ONE

I arrived in Pucallpa, one of the two major cities in the Amazonian jungle, on a warm evening in May. At the exit of the airport, I was received by a group of people dressing in traditional Indigenous Shipibo-Konibo clothing: tari (robes) by men and chitonti (skirts) by women, with beautiful and colourful embroidery of what is considered now the cultural patrimony of Peru: Kené. They were singing to the travellers and welcoming us, but for some reason, I felt a bit uncomfortable as a tourist. As soon as I was outside, I was intercepted by several men asking if I wanted a motorcar (tuk-tuk); I ran away from the multitude to the one where it was parked the farthest. I am accustomed to Peru now, in the last three years, I have spent at least half of my time as a translator in the jungle but never in the cities.

We drove to a small neighbourhood 40 minutes outside the city; on the wall of the Lodge entrance, the sign “Shipibo Collective” got my attention. It was literary in English. The owners of the place I choose to stay are also Shipibo family. A relative received me since the family had taken some visitors inside the jungle to see a curandero (a traditional healer). The place was a green area with a big mango tree in the middle, plants and flowers as in the tropics blooming all the time. Each of the cabins had the name of a medicinal plant. I was located in one of the more rustic spaces under the name of Piñón Colorado. I smelled the humidity of the jungle; my skin was sticky and hot, and mosquitoes were around my legs. I loved all that. San José de Yarinacocha is quiet in comparison with the turbulence of Pucallpa. The crickets and frogs started the evening concert while I was unpacking. I was sitting on the terrace to drink a glass of water when I realised that, right in front of my cabin, there was a magnificent giant mural: an elderly woman with deep-dark straight hair, a penetrating gaze, dressed in an electric blue shirt with pink and yellow ruffles on the neck. The image was too familiar to me; I recognised her; she is Maestra Olivia Arévalo, a highly regarded Shipibo curandera and activist who died in her eighties murdered by a Canadian tourist. After a moment reflecting on her and her death, I took a mapacho (a wild tobacco cigar) from my bag and went downstairs. I did what the Mestros had taught me: I quietly introduced myself as Tulia from the Cerro Gordo outskirts in Teotihuacan, Mexico, and I asked for her permission to be here.

***

Elsa

The week is starting, and besides eating grilled fish with funny names such as “palomera,” grilled plantains and “chapo” (banana drink) instead of coffee in the morning, my search for the people I came to introduce myself and the team also starts now. Looking up Google Maps for the location I will go to, I find a little coffee shop two blocks apart from the place. The cafetería seems set up for foreigners looking for coffee as early as 7:30 am and serves vegetarian and vegan options. The owner is a local woman, so I decide to take a motocar there before my meeting.

Elsa greets me, she is a Peruvian mestizo woman from Lima who moved here five years ago. I acknowledge her as mestiza because she literally tells me that. I find it revealing that she adds this characteristic while introducing herself to a foreigner. I ask a couple of questions about the area and if she likes it here… She answers -what to me seems- very smartly. I notice a big pile of books ranging from history to spirituality to plants on the shelves. Shipibo kené art pieces and handicrafts hang on the walls. And there is organic, non-GMO peanut butter and other difficult-to-find foods like almond milk for sale. I am looking all around, enjoying my peanut butter smoothie, when…  What did you come for? She asks very to the point. I’m a bit surprised since it is not the usual way many of us Latin American people approach; we tend to go a bit around the topic first. However, I feel comfortable with the tone. I tell her I’m part of a project/collective that wants to engage and talk with a Shipibo/Intercultural NGO here in Pucallpa. “You are within the 1% of people that do not come here for Ayahuasca, then.”

#Ayahuasca

I disclose personal things. I desire to relate with Elsa as a person and not only as an observer. While still, I find myself aware of an underlying desire to keep the conversation open. I tell her I had received a treatment by a Shipibo Maestro before, which included Ayahuasca. Then, I repeat, this trip to Pucallpa does not have this intention at all.“I knew you had done Aya; otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking like this; the medicine connects people” I think she’s right, but I also see we are in a kind of balanced position to allow ourselves to be open. I am also a mestizo woman, about the same age, living in a rural area. We both went to university and moved to other towns, and she is outspoken and confident. She doesn’t seem to try to please me besides being her customer in a coffee shop. In this way, we engage in a vivid, refreshing, and a bit opinionated conversation.

I tell her I support Indigenous efforts for cultural conservation and sovereignty, including their healing and plant knowledge practices. “It doesn’t matter if you are a foreigner; believe it or not, the plants teach you,” she answers. “For example, my Spanish friend, who was an ex-addict and came to heal himself, connected very strongly with the medicine, so he started serving Aya to others. She looks at me, waiting for my reaction. “This is exactly the person I would never go to if I were looking for Aya,” I answer. She laughs hard; the environment feels like friends discussing more than convincing each other. She continues her kitchen cores.“The majority come to drink Ayahuasca, but they don’t go into a Dieta. For example, my Spanish friend, when he started to give to others, he didn’t know what he was doing, and I told him, cuz I don’t hold my words, I told him: ‘Hey, you don’t know what you are doing, you need to go into a Dieta.’ I haven’t dieted myself, but I knew he needed a Dieta if he wanted to give aya to other people. So he looked around for a Shipibo shaman. He dieted for a month or so, and now he is doing very well (economically). He bought some land, and he works there. As a background, a Dieta is a traditional practice of the Amazon Indigenous Nations, where people abstain from certain activities and foods while remaining isolated in nature for a certain period under the guidance of a Maestro curandero; with many purposes, including healing or training. In the Shipibo tradition, it takes years to become a curandero; some started ‘dieting’ from the age of 5-10, or at least for a good amount of years, inheriting the knowledge from their family lineage.

My heart is a bit sore to hear this -unfortunately common- story about a Western person, who comes for healing, finds a significant spiritual experience, and without thinking about privilege, colonialism, or cultural appropriation, buys some land and opens a ‘healing centre’ charging ten times more the price than a local. Before I can answer from a frustrated mood, her phone rings. She speaks very good English to someone on the other side of the line. When she hangs, I appraise her English.

#Western Philanthropy

“I have many foreign friends, and I know many Shipibos as well. One day, a gringo friend saw the Shipibo and said, ‘Oh, poor people, I will help them build a well in the community’. But I told him: My friend, they are not as poor as you think; if you support building a well, then ask that uncles, brothers, and fathers come to learn how to give maintenance to that well, and you don’t have to pay for labour, they can help with that. The Shipibos come and say to me, ‘I don’t have money.’I tell them: what do you know to do? And they bring their art (she shows me the wide variety of Shipibo kené in the shop for sale), and sometimes we become friends.” I remember what a Shipibo Maestra told me once: that there have been many ‘projects’ from people wanting to help, both Westerns and from the Government, and very, very few with success of some kind. She explained that sometimes they bring chaos to the community when promises are broken, the project creates conflicts between different points of view, or when some Shipibos that ‘have changed’ look to take some advantage over others.

In the Shipibo culture, there is no ‘saving money,’ If you give them 10,000 soles, it is the same amount they will spend. They live day-to-day because they are accustomed to not paying for water or electricity, and they can bring their food from the jungle. I respect their way of living, of not thinking about the future; this is them.” Her reflection reminds me of an amazing lecture by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Nishnaabeg academic, artist, and activist from Turtle Island. One of the examples she gave was that Indigenous people do not have a savings account because their investments are in relationships. When someone gives to another, let’s say, bringing a pie to the neighbour, they don’t think they are ‘losing something,’ she explained. They are investing in a relationship. For years and years, they did this, so when a community struggled for food, their neighbour community would support them… and the opposite is true.

With this, the least I would like to do is discourage external support and good intentions. We need to keep doing the best we can while reflecting deeper. However, in Peru and other countries, including the so-called ‘developed’, philanthropy, in many cases, reproduces the logic of the ‘rich and the poor,’ taking away the agency of the communities and bringing up plans and programs they haven’t participated in the creation of. Most of the time, the paternalistic attitude of ‘we know better what is best for you,’ based on rationalism and ‘scientific research’ does not acknowledge Indigenous wisdom and resilience.

Two main themes emerged in my conversation with Elsa that portray the underlying ontology of separation and capitalism that dominate our world. Philanthropy and Indigenous healing practices with sacred plants. The latest considered part of “the psychedelic renaissance,” which may good be a satire, considering that the historical context of the Renaissance is the imperialist expansion of Europe and that Indigenous cultures never stopped using these plants; it is just that the Western world was not aware of them.

We live right now in the “house that modernity built,” with narratives engraved in our minds and bodies that include dispossession, genocide, and ecocide as part of ‘progress,’ ‘growth’” and ‘development.’

Edwin

I am invited to the OniXobo headquarters, an Intercultural/Shipibo NGO, to an event with traditional dances and food. They are gathering funds to send essential needs like soap to the Shipibo in jail. It’s a bit late when I’m able to arrive. The event started quite early; by now, there are only a couple of tables with music from a speaker (the live traditional music is over). I greet a couple of women I met the other day, ask for a grilled chicken with maduro, and sit with a group of men, all speaking in the Shipibo language.

“Can I?” the youngest of them asks me, serving me beer in a very small cup, only half of it. His name is Edwin; he introduced himself in Spanish. He dresses in tight black pants and a white shirt in a way that reminds me of my fellow nurse colleagues back in the university. Or maybe it is his short and well-groomed hair. Very smiley, he asks my name and why I came to Pucallpa. He moves his hands excitedly and pronounces the words with singular clarity.

#Power Dynamics

I told him my name and that I am from the centre of Mexico. I live on a ranch on a mountain. However, I am self-conscious when I answer the second question: Why did I come to Pucallpa?

-I came to meet the people from OniXobo and introduce myself so that we can, maybe, work together in the future.

-Why OniXobo? He asks.

-Because I would like to learn more about the Shipibo culture.

-Ah! You are researching! He says, stressing on the last word in a particular manner. Then I remembered what someone told me about the anthropology and filmmaking students who come to the Shipibos to do their theses, making promises, but when they finish and graduate, they leave and are never seen again.

-Well, I’d like to know more about you and the OniXobo team.

-Can I? I nod, and he pours beer into the very small plastic glass, literally three sips. He stops to think for a moment and repeats, “You are investigating me.” He laughs and points at me with his finger. I feel exposed.

-I guess… but you can also investigate me. I tell him to ask any questions regarding my life, where I am from, how old I am, what I do for work, etc. However, I still feel I am protecting myself somehow and ask myself what I am really doing. It is clear to him—and he makes me aware of—the power dynamics.

-So, are you researching the Shipibo? Then you go with another community, then another?  I tell him I know a bit about the Ashaninka, the Huni Kuin, and the Quero… but I am not looking to meet people belonging to these communities.

-But you know about them, you have read about us… Ok, he gets me here.

-I think we never finish meeting a person or a community because you are present, not only in the past.

-Well, yes, if I go to your country and research your people, how’s your culture… I cannot ever finish! He keeps quiet for a while.

-Who are your friends?

-They are from England and the Netherlands, mostly.

-They are powerful.

-They are quite average people…

-They are powerful. He repeats, smiling. I keep quiet for a while this time.

Power permeates everything that we do; it is relational and changes with situations and context. Every time we interact with somebody else, power relations are there. It doesn’t mean we are conscious of this all the time. Several characteristics, such as gender, age, socio-economic status, cultural capital, ethnicity, spoken language, sexual orientation, and others, affect these relationships (Berger, 2015). And in this case, Edwin makes the point that I have ‘read about them,’ which is an unbalanced position of knowledge. When I think about power dynamics, I also think about research and colonisation. ‘Research’ has been the tool of the coloniser for hundreds of years, and like philanthropy, Western sciences live within the “house that modernity built.”

#Self-awareness as a Shipibo-Konibo

Edwin then keeps the conversation going more lively. He tells me that when he was a child, he was very interested in his culture; he loved to learn, to ask his grandparents, to be involved in cultural things. “But later, some people came, and changed my thinking, and I went down.” (‘Going down’ in Peru refers to worsening in something, a skill, a practice). “After I realised, I changed my mind again and went up. I started asking my grandparents questions again.” I paid special attention to the phrase “[they] changed my thinking.” He continues by saying that a professor ‘expert’ in linguistics, during a talk, calculated how many years from now the Shipibo-Konibo language will be extinct, and it is going to be rather soon.

-And how did you feel about that?

-Disappointed, very disappointed, sad.

Edwin is very expressive in his gestures. He frowns and makes a painful gesture while shaking his head from one side to the other. He is 21 years old and studying at the university. I am amazed by his perspicacity and intelligence at such a young age. But when I tell him, he looks at me suspiciously.

-I’m not saying anything interesting. He says.

-Oh, you are surprising me; at your age, I was not aware of many things you are. He again shakes his head to one side and the other.

-I actually would like to write about this. What do you think? He laughs.

-If that helps…

I remember what the Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith would say in a lecture when being asked why to revitalise Indigenous knowledge(s) and languages: “We need to do this as Indigenous people, we need it because inside all of this is us, is who we are, and we not only need to find out who we are… we need to learn how to love who we are, who we were. Because one of the impacts of colonisation is that we hate who became, and we don’t like ourselves. So a lot of this process is to fall in love with ourselves.”

***

The sight of Maestra Olivia Arevalo is the first thing I see in the morning when I go out to the terrace to drink my coffee. In the shadow cast by her murder, there was an organising movement amongst the Shipibo community where, for the first time, called a convention of curanderos and practitioners of ancestral medicine to form the Union of Onanyabos and Traditional Medical Practitioners of the Shipibo Konibo (ASOMASHK), and in 2018 the Yarinacocha Declaration was made public. It starts as:

Recognising the repercussions of colonialism, Western state education, and the industry invasion in our communities that threaten the ancestral healing practices and knowledge(s) of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo peoples…

And it follows calling for political awareness of inequality, spiritual extractivism, and solidarity with the struggle of the Shipibo for sovereignty, highlighting the importance of family and education of Shipibo young people in the arts and the healing science ‘curanderismo’. They also invite us to think of mechanisms by which foreigners searching for healing and wisdom through the plants, including Ayahuasca, could contribute to the cultural and political empowerment of the community.

Colonisation is not only something that happened 500 years ago; it is an ongoing process, and we are part of it consciously or unconsciously when we make decisions and, particularly in the way we approach things. Without a deep reflection, we risk being in service of the master’s current system and replicating it. Although I don’t know the solutions, and some things will only be clear while walking the path, I’m aware of the need to constantly ask myself: Why am I approaching things the way I do?  What am I willing to let go of those ways in service of creating a relationship that is right for everyone, human and non-human?