Book I: Ayahuasca, Iquitos and Monster Vorax

Originally published in 2015, this first book in the series is set in the early days of the ayahuasca boom in Iquitos. The story unfolds through the experiences of a diverse cast of characters: several ayahuasca tourists, village healers turned “shamans,” an American doctor with a bold epigenetic theory, and local patients who claim to have been bewitched or who want to find a partner. Ayahuasca, Iquitos, and Monster Vorax captures the effervescence of another “bonanza” moment in the Amazon and relates it to other extractive processes that have taken place throughout history.

English translation by Cecilia Bartolomé Grande and Andrew Lee Jackson

Introduction

We do not know when this story begins, or where. We do not know who understood that cooking ayahuasca stems with chacruna leaves would realize a powerful remedy capable of purging body and spirit to open a fabulous world of visions. Some say it was divine…

1. Joe Tafur's metaphor

Joe Tafur, the North American family doctor, son of Colombian parents, has gone back south. He felt strange in a prestigious medical school in California, among students who worshiped Monster Vorāx (praying for the money they would earn, for the status). Is…

2. Retreat at Kapitari

At the age of 82, the mother of popular Cocama ayahuasquero Lucho Culquitón recreates, with her everyday work, a world that is coming to an end: that of the chagra, that used to guarantee the food supply of native families in this big forest. Knock down a hectare of……

3. A touristic proposal (and some bad trips)

I venture to say that the commodification of spiritual experience is inseparable from its trivialization, which fits perfectly into the dynamics of Monster, ready supplier of new stimuli, experiences, objects, enjoyed superficially (and later something else, meditation...…

4. Dark digression within Monster's dominions

Monster hates plants from the present-day and plants from millions years ago, those that after complex physical-chemical processes became oil and other fossil fuels. In the Amazon region he can free up his obsession to give back to the atmosphere the carbon…

5. The village curandero Benigno Dahua also needs oil

Benigno is a good fellow. His favorite words are "buddy" and "correctly"; everything seems right to him. Benigno is sure that I know him through a website in which he appears, and he does not mind when I explain that it was through his nephew (whom he…

6. Products in the market

As Harry and Sam did a week before, I enjoy the beautiful sunset over the Río Itaya in the tourist waterfront in Iquitos, until I feel an unsettling presence by my side; a thief, I am afraid. I turn and find a dapper man, pristine clothes, neatly combed black hair, small…

7. The sweet purge of the Gringo Shaman

Ron Wheelock, the "gringo shaman", is one of the few foreign curanderos who runs ceremonies without the help of a local maestro. And he is the most productive ayahuasca cook in Iquitos (perhaps in the world). In his home garden he cooks an average of thirty…

8. Lucho and the spirits

The ceremony is about to begin. Lucho Panduro smokes and in doing so he puts an impenetrable electrical mesh around the temple. His second level of protection is a shiny black stone dome. It will be sufficient to repel the attacks of malevolent spirits but…

9. What the curandero cures

Juan Curico cannot hold back tears of emotion when, on All Saint's Day, he visits at Punchana cemetery the grave of his grandfather, Jacinto, who raised him. "My maestro..." he sighs with emotion. "The patients came to him and, oh my Lord, how well he cured…

10. Francisco Montes in his garden

Just one kilometer from this extraordinary vine runs the menacing Iquitos Nauta road. Francisco Montes embodies a dream: doors can be put on Monster Vorāx, the ones of Sachamama botanical garden, where plant life does not diminish. This ayahuasca plant…

Epilogue

…but I decided to drink one last time, two days later, in another center. I had a frightening experience. I found myself immersed in a spiritual attack directed against the maestro, who left the maloca at the beginning of the ceremony, and vomited, maybe took a shit. I…

Initially, the Ayahuasca, Iquitos and Monster Vorax book series had a price of 10 dollars. Although it's now freely accessible, fieldwork still costs money. If you've enjoyed these two books and want to see a third installment, I encourage you to make a donation for the original price. There are many new things to tell, and I also want to know what will have become of Ron Wheelock, of Juan Curico, of the million-dollar business, of the long-suffering Banisteriopsis.

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