This small community is famous for having driven mining companies out of their Amazonian territory in northern Ecuador.
The Cofán Avie natives have yet another mysterious and fascinating particularity: they are masters of Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic medicinal plant and gateway “to the world of spirits.”
“God once lived here, on this planet,” says 63-year-old Isidro Lucitante, patriarch and “taita” (shaman) of the nine families that make up this community in the village of Bermejo Ecological Reserve.
The sparse population of Cofán Avie lives scattered over 55,000 hectares of jungles and rivers along the Colombian border.
“God plucked out one of its hairs and planted it in the earth. Thus was born ayahuasca, source of wisdom,” he adds.
Also known as yagé, Ayahuasca is a decoction prepared traditionally by the peoples of the western Amazon basin from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine.
Very popular in the United States and Europe, it has gained fame as a miracle remedy, recreational hallucinogen, or even a dangerous psychotropic drug.
In Peru, and to a lesser extent in Ecuador, a nurturing psychedelic tourism industry has developed around this plant, now available in capsules or infusions and is sold on the internet.
ENVIRONMENTAL NOBEL
For the Cofán Avie, Ayahuasca is part of their ancestral culture and cosmogony, passed down from generation to generation, and linked to the lush nature surrounding them.
A few privileged visitors, including the AFP team, are willing to live the experience.
Every weekend, family members, residents, some university students, and a few tourists sit in the hammocks of the maloca, the indigenous communal house, where they drink the strange, bitter-brown liquid.
Under the supervision of the “taita,” Isidro and his assistants, amidst the participants’ smoking, chanting, nausea, and feverish monologues, begin the chaotic, hypnotic journey that takes the consciousness into unknown spaces.
Our culture comes from our ancestors’ knowledge of yagé medicine, an ancient and sacred plant,” explains Isidro, his coppery face dotted with makeup.
Yagé “is first and foremost a medicine,” he emphasizes.
Harvested in the forest, the vine is “crushed, mixed with water, and boiled for hours. The cook must fast and follow a special diet,” he adds.
The Lucitante ceremony takes place at dusk in the family’s wooden maloca, painted with parrots, snakes, panther heads, and the faces of illustrious elders from the community.
The Cofán Avie are known in Ecuador for winning a historic legal victory against the mining industry in 2018.
A local court annulled 52 gold mining concessions granted by the Ecuadorian state without consulting or informing the community as required by law.
Their struggle was honored in 2022 with the Goldman Prize, known as the Nobel for environmentalists, awarded to Alex Lucitante, one of the community leaders.
‘IT’S NOT A DRUG’
Alex, 30, one of the shaman’s sons, has organized an indigenous guard and drone surveillance to collect evidence of the miners’ abuses.
“It has been a long and difficult struggle to protect our territory and nature, a path in which we draw on the wisdom of the ancients and the knowledge of the yagé,” Alex told AFP.
He wears a necklace of peccary teeth (a medium-sized mammal similar to a hairy pig) on his chest, a red scarf around his neck, and a feather in his nose.
This “biodiversity hero”, as some NGOs call him, works at night as a father’s helper and singer with a guitar to accompany the trance of the participants.
Thanks to yagé medicine, we can connect with the spirits and (?) balance the world. Yagé is a sacred path that invites us to live in harmony with nature,” explains Alex.
In vogue in various parts of the world, ayahuasca can, however, be dangerous for people who take antidepressants, have heart problems, or psychotic, epileptic, and asthmatic people.
Although the recipe of the Cofán Avie has not been revealed, this mixture usually contains the hallucinogen DMT (dimethyltryptamine), which is forbidden in the United States and other Western countries.
“Yagé is not a drug,” Isidro insists.
“My grandfather drank yagé every week and died at 115,” he says.
Ayahuasca is not addictive, according to experts, and can instead serve to treat certain addictions.
“They come in sick, and some are drug dependent. They come out calmer or healthier,” says the old shaman, who started using it when he was five.
PURIFY
“Contact with this other world can be dangerous, and it is the function of the shaman to guide and protect the apprentice,” warned the main documentary on the subject, “Other Worlds”, by filmmaker Jan Kounen, in 2004.
Drinking “ayahuasca is a risky proposition,” since the drink “acts as a psychic revealer, and one never knows, until one ingests it, what this powerful hallucinogen will reveal about oneself.
It is also a “purification,” another way to refer to this ritual.
“You vomit out all the bad food and negative energy accumulated in your body. It’s like a big cleansing,” Isidro describes.
Only then “can the visions come. First the colors. Then, as we concentrate, the jungle appears. The animals come the boa constrictor that owns the rivers, the catfish, or the jaguar. And, finally, people and spirits (…) but not everyone can see them,” says the wise old man enigmatically.
In the maloca, everyone prepares for the inner “journey”.
The newcomers remain in tense silence, and the more experienced chat and joke.
The “taita” calls one participant at a time to drink a glass of the disgusting mixture.
Then comes the order to turn off the camera and end the report.
Everyone settles into their hammocks, eager to tread “the snake’s path.”
With information from AFP
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