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YAJÈ - THE NEW PURGATORY: Page 2
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The banks of the lower Putumayo.
"The jungle is for the native and when not for him, for the obstinate. For the stubborn, romantic and masochistic rebel from the city who senses that it offers some mysterious illumination when all evidence points to the hard truth that it is a crude, uncomfortable, uncouth and lonely, very lonely, existence for an outsider. And yet . . .How beautiful the Putumayo is when you really see it ! First it happens with yajé, a transitory inspiration, to be sure, but one that strengthens your determination to stick things out. Then a few days pass and - since the sessions only take place once a week - the perception fades and vanishes. Tedium overpowers you and you slide back into desperation. But even though you are not aware of it, the spirit of the vine is within you, alive and subtly working away and this being will not allow the wish to recover that happy sensibility to die - if you trust in him."

If the taitas, as they bring yajé to our world, have already broken many of the traditional rules, why can't they or we go even further ? Indeed, if the magic of yajé is in the plant itself, if it is a spiritual force and therefore an eternal one, why do we need indigenous guides at all ? Why, when we have such a different formation, should we be bound by the values of one particular culture - values which, by definition, are relative and temporal ? What is to stop us from removing the non-essential elements - the ones that appeal to our nostalgia and longing for the exotic - and use it in a way that is relevant to our own time and our own culture, as Jonathan Ott suggests ?

These are not only legitimate arguments in themselves but also - strangely enough - they find some support in the very indigenous tradition which they question. The taitas themselves say that the plant is the teacher and they its adjuncts. They emphasize that you must drink as much of it as you can and the only valuable lessons the ones you learn, the hard way, for yourself. Yet they themselves would never dream of abandoning their hierarchical practice of communicating knowledge from master to apprentice within a rich and ordered ritual context.

These are complex philosophical questions and even if I (or any one else) were capable of answering them, it wouldn't really matter. The march of time will determine the future of yajé, probably in a way that is not to my liking but then I have to remember that it is, precisely, the decadence of the indigenous culture that allows me to participate in their rituals. The only thing that is clear to me is that yajé has escaped from the hands of its indigenous masters and anything may happen to it from now on. In more pessimistic moods, feeling the dilution of many of the rituals I now go to in Bogotá compared to those which marked my initiation in Buenavista and knowing that those, in turn, were a degeneration of what went on before, I project a situation where, in fifty or a hundred years, many thousands of people will be drinking yajé in different parts of the world but no one will understand what it is about anymore. Not the true depth and majesty of it.

I stick with my committment to the indigenous tradition, at least as I know it, for the simple reason that it works, both for me and my companions. When we do yajé with bogus shamans (some of whom may be Indians, for it is not really a matter of the practitioner's race but his respect for the tradition), we realize that there is a big contrast between the two experiences. A contrast which can be observed, not in vague terms of feeling but in specific phenomena. If the shaman ignores this law, you may not vomit at all, your pinta will be disappointing or non-existent, you are more likely to fall asleep and the yajé won't inspire to sing and dance.

Tikuna girl in ceremonial costume. The homeland of the Tikuna ethnic group is the Colombian Amazon, the most important nuclei living around Leticia on the big river and important tributaries like the river Amacayacu, which, as the first part of the word suggests, is the "river of the hammocks". This is the territory of the fabled Amazonian river dolphins, which are sacred animals that figure in many Tikuna myths. The famous pink dolphins or "bufeos" are said, in these legends, to sink canoes and strike those who fall from them until they drown. The other class of dolphin, the "toninas", which are gray, are by contrast benevolent spirits which help those who fall from canoes to reach the banks and also push fish towards the canoes to help the Tikuna fishermen. The Tikunas practice ayahuasca ceremonies but little is known about their practices.

Tikuna man with headdress. Note the characteristic brightly-colored bird´s feathers and the strip made of "yanchama", a bark that is used for a variety of ceremonial clothing.

Exterior view of a maloca

Interior of a maloca of the Colombian Amazon. The maloca is the "Long House" of the indigenous people of the Colombian Amazon. In their complex mythologies, it represents, among many other things, an anaconda, whose mouth faces the river and is represented by the door of the men; the opposite end of the maloca represents its tail placed over the door of the women; its excrement fertilizes the chagra or food plot. The long house constitutes the axis of religious ceremonies and for this reason the spaces, beams, posts and roofs represent the universe, while the different structural designs, which enable light to be projected from the roofsaddle, facilitate the observation of sun rays, which establish the agricultural cycle with a certain precision. The maloca is equally the ancestral path of water and therefore an umbilical cord which, with its branches, connects the communities with the mouth of the native name for the Amazon: the "River of Milk" - that is, the river of white water - which symbolizes, in turn, the branched stem of the hallucinogenic plant "kana" (yajè).

Below: Stages in the construction of a 'maloca' recently built on the reservation of the Yucuna indigenous group, near Leticia.. Traditionally, at least among some ethnic groups of this region, the 'maloca' served as a multi-family residence but the former practice is dying out and in this particular case it only serves as a ceremonial center, that is, a place where the ritual imbibing of coca and tobacco goes on and traditional community dances are held. These dances sometimes go on, day and night, for three days without a break, to the music of exotic indigenous musical instruments, like flutes, seed rattles, sounding staffs and, above all, the "maguaré", a long hollowed log whose resonance is tremendous: the original bush telegraph Participants wear ceremonial costumes of bark cloth, feathers, etc and paint their bodies blue with a vegetable dye called "huito". They dance in a sort of conga line that goes weaving around the precinct as they sing the chants learned from their ancestors. But it is informal, you can take a break and rest in your hammock when you get tired. In the middle of all this, you will always find some of the elderly men in a corner taking part in the ritual ingestion of coca, which stimulates them to enounce their reflections on life. And often there is also thee of drinking of "chicha", an alcoholic brew made from fermented fruits or tubers. Even so, this informality is deceptive: it is, in essence, a spiritual ceremony, designed to bring harmony to the cosmos through a dance and music that evokes the spirits of the jungle, ethic the ancestral culture and the joy of life.

The person who built it is a friend of mine, the leader of this particular community, Juan Carlos Yucuna, an example of the younger generation of indigenous people who have received a western education and are perfectly at home in the white man´s world, but nevertheless are proud of their traditions and want to get back to their roots.

The structure may look pretty basic, but this is deceptive, because, in the first place, the location of the hut and the alignment of the doorways, posts and other features have to follow strict spatial coordinates, in line with traditional mythology and customs, and every step of its building must be accompanied by rituals expressing respect for the spirits of the forest. Then, the choice of the timber, palm-leaves, tie vines and other materials is not random but must conform to traditional practices, which in any case are the most practical ones. This means, for example, that a gang of workers had to drag big logs for miles through the forest for the four main posts. Gathering together the amount of palm leaves needed for the thatch alone is a tremendous job, to say nothing of weaving the leaves and installing them on the framework. In the olden days, all of this was done a voluntary basis by members of the community and their neighbors but, increasingly, with the inroads of the money economy even on isolated indigenous groups, this is becoming a thing of the past, so that Juan Carlos, in addition to all his other responsibilities, had to raise the money to pay workers to help him. Nevertheless, the voluntary spirit of the 'minga', the traditional community work gang of Indians, has not entirely disappeared. In one photo, we can see, perched on the structure in white tee-shirt and beard, a friend of Juan Carlos and mine who is helping out for the fun of it and because he is committed to the conservation of the indigenous culture: Germán Ochoa, an environmentalist from the Leticia campus of the National University of Colombia, where I myself worked as an English professor for a while.

Indigenous riverside settlement, Colombian Amazon

Jungle vegetation
"Constantly surrounded by the forest, I eventually came to recognize some its common plants and animals and gain a small idea of how its components related to the whole but, for the most part, it was too taxing for my powers of observation. I lacked a method for classifying, for breaking down what I saw, having to depend instead on vague poetical impressions that were too influenced by my passing moods. The jungle had an invasive force that was so intense that, at times, I would literally become dizzy before the breadth and complexity of it. Without some kind of objective approach to this bewildering world, you had, if you were at all sensitive, to shut off at some point or risk short-circuiting your sensory apparatus. Unless you were a genius like Schultes, who, on one occasion when he was facing a wall of forest in the company of Reichel-Dolmatoff, murmured to himself, "I know every tree, every single tree one can see from here".
No, it was better to stick to the near and familiar, consoling myself with the illusion that if you knew only one flower well, you would understand the jungle as a whole. Yet at other times, when yajé stopped me from trying to make sense of things, all became clear: the jungle went inside you and you surrendered to its colours. A feverish abstraction of its complex forms would penetrate your awareness, revealing the inner logic of the confusing impressions of waking life. You would taste the bitter plants, the sinister flowers, the proud, evasive beasts. You would feel the sourness of the forest inside you, lying heavy on the stomach, until you would go mad with the dense texture and die, realizing, as you vomited, that it was spirit."

Taita Antonio, with one of his maestros, Taita Emilio Jojoa. The picture was taken, around the nineteen fifties, in el Santuario de las Lajas, a famous Catholic shrine in the Department of Nariño relatively near to the upper Putumayo and especially popular with the indigenous people of the south of Colombia.

"Despite the persecution they suffered, many indigenous people of the older generation in the Putumayo still have a grudging sort of feudal loyalty to the Catholic Church. The first to be educated by the missionaries, they are grateful to them for having brought “civilization” (especially, literacy) to the Indians of the region. Behind this attitude is a more primitive feeling that was found throughout the indigenous jungle in the early days of the Catholic missions. Namely, that the Latin Mass, baptism, ceremonial vestments, icons, etc were not so much an ideology that you had to commit your belief to as a kind of magic that it was advantageous to possess. The strictly doctrinal part you could take or leave - it wasn’t really central to one’s Catholicism. What mattered was to grab hold of part of the power of the Church, which was also the mystery of firearms, motor boats and all the rest.

Autocratic and narrow-minded as the Catholic missionaries were, they had a close, paternalistic relationship with the indigenous people. Originally fanatic opponents of the vine, the Catholic priests gradually came to understand that it didn’t really threaten their ascendancy and nowadays, even if they don’t particularly like the ritual, they at least tolerate it. Some priests, for reasons of friendship with indigenous shamans and intellectual curiosity, have even done yajé in an experimental way.

This not a new happening. One of the legendary Capuchin fathers of a previous generation, Marcelino de Castellví, the virtual ruler of Sibundoy Valley for nearly half a century, had not only taken yajé but (in his condition of a dispenser of Western medicine) sometimes recommended his indigenous patients to go the taitas. It sounds unlikely, because the Spanish priests who staffed such missions were extreme puritans, but Father Marcelino himself was an ethnographer and botanist, which makes the story a bit more plausible. Another of these explorer-priests of the early twentieth century (heroic figures even to an anti-clerical person like myself) , Father Bartolomé de Igualada, who participated in a Capuchin mission to the tribes that lived downstream from the Sionas, is reported to have championed the indigenous use of yajé.

This attitude was astute because the taitas, in general, were also devoted Catholics and this, through the characteristic syncretism, strengthened, rather than weakened, the Church’s hold on the indigenous people.

Taita Querubín Queta, a Kofán shaman from the lower Putumayo, is one of the most respected native healers in the country. Despite his severe appearance in this photo, he is actually a kindly, approachable and modest man, with a great sense of humor. Tragically, two of his apprentices were recently murdered by paramilitary groups of the extreme right, victims of the terrible violence that afflicts Colombia and has been particularly cruel towards its indigenous people. For more information on the wicked and perverse destruction of the indigenous cultures of yajé in Colombia, see: http://www.mamacoca.org/llamados_cofanes.htm

The late Taita Juan Hansasoy and his wife, playing harmonica and drum during a yajé ceremony. The favorite teacher of don Antonio, Taita Juan belonged to the Kamsá indigenous nation that shares the valley of Sibundoy with the Inganos and are equally devoted to ayahuasca.

Peruvian indigenous yajecero William Muzumbite in his chagra near Leticia. He is holding strips of "yanchamas", a natural plant fabric used for a variety of ceremonial costumes. William, with the help of his Huitoto wife, was carrying out one of the first steps in its preparation, carefully beating the stripped bark with a piece of wood to give it greater strength and consistency.

The indigenous people of the Amazon utilize the bark of Ficus glabrata var.obtuso, for fabricating these "yanchamas". With the help of plant brushes and dyes from the fruit of the "morado" (Renealmia alpinia), "achiote" (Bixa orellana) and certain tubers, they produce paintings, masks, clothing and other objects for their ritual ceremonies. The employment of tree bark involves complex techniques for the selection of raw materials and the manufacture and termination of the finished article. One must stretch and dry the bark until it becomes soft and smooth.

Indigenous healer William Muzumbite showing his "chakruna" plant. To prepare the psychotropic drink known as yajé or ayahuasca you always use the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and generally leaves from one or another of the two most common admixture plants: "chakruna" (Psychotria viridis) and another whose scientific name is Diplopterys cabrerana. The popular names for these two plants are very confusing. In Colombia it is the latter which is known as "chagropanga", which is the common name for the former in Peru and Ecuador. Likewise, yajé or ayahuasca may variously describe the vine or the admixture plant, though it is invariably the term for the finished drink. The admixtures may be called "complements", "mixtures", or just plain leaves.

The orthodox scientific opinion is that it is the admixture, not the vine, which gives the visions, the latter merely serving to counteract certain enzymes in our stomach which prevent us from taking advantage of the innate visionary properties of the admixture. Curiously enough, a lot of indigenous shamans agree with this, by saying that it is the "chagropanga" that gives the visions or makes them brighter.

However, I find several objections to the theory. First, the fact that in the great majority of indigenous cultures it is the vine, not the leaf, which is the supremely sacred plant and its varieties are named in accordance with the different kinds of visions they are thought to give. But perhaps the most striking contradiction lies in the widespread reports of ethnic groups who only prepare yajé with the B. caapi vine and have visions that are as vivid as those from the brew with the two components. Let´s not forget that what was possibly the first rigorous scientific description of the yajé experience with visions and all, at least from an ethnographic point of view,was done by the Austro-Colombian anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, who had the unusual privilege of doing yajé with the Tukanos of the Vaupés region of Colombia. It still stands as a classic description of the visionary rapture of yajé but - one little-commented detail - the brew he drank was prepared with yajé vines and nothing else, and not cooked (as usually happens) but raw. I myself have once drunk something similar and it didn´t seem to be essentially different from or less effective than the orthodox preparation.

William Muzumbite standing behind a bush of Pariana sp. in his chagra in Leticia. The leaves of this plant are used for the "fans" which many indigenous and mestizo shamans use in yajé ceremonies to "blow away" the evil spirits that are thought to be responsible for illness in the shamanic cosmogony. These leaf-fans are known as "schakapas" in Peru, but they have different names in Colombia: "wayra sacha" among the Inganos and "mame-oko" amongst the Sionas. The Pariana is a common jungle bush, with long, thin, oval leaves and a bamboo-like stem. The leaves have a papery texture when dry and are tied in a cluster with a cord.The leaf-fan is the "wind that blows away evil spirits".

The awesome stinging nettle of the jungle, "pringamoza" (Urera baccifera, among other species), used in yajé ceremonies. In many but not all indigenous yajé communities in Colombia, a bundle of stinging nettle leaves is used by the shaman to calm someone who is having a bad trip with the vine, but it is up to the patient to decide whether he wants it. I have even seen experienced drinkers, including once or twice a shaman, self-flagellate themselves for the same purpose.

In some places, it also used, along with the leaf fan, to effect a psychic cleaning of the yajé-drinker, even when he is not in a bad way. It is painful, of course, but in the frenzy of the vine this seems secondary and one definitely feels the beneficial effects. It is like an electric-shock treatment with a vegetable voltage: the nettle invigorates, cleanses and makes you tranquil. This tree-like nettle isn´t used in all parts: in the mountainregion they use a smaller variety that is like the one we know in northern climes, but it is just as burning.

William and I posing behind a vine in his chagra.

Jimmy with the maestro Vides, a well-known mestizo shaman from Tabatinga, the Brazilian town that is adjacent to Leticia. The maestro Vides is a "vegetalista" from Peru who is now settled in the Amazon. He is typical of the kind of shamans, close to the indigenous tradition but uprooted from the original culture, who work in an urban setting in the towns and cities of the Amazonian regions of Peru, Colombia and Brazil and provide the poor with a cheap and effective service of healing with medicinal plants. But he also has a following among educated ayahuasqueros from Bogotá and other Colombian cities.

Though largely self-taught, like most "vegetalistas" he is an heir to the long tradition of plant medicine that the mestizo population of South America got from their indigenous forebears: he is the grandson of Inca-descended peasant-farmers who taught him their science when he was a boy.

If we look a bit spaced-out in the photo, it is because it was taken at dawn after an all-night session in his house. Among his other talents, maestro Vides knows how to prepare a potion I have never seen anywhere else, one so concentrated that you only need a spoonful or two, not a cup, to feel the full effects of the vine.

Jimmy in the maloca of Juan Carlos Yucuna near Leticia. Juan Carlos is weaving palm leaves onto one of the laths that forms the framework of the roof and holds the thatch.

The following description gives some idea of the complex meanings, both practical and mythological, of the spaces of the maloca. It was written by a friend of mine, a Colombian theater director called Juan Monsalve, who has studied the ritual dances and music of the indigenous groups which live in malocas and has incorporated them into his work, which also draws on the traditions of indigenous races in different parts of the world, including India, Indonesia and Japan. The maloca described in the text does not belong to the Yucuna ethnic group but another from the same part of the Colombian Amazon. Although each ethnic group has its own beliefs and customs about the maloca, what he says applies, in a general way, to that of Juan Carlos Yucuna and the Yucuna culture to which he belongs.

"The maloca is built in the image and likeness of the cosmos and its space is divided in accordance with the laws which order and determine the life of nature and of mankind.

In a horizontal sense, it is divided into two halves, one male and ceremonial, and the other female and domestic. In the female half, whose door is oriented towards the stream that provides water for domestic use and the paths that lead to the chagras (food plots) are found the fires for the budares (flat ceramic pans) for preparing casabe (cassava meal) and toasting coca leaves and the fires for cooking other foods. This is the domestic space, delimited by the door and the central pillars. Here the female activities are carried out and the objects and utensils that have to do with them are kept: pots, baskets for storing cassava starch; vessels for water and the sieves and strainers used for the preparation of foods. In the male half, whose door is oriented towards the landing stage on the river and the paths along which visitors arrive, are placed the male objects, like the hollowed-out trunk that serves as a mortar for preparing coca and tobacco: there ritual objects are fabricated and the men gather to chew coca. The center of the maloca, a square delimited by the four central pillars, is considered to be the center of the world: it represents the place of origin of the tribe. There, the shaman, seated in his ceremonial stool, communicates with the spirits of the ancestors to obtain his oracles, heal the sick, bless the food, etc. There, the men dance with masks and through the dance relive the deeds that gave life and form to the tribe in the Origin.

Every object has its place, according to its male or female character and use. Many ritual objects are placed at a high level: they hang from the roof or from the posts or on shelves built between the wall and the roof. There they keep the most sacred objects, which may only be touched by the elders, like feather headdresses and ceremonial staffs. In a vertical sense, the maloca represents the different worlds of their cosmogony: the area between the floor and the upper border of the surrounding wall of posts, represents the middle world, inhabited by men, animals, trees, rivers, fish, etc. This is the tangible, corporeal, material world.

From the point where the surrounding wall joins the roof and along the roof, separated by the crosspieces, there are a succession of different heavens, inhabited by the spirits of the mythological heroes, ancestors, lords of the animals and other elements of nature. All of these immaterial and ethereal beings live in malocas and are only visible to the eyes of the shaman, just as if they were real men. In one of these heavens is the maloca of the ancestors of the tribe, from which newborn children come and to which the dead return.

Heaven is a atemporal, eternal and is in permanent communication with the world through the shaman, who travels there and invokes the favor and protection of the spiritual beings. During such rituals, the space of the maloca merges with the space of the heavenly malocas. Men and their creators meet, recognize each other and renew their links.

From the floor of the maloca downwards are the ?earths? that form the underworld, which is associated with the female, the heat of menstrual blood which is harmful for the ethereal and cold male energy. In the depths of the red earth is the great hearth on which life is cooked and around which the ancestral anaconda has rested since the day in which he finished the journey in which he brought the ancestors of the tribe to their place of birth. The men try not to disturb its sleep, because each movement of the anaconda causes an earth tremor. The dead are buried beneath the floor of the maloca with their possessions.

Although there are no rooms or partitions in the interior, each of its inhabitants has his precise place, according to his or her sex, age and relationship with the owner of the maloca. Along the corridor between the round wall and the lateral posts several compartments are formed, in which each family places its hammocks, forming triangles with a fireplace in the center.

In the female half, on either side of the door, are the family of the owner of the maloca and the families of his children or close relatives. In the triangle surrounding the fire that protects them from the intense cold at night sleep the parents, younger children and daughters. In the corridor formed by the lateral and central posts sleep the young unmarried men, further from the fire. In the male half, visitors sleep, following the same arrangement."

Translated from: EL BAILE DEL MUÑECO Lavinia Fiori Juan Monsalve www.banrep.gov.co/blaavirtual/letra-b/baile/vida.htm

Jimmy with a basket full of the leaves used in the thatch of the maloca. The basket, woven from the leaves of a different kind of palm, is made on the spot where the palm leaves for the thatch are gathered. A sort of tubular cage, it is filled with bundles of the thatching leaves and carried to the maloca, where the thatching leaves are plaited onto the lath, as seen in the previous photo. It sounds easy, but the dexterity with which this capacious and sturdy carrying basket was assembled, with no tool other than a machete, was amazing and even more so the job of carrying it through the bush, along slippery trunks bridging jungle streams and muddy paths overhung with vegetation. Compressed to the maximum degree (Juan Carlos tied the carrying basket to a fallen trunk and pushed them in with his feet), the leaves must have weighed close to a hundred pounds. In short, this photo of Jimmy lifting one is posed: he was only able to hold it on his back for a minute.

That, however, is only the first part of the job. As the previous photo shows, once the leaves are in the maloca, they are plaited onto the laths, a job where, once again, Juan Carlos showed incredible skill, twisting the stems of each palm frond over, around and across the lath to form a tight weave. Depending on how far from the maloca you have to go to find the leaves, the work of gathering the leaves, filling the basket and returning to the maloca may take an hour or two, and the plaiting of the leaves from each basket may take up half the day. When you consider that there are thousands of such laths in the structure, you get some idea of the difficulty of the job. Nowadays, some indigenous people around Leticia buy the laths with leaves from specialists in that art when they build a maloca, but what they gain in time they lose in money, so either way it is a challenge. The owner of a maloca needs a gang of workers to help him build it: they may be family members who do it on a voluntary basis or paid workers. In either case, it takes about a year to build one, and, the most frustrating part, the thatch only lasts ten years at most, so you have to put on a new roof, or, what a lot of people do, construct a completely new one on a different site. It is not easy to live in the traditional way in the jungle.

Jimmy´s son with some typical arts and crafts of the jungle. The sausage-like object in his hand is a long, tightly-compressed roll of home-grown Amazonian tobacco leaves, wound round with a natural jungle fiber. These rolls are produced along the Brazilian stretch of the river and sold in ordinary stores, but their production is seasonal, so you can only buy them at certain times of the year. This roll was bought in a store in Tabatinga, the Brazilian city that adjoins Leticia. In his lap is a tortoise shell.

Beside him is a "banca", the ceremonial stool used in indigenous coca and yajé ceremonies. This one actually comes from an ethnic group in the Andes, but similar ones are found in the jungle. The one he is sitting on, which has a different shape, does come from the jungle region of the river Piraparaná and is associated with ethnic groups which use yajé, as is the first.