Page 32 - aruba-today-20190708

A32 FEATURE
Monday 8 July 2019

Psychedelic tourism thrives in Peru despite recent killing

By FRANKLIN BRICENO ties throughout the Ama- But Grob adds that there
Associated Press zon basin, mostly in religious are risks in taking the plant,
NUEVO EGIPTO, Peru (AP) rituals. especially in places where
— Sitting on a mattress The gringo trail to the spiri- there is no medical facili-
strewn across the floor with tual El Dorado took off with ties or proper oversight. The
white sheets, Pamela Mo- the publication in 1963 plant contains DMT, an al-
ronci closes her eyes while of “The Yage Letters,” in kaloid that causes strong
a traditional healer starts which beatnik poet Allen hallucinations.
to chant in the indigenous Ginsberg described feeling “Some retreat centers are
Shipibo language. like a “snake vomiting out well trained and have a
In a straw hut, engulfed by the universe” after trying good sense of ethics, but in
the nighttime cacophony ayahuasca in the rainfor- others that may not be the
of the Amazon rainforest, est a short boat ride from case,” said Grob.
a shaman inhales a potent Nuevo Egipto. Although the ayahuasca
tobacco from a pipe and More recently, it has won ritual was declared part of
blows smoke on Moronci’s In this May 6, 2018 photo, Shaman Pablo Flores concentrates devotees among the rich Peru’s national heritage in
head to cleanse her, be- after drinking ayahuasca during a session in Nuevo Egipto, a and famous despite its rep- 2008, there are no estab-
fore she takes her place in remote village in the Peruvian Amazon. utation for an all-consuming lished guidelines for how a
a sacred ayahuasca cer- Associated Press high that for many people ceremony should be con-
emony. He offers the Ital- a revered traditional heal- or Pucallpa, aggressive leads to violent vomiting ducted or any agency
ian woman a plastic cup er. Peruvian investigators English-speaking touts of- and diarrhea. Troubled ac- in charge of overseeing
with three ounces of a bit- later concluded Woodroffe fering ayahuasca cere- tress Lindsay Lohan credits people who carry out the
ter, muddy brew made of shot healer Olivia Arevalo monies greet tourists liter- ayahuasca with changing rituals. Moronci, the Ital-
psychedelic vines. Moronci with a gun he purchased. ally as they come off the her life, singer Sting said it ian tourist, says the spate
drinks it, coughs and smiles Now they are investigating boat, while in indigenous was his only ever “genuine of ayahuasca deaths, and
despite its unpleasant taste. what could have led him to markets a liter-size bottle religious experience,” and the killing of Woodroffe, did
“There is a really strong en- pull the trigger. of the powerful tea fetch- Netflix is currently distrib- not cause her much con-
ergy here,” she says, be- “The most likely scenario is es as much as $100. “The uting two documentaries cern.
fore falling asleep, amid that it was a dispute over Amazon has long had a on the mind-tripping drink The 30-year-old business-
the chirping of crickets and money,” says Ricardo Ji- frontier economy, based with big-name backers like woman said she first tried
thundering rain. menez, the lead prosecu- on the exploitation of its Leonardo DiCaprio and ayahuasca in Italy as
Every year thousands of tor in the case. natural resources,” said Chelsea Handler. Charles she fought depression,
tourists visit jungle retreats in In 2015, a former Goldman Ana Echazu-Boschemeier, Grob, a psychiatrist at the and credits it with “find-
Peru, Colombia and Ecua- Sachs analyst got hold of a an anthropology professor Harbor-UCLA Medical Cen- ing truths” about herself
dor to try ayahuasca, a hal- knife during an ayahuasca at the Federal University of ter in Los Angeles who has that traditional meditation
lucinogenic elixir made of ceremony at a retreat cen- Rio Grande do Norte in Bra- studied ayahuasca, says could not provide. There
native plants that is thought ter in Peru and attacked a zil, who spent more than a that the plants’ effects she met a shaman from
to heal some mental illness- Canadian man who was year in the jungle research- are mostly benign. In 1993, Spain who told her about
es. But while Moronci and with him. He was killed by ing ayahuasca and its uses. he conducted a study on retreat centers in Peru.
others say they have found the Canadian, who acted “To some extent, shamanic ayahuasca users in Brazil, In a recent ritual in Nuevo
peace and enlightenment, in self-defense. In 2014, tourism is replicating this finding that subjects who Egipto led by local sha-
for a few seekers the expe- a 19-year-old British man savage logic of extractive attended a church that man Pablo Flores, Moronci
rience has been fatal. died in Colombia after he industries where people reveres ayahuasca were said she relived happy mo-
And as more Westerners passed out during an aya- and nature have little pro- mentally healthy. ments of her childhood,
seek out the legendary cu- huasca ritual. tection,” she said. “A number of our subjects and also realized she had
rative, commercialization Anthropologists say the re- Ayahuasca in the Que- had strong histories of al- health problems that had
has taken over as profit- gion’s history of violence chua language means the cohol abuse that entirely to be addressed.
seeking impostors pop up and lawlessness could be vine of the soul — or death, ceased,” after they joined “The plant told me I had a
among the dozens of legiti- replicating itself in the vir- depending on the trans- the Uniao do Vegetal problem in my ovaries that I
mate ayahuasca centers tually unregulated aya- lation — and it has been church and took ayahuas- was not aware of, and that
that have emerged over huasca industry. In back- used for hundreds of years ca twice a month, Grob is what I am working on
the years. water towns like Iquitos by indigenous communi- said. now,” she said.q
Over the past decade at
least 11 tourists have been
killed in incidents linked
to traditional medicine in
South America, according
to news reports, including
a California man who was
buried secretly by a sha-
man after he died in an
ayahuasca ceremony in
Peru. The latest killing took
place in April, not far from
the Peruvian village of Nue-
vo Egipto, where Sebastian
Woodroffe, a 41-year-old
Canadian man studying
medicinal plants, was blud-
geoned in broad daylight In this May 6, 2018 photo, Italian national Pamela Moronci In this May 4, 2018 photo, supplies for ayahuasca and Santeria
attends an ayahuasca session in Nuevo Egipto, at a remote
rituals, are displayed for sale in the Pucallpa market, deep in the
by an angry mob in retalia- village in the Peruvian Amazon. Amazonian jungle of Peru.
tion for him allegedly killing Associated Press Associated Press