Anthropology News October 2006
be. Some healers use mud baths
Mea Culpa: Drug Tourism and the
Anthropologists Responsibility
MARLENE DOBKIN DE RIOS
UC IRVINE
I
first wrote about drug tour-
ism in 1994. In drug tourism,
charlatans tour individuals
from the First World to the
Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Brazil-
ian Amazon to participate in plant
hallucinogenic sessions with aya-
huasca (various Banisteriopsis sps).
These plants contain harmine, har-
maline and tetrohydroharmaline.
This phenomenona dark side
of globalizationhas increased in
the last 15 years, causing serious,
although unfortunately poorly
documented or chronicled, health
hazards for the clients of new-
shamans.
Commercial shamanism in Peru
has become a system where for-
eigners are given a powerful plant
psychedelic at a cost of $300$500
a visit, compared to the $2030 cost
for local people. Since these drug
rituals have become a commercial
undertaking and since the commu-
nity lives from tourism, governmen-
tal authorities have not curtailed
this activity, despite international
treaties concerning drug interdiction
of DMT, a substance contained in
one of the additives to ayahuasca.
Called chacruna in Spanish in Peru,
psychotropia viridis, the DMT con-
tained within it, is a Schedule I drug,
with interdiction by the Controlled
Substances Act of 1970.
C O M M E N TA RY
Anthropologists Complicity
and Intervention
Anthropological scholars inadver-
tently have played a major role in
diffusing esoteric knowledge to the
general public, as they studied and
analyzed traditional psychedelic
rituals in their writings and pro-
fessional talks. Despite publishing
in peer-reviewed journals and aca-
demic venues, or having present-
ed papers in academic conferences
and having avoided sensational-
izing their findings, the work of
these scholars have diffused to the
democratic masses, a process dis-
cussed in 1932 by the Spanish phil-
20
IN FOCUS
and nudity in their group rituals,
quite distinct from traditional aya-
huasca rituals that I observed in
196869, 1977 and 1979. Today,
a simple plastic cloth is laid on
osopher Ortega y Gasett in his ism causes harm to participants the ground and clients are seated
book, The Revolt of the Masses. and also changes and effectively around a circle with the healer
Thus, anthropologists now have destroys traditional urban and whistling incantations to provoke
a responsibility to note the differ- rural hallucinogenic healing that spiritual contact for a couple of
ence between new religions sacra- has roots in the prehistoric past. hours. Drug-tourist clients are not
mental use of plant hallucinogens, screened. New healers never have
for example, among the Unio The New Shamans been apprentices, nor fasted or
do Vegetal Church in Brazil, in These new shamans are basically adhered to special diets employed
comparison to the trendy halluci- businessmen who extract cash by traditional healers to enhance
nogenic experiences of urban edu- from visitors. Some develop fool- their ability to understand the
cated men and women who tour ish rituals and procedures that are plant hallucinogenic effect.
Latin America. From an ethical- burlesque images of what they These new shamans, predomi-
relativistic stance, this drug tour- believe an altered state should nantly Mestizo middle class men
and women, are in many ways
usurping the traditional role of
Data Sheet on New Ayahuasca Healers folk healers or curandero, there-
by contributing to the ongoing
Characteristics of 12 new shamans interviewed by Roger Rumrrill and Marlene demise of a cultural healing sys-
Dobkin de Rios in Peru over a 6-month period ending November 2004 include: tem, slowly destroying the tradi-
Called curanderos, ayahuasqueros or plant doctors tions of the region where aya-
80% of doctors are men huasca is used to determine the
Ages range between 4060 years of age, with few older healers
source of witchcraft hexes and
No formal professional training, as healers focus mainly on
evil-doing, and to permit a power-
psychosomatic disorders
Few influenced by Western scientific medicine; a majority learned ful shamanic healer to rectify his
from family members and friends who practice folk medicine clients anxiety and fears.
None were mystics or admitted to involvement in witchcraft Many of the new shamans, how-
All used ayahuasca, as well as other plants including to and chiricsanango ever, lack the experience, appropri-
Report little or no danger from use of ayahuasca regarding health of client ate personality and requisite train-
Deny problems reported to them from clients ing for this traditional work of
Are entrepreneurs, traveling around the world by invitation by clients healing. Many are unable to accu-
in major cities rately diagnose the illnesses that
Maintain web pages, edit brochures and manage tourism firms
clients suffer, necessary for effec-
Have a shamanic service which they contract with a local ayahuasquero
tive curing, nor are they aware of
Cure not for moral or providential justification but because patients
arrive with physical or spiritual illnesses important facts about drug inter-
Clients come from the US and Europe actions, such as that ayahuasca
and antibiotics can cause client
Other data on the effects of Drug Tourism in the Amazon: poisoning. As a result, sometimes
Ayahuasca is disappearing as a sustainable plant in the Amazon, often a drug tourists condition worsens
replaced by use of tobacco and the client has to be rescued
Shamanism is pauperized, including the special preparatory diets that and sometimes hospitalized. And,
accompany ayahuasca use in the past on occasion, madness or death
has followed, as when a new sha-
man adds nightshade plants to
the mixture.
Given the potency of the chemi-
cals involved, and the new sha-
mans lack of understanding about
these chemicals, this drug tourism
calls out for regulation. Unlike tra-
ditional Mestizo or indigenous use
of the plants within a ritualized
context, with knowledge passed on
through periods of long and rigor-
ous apprenticeship, drug tourism in
contemporary Peru and the Amazon
region is merely a footnote to drug
trafficking around the world.
Marlene Dobkin de Rios is an associ-
Street scenes from the Belen barriada, in Iquitos, Peru, where de Rios con- ate clinical professor of psychiatry and
ducted fieldwork with traditional Ayahuasca healers from June 196869. human behavior at the University of
Photo courtesy of Marlene Dobkin de Rios California, Irvine.