The Ayahuasca Boom & It’s Exploitation From Westerners.
By: Akapa Supay
Owner of Supaycha Films and Blogger from New York City.
In 2023, when you think of Peru you usually envision the country synonymous with Ayahuasca. As someone Quechua, I can recall almost half my life of westerners not knowing anything about Peru or my people. Very often tribes in the amazon are often looked at as the original people who use ayahuasca, however this is incorrect. My ancestors, where my entire lineage descends from in Ancash actually has the oldest evidence of us using Ayahuasca thousands of years before even the Inka. Our people used this to get closer to the “gods”.
““There was a tradition in Chavín to inhale hallucinogenic snuff,” he told Live Science. He’s argued that it was made from seed pods of the vilca tree, which contain a powerful hallucinogenic substance that includes dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.”
Ayahuasca is a type of brew made from ingredients with hallucinogenic properties. Our people were known to mix plants in order to create stronger potent medicines that allow us to connect with the ancestors. It’s made from the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub along with the stalks of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, though other plants and ingredients can be added as well.
You might be wondering how westerners got a hand on ayahuasca. Well, it started from a blog and other celebrities with a massive following to promote it such as Lindsey Lohan. There were people who wrote about ayahuasca before Lindsey such as Peter Gorman, but it’s believed to have reached its true spark after the celebrity spoke about her experience.
“ Ayahuasca traditions were developed for people coming from specific cultural backgrounds. As such, even though the brew itself, and even some of the ritual practices surrounding it, may have similar raw effects on anyone, they will likely generate very different overall experiences—different risks and benefits—for outsiders than for insiders.
At best, this means that many Westerners may be shelling out large sums for experiences they are not well situated to fully understand or benefit from. In the process, they contribute to the wanton commodification and fetishization of the cultures whose practices they wish to insinuate themselves into, or to co-opt. At worst, it means that some individuals may expose themselves, through their misreadings of context and content, to serious physical or mental dangers.”
Over the last 25 years ayahuasca has gone global. In Peru, major centres include the Cusco region and the cities of Pucallpa and Tarapoto, but it is Iquitos that attracts most interest. Estimates of the number of centres in the Iquitos region offering ayahuasca vary from 30 to 100. It’s to the point people within these regions either descend from lineages that actually dealt with ayahuasca and then there are those who either just have access to it or capitalize off of it. Peter Gorman himself once stated “there was, and still is, an ayahuasca curandero (medicine man) on every couple of blocks in Iquitos. After ayahuasca tourism started to take off in the late 90s and especially in the mid-aughts upwards of 100 tourist-focused ayahuasca centers sprung up on the edges or just outside of town as well”. What Westerners don’t realize is Peru is like any other country and will capitalize off this as tourism. This is one of the many reasons Indigenous people protest in Peru. The Government will use us for tourism but yet we are still disadvantaged and discriminated against for our culture.
“Today, in urban centers such
as Iquitos and Tarapoto, ayahuasca is central to a multimillion-dollar industry
that has greatly affected the social lives and economic prosperity of many individuals throughout the Peruvian Amazon.”
“Most people who take ayahuasca in the United States do so in small “ceremonies,” led by an individual who may call himself a shaman, an ayahuasquero, a curandero, a vegetalista, or just a healer. This person may have come from generations of Shipibo or Quechua shamans in Peru, or he may just be someone with access to ayahuasca. ”
Ayahuasca is linked to the notions of spiritual warfare and sorcery in addition to healing. Although yes there are people with great experiences with the medicine, there are also bad experiences. In Peru there has been cases where tourists have died from this sacred medicine. These deaths can be sometimes due to the dosage being served to the tourist, or sometimes the medicine enhancing negative effects of an already illness the tourist had prior. 5 deaths have been linked to peru with 58 world wide. It is a small number, but people have died from it.
There are many that bring attention to these effects, but I have yet to see anyone talk about the metaphysical effects on the user. There are a lot of cultural nuances these foreigners do not understand. For example, in my culture we do not believe someone can simply be an apprentice and become a medicine carrier or healer (curandero). We believe you are born that way or come from a lineage of it. As stated prior you have to take into account Peru and the people are now capitalizing off of the medicine and using it as tourism. If Ayahuasca is being capitalized (which is against my peoples ways) it is most likely not real. Most of the time outsiders are not present during our ceremonies let alone would they gather a bunch of them. In very rare cases, will someone be taken as an apprentice. Usually these people are either from Peru, married to someone from that tribe, etc. Very rare is it just a random outsider becoming an apprentice, it just doesn’t work like that although many in the west like to fantasize about this.
Many have this misconception that you need ayahuasca to become spiritual, and this is simply not true. I won’t go in depth but there are other ways we reach spiritual states. Using ayahuasca is more like a spiritual “tool”. However if you can not naturally reach a spiritual state without the use of hallucinogens Ayahuasca probably isnt for you. It tends to be helpful for those looking for a last resort in healing.
However there are many who do ayahuasca, just to experience the “trip”. These people do not understand if you can not control your mind or your energy; when you take ayahausca (or any sacred medicine) you can in fact open portals within your body. These portals that open will allow you to easily be possessed by spirits. And with that can cause more problems to you in your life. These are nuances foreigners do not understand about our culture. Also allowing yourself to fast, do ceremony, and be in such a vulnerable state is dangerous. It’s dangerous because there are also cases where people will do magic on the person that is trusting them to heal them. If what im saying is too vague for you to understand, you definitely should not take Ayahuasca.
My advice to someone who is interested in Ayahausca would be to actually be involved in a community that holds this medicine, build a relationship, and you will eventually know who to trust and who not to trust. Sometimes all it takes is knowing someone from that community and they will know someone who holds ceremony. A real ceremony or cleansing in peru does not cost money.
“Many believe that shamans who
can heal can also cause harm, leading to the ambiguous character of traditional
shamanism in Western Amazonia (see Roe, 1982; Brown, 1988; Whitehead &
Wright, 2004). Today, however, such ideas have little place in the practice of vegetalismo that is deeply connected to shamanic tourism and the general diaspora of ayahuasca shamanism from Amazonia. This leads to a sanitized version of ayahuasca shamanism, devoid of all “negative” aspects, which readily fits into the I common New Age vision of shamanism being concerned with healing alone.”
“Those participating in shamanic tourism, however, continue to engage in ayahuasca ceremonies and advertise their services without any repercussions. In conversations with Shawi individuals in 2013, I was often told that these shamans
were not “real” shamans, connected to terms such as wa ‘an (leader), penoton,
and nunentuna ‘pi (healer), suggesting a lack of authentic practice (see Alvira
et al., 2014). ”
The last quote by Joshua Homan is something I have said all my life as someone Quechua. It’s easy to tell when a ceremony or experience is not real. You do not pay for the experience nor will there be many outsiders. Do not confuse tourism for the actual experience. There are many westerners that will show off that their teacher is in fact native from peru, but not everyone native in peru is a medicine man. They use this as way to validate their apprenticeships that they paid for or to boast about the legitimacy of their teachers. Not everyone from Peru comes from a lineage of medicine carriers or healers. Foreigners think this due to ignorance, fantasization, and fetishization of the Andean and Amazonian identity. This is truly modern day colonialism where a bunch of foreign privileged people and mestizos capitalize off of sacred medicine, while indigenous people are discriminated against regularly in Peru.
“shamanism’s authentic practice is often contested, as locals argue that new shamans who have not received proper training simply perform for tourists, strategically utilizing ethnicity, identity, and practice to be perceived within the “savage
slot” constructed from the tourists’ point of view”
“authenticity is deeply connected to identity, particularly
in relation to shamanic tourism. Identity plays an increasingly important role in
the ayahuasca boom, both within the practice of shamanic tourism as well as
in the diaspora of ayahuasca and its related knowledge, practices, and material.
For many outsiders, exotic notions of indigenous peoples as ayahuasca shamans
who act as the keepers of ancient knowledge that has been passed down over
generations, are prominent - which, in turn, affect how shamans in Amazonia
present themselves to outsiders. While many ayahuasca shamans in urban areas
of the western Peruvian Amazon usually self-identify as mestizo, they also draw
heavily upon indigeneity in their shamanic practice. This takes the form of asserting indigenous identity during ayahuasca sessions with tourists, donning indigenous garb or, more commonly, talking of their apprenticeship among indigenous peoples (see Peluso, 2006; Davidov, 2010). The majority of shamans that I have
worked with in urban areas claimed they trained and lived with a variety of indigenous groups, such as the Awajun or Shipibo. ”
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