Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (6 page)

When the icaro is finished, he whispers into the bottle the names of everyone present, adding "... and all the other brothers and sisters" if there are people present whose names he does not know or remember. Finally, he
whistles softly once more into the bottle, the breathy whistle fading into his
whispered song, his icaro de ayahuasca. He is jalando la medicina, calling in the
medicine, summoning the spirit ofayahuasca.

DRINKING THE AYAHUASCA

The participants who will drink are called up, one by one, to stand before don
Roberto, who fills the small cup from the altar with ayahuasca, singing over
it, blowing tobacco smoke on it. The medicine itself tells don Roberto how
much to pour for each participant; after he pours the appropriate amount into
the cup, he blows mapacho smoke over the liquid. One by one, they take the
pungent, oily, nauseating, and profoundly emetic ayahuasca; swallow it down
quickly, asking the medicine for the healing or revelation that is desired; hand
back the cup, and return to their places.

I come up to the mesa. I am among the last to drink, an honor. Don Roberto hands me the cup of ayahuasca-particularly full tonight, I note with
dismay. Every molecule of my body rebels against drinking this vile liquid. I
swallow it down as quickly as I can. It is one of the worst things I have ever
tasted; it coats my teeth and tongue. I am grateful to return to my seat and
smoke more mapacho.

Don Roberto drinks the ayahuasca last, singing over the cup. All light has
gone from the sky. Someone blows out the candles, and everyone sits in the
growing dark. Don Roberto sings icaros, rhythmically shaking his shacapa,
calling in the spirits of the plants. After a while, the first gagging and vomiting sounds are heard in the dark room. Many participants are smoking mapacho; every few seconds the darkness is pierced by the glowing end of a cigarette. The room is filled with the smells of tobacco smoke and agua de florida,
the one rich and deep, the other high and sweet, like musical tones.

CALLING IN THE PLANT SPIRITS

Now, while the ayahuasca is taking effect, don Roberto calls in all the remaining genios, the spirits of the plants, of whom ayahuasca is the jefe, chief. He
sings the icaros of the plants-separate special icaros for some plants, often
a single long icaro that lists dozens of plants and their healing powers, sometimes as many as a half-dozen icaros in a row. Here he is calling in the spirits of all the plants-like having the whole hospital staff present, he has told
me-so that the appropriate plant spirit is immediately available if needed to heal a particular participant. Other shamans say the same: the shaman should
convene as many spirits as possible, so that all may contribute to making
the healing most effective;2 don Juan Flores Salazar, an Ashdninka shaman,
sometimes jokingly refers to this as "the parade."3 These icaros are often repeated from ceremony to ceremony; many in the audience-those who regularly attend don Roberto's healing ceremonies-know the melodies, and at
least some of the words, and sing along. The icaros sung during the individual
healings are more likely to be specialized, unknown to the audience.

CALLING IN THE DOCTORS

Here too there descend from the sky what don Roberto calls the doctores extraterrestreales, the extraterrestrial doctors. Such celestial spirits appear common
to the healing ceremonies of many mestizo shamans; often they are from distant planets or galaxies, or are the spirits of deceased healers, maestros de la medicina. Don Romulo Magin calls them jefes, chiefs; they descend from the sky
dressed like Peruvian military officers. Don Emilio Andrade Gomez calls them
doctores or doctorcitos; they may be Indian shamans or the spirits of doctors that
come from other parts of the world, such as England, America, China, Japan,
Spain, or Chile.4 To Elvis Luna, a mestizo shaman and painter from Pucallpa,
they are brilliant celestial beings that appear like angels. To don Roberto, they
appear as dark-skinned people, Indians, almost naked, wearing only short
skirts that cover their genitals; Bona Maria calls them marcianos, Martians.

They speak, but not in human language. Rather, they speak in sounds:
doiia Maria says they speak in computer language, beep boop beep beep boop beep
beep; don Roberto says they sound like ping ping dan dan. These are the spirits
who help provide the diagnosis; they look at the patient and tell don Roberto
where the problem lies, where to suck, what songs to sing, what healing
plants to call; they also help him to heal, by blowing on the patients and waving their hands over them. "Treatment begins with the calling of spirits," says
don Juan Flores Salazar, "the studying of what plants are

SMALL HEALINGS

It is full dark. The frogs have started calling from the trees. There is one that
sounds surprisingly like the ringing of a cell phone. Outside the hut, the jungle is breathing in the darkness-the river flowing, the wind in the palm trees,
the delicate susurration of the shacapa, the syncopated singing of the magical
icaros. I am beginning to feel really nauseous. Oh boy, here it comes, I think.

Once all the healing spirits have assembled in response to don Roberto's
icaros, he begins the treatment of individual patients. He walks around the
room, stopping before individuals, checking whether they are mareado, hallucinating. He approaches some of the patients, stands in front of them, and
does relatively quick healings. He draws crosses on their palms and foreheads
with agua de florida, sings icaros, and rattles his shacapa leaves, touching
the bundle to their head and torso. He bends over and blows tobacco smoke
into their bodies through the crowns of their heads, each with a soft voiceless
sound-pshooo....

Meanwhile, I am vomiting. Among mestizos, vomiting is accepted as natural and healthy; indeed, for many participants in this healing session, it is
the vomiting, not the visions, that is the primary goal. But, to a North American like me, vomiting is a painful loss of control, a humiliating admission of
weakness, often resisted, done in private; my embarrassed attempts to silence
the sounds of my vomiting result in strangled retching, horrible sounds. In
the context of ayahuasca, at least for those on the ayahuasca path, the giving
up of control to the doctores, the plant teachers, is a lesson in itself, one I have
still to learn.

BIG HEALINGS

Then the most serious healing begins. The patients requiring special attention are called up to the front, walking by themselves or helped forward by
friends and relatives. One by one, the most seriously sick first, they sit or lie in
front of the room, before the cloth where don Roberto has laid out his implements. Sometimes he asks them, "Where does it hurt? What is your problem?"
Then he sings over them, shaking his shacapa, touching it to the places where
they claim affliction. The patient is touched, prodded, as don Roberto seeks
out the place where the illness is lodged in the form of a magic dart; then he
blows tobacco smoke on the place, rubs it to loosen the affliction from the
flesh in which it is embedded.

Then he ceases his singing and begins making extraordinary and dramatic
sounds of belching, sucking, gagging, and spitting. He is drawing up his
mariri, his magical and protective phlegm, to make sure that what he sucks
from the body of his patient cannot harm him; then he loudly and vigorously
sucks out the affliction, the magic dart, the putrid flesh or stinging insect,
the magically projected scorpion or razor blade. He gags audibly at its vicious power and noisily spits it out on the ground. I watch don Roberto do
his work-a synesthetic cacophony of perfumes, tobacco smoke, whispering, whistling, blowing, singing, sucking, gagging, the insistent shaking of the
shacapa leaves, the internal turmoil, the inchoate visions. When the healing is
done, don Roberto blows mapacho smoke into the patient through the crown
of the head, over the place from which the sickness was sucked, and over the
patient's entire body, cleansing and protecting both inside and out.

It is the medicine that tells don Roberto which icaros to sing, what healing
plants are needed. He hears this as a voice speaking clearly and distinctly in
his ear. "Suck in this place," he told me the voice says. "Blow mapacho smoke
in that place. Use this icaro." The appropriate plant spirit steps forward and
says, "Use me!" Don Roberto gave me an example of what he had heard during a healing ceremony the night before; he put his mouth right next to my
ear and said, with startling clarity, "This patient has a serious sickness, pain
in her womb. Tomorrow prepare medicine made from catahua and patiquina."

The same is true for dona Maria. "When you are in ayahuasca," she says,
"the spirits come forth to do the healing." Just as with don Roberto, all the
plant spirits attend dona Maria's healings, and, for each patient, the correct
medicine steps forward and speaks into her ear in a clear voice, telling her
what icaro to sing and what plant medicines to prescribe. She understands
what they say, although they speak to her in Quechua, a language she does not
know.

I am watching all this go on, with great lucidity, weak from vomiting, my
legs like rubber. I am watching the preliminary effects of ayahuasca-lights,
swirling galaxies, interlocking patterns, Van Gogh skies, fleeting images,
floating and disembodied eyes. Suddenly, I am no longer in the jungle hut.
Instead, I am walking down a street in an urban setting, with no one around,
near a vacant lot with a chain-link fence, garbage scattered around. I come
upon a vendor with a wooden cart-two large wheels behind, two small
wheels in front, a handle to push it with-who has necklaces for sale, hanging from wooden pegs, of the inexpensive kind that are tossed to the crowd at
Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I buy one and see a small girl, maybe five or six
years old, standing on the sidewalk. She is blond, muy gringa, dressed in a pale
blue satin party dress, as if she is on her way to a birthday party. In fact, she
is wearing a crown on her head, which looks like a cardboard crown covered
with gold foil, which I take to be a sort of party costume. I hand her the necklace as a gift, and she stands there very still, like a statue, holding the rosarythat is how I think of it now-raised in her right hand, the golden crown on
her head, covered in light on the broken sidewalk.

She is, don Roberto tells me later, ayahuasca, the goddess, speaking to me.
She has come to me before when I have drunk ayahuasca, in the form of a teenage Indian girl, in shorts and a white T-shirt, with long straight black hair
and the most dazzling smile I have ever seen. I do not know why, but the spirits of the plants come to me as women.

ENDING

The ceremony continues through the night, as individual patients come forward. The icaros continue, rhythmic, syncopated, repetitive; there are breaks
in the ceremony, during which don Roberto sings an icaro by himself, or the
participants sit quietly or go outside for some fresh air. I go outside, into the
jungle, breathing deeply, listening to the river, listening to the frogs.

Patients are called forward, rubbed, sung over, touched with the rhythmic
shacapa, in some cases their bodies sucked and their gagging illness spit
away. Hours pass, and the pace slows; people are nodding off. The ceremony
does not so much end as fade away, like my nausea and visions. I am weak and
tired, wrung out, wired. I can't take much more of this, I think, knowing that I
will take much more of this. The call of vision is very strong. Why did la diosa
come to me? What did she try to say? Did I listen for her song?

Dona Maria typically sings a concluding icaro thanking the spirits and
sending them away; but, for don Roberto, the spirits simply fade away with
the passing of his own mareacidn. Don Roberto relaxes, smiles, and slumps
slightly, exhausted, once again informal, making a joke, talking about the
ceremony.

THE SHAMAN AS PERFORMER

Drama and Plot

The first thing we can notice about don Roberto's ayahuasca healing ceremony is that it is a performance. This should not be a surprise. Look at the healing performance of a typical American doctor-the white coat, the surgical
scrubs, the stethoscope casually draped around the neck, the serious demeanor, the studied frown, the authoritative issuing of what are called orders, all
conveying the authority of the healer and the risk and mastery of the healing
process; then the patient waiting in a separate area, the name publicly called,
the patient stripped and dressed in special healing clothes, the sudden appearance of the doctor, wearing a healing costume, at the door of the separate
room. Indeed, as medical anthropologists Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman put it, "AU medical encounters, no matter how mundane, are dramatic
episodes.",