argentina-even someone from Lima-may be considered a gringo. Still, the term
refers primarily to light-skinned foreigners of European appearance and thus,
paradigmatically, to North Americans. Gringo tourists apply a great deal of
pressure on mestizo shamans to produce ceremonies and interact with clients
in ways consistent with their own expectations.

Both don Roberto and dona Maria have worked with gringo clients, most
frequently ayahuasca tourists, whom they meet through Howard Lawler's
El Tigre Journeys. Dona Maria told me gringos are pretty much the same as
everyone else, except that many of them are cruzado, confused, burdened,
tormented. She attributes this condition to the fact that many gringos have
read about magic in books, especially while at university, yet had no maestros
to give them guidance; this has left them open to maldades, evils, of all sorts.
Thus ayahuasca tourists are conceptually assimilated to two groups-the colonizers who brought their powerful magia to the Amazon, and those mestizo and indigenous youths who are unwilling to undergo the deprivations of
shamanic training and turn to books of magic instead.