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22 Ayahuasca and Sumak Kawsay PDF
22 Ayahuasca and Sumak Kawsay PDF
pierre girard
Federal University of Mato Grosso,
pierregirard1301@gmail.com
m a ır a i r i g a r a y
University of Florida,
mirigaray@ufl.edu
abstract
Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 27, Issue 2, pp. 204–225, ISSN 1053-4202, © 2016 by the
American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12057
204
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 205
&
What is at risk is the Earth in its totality, and the humans along with it.
Global history enters into nature, global nature enters into history: and
this goes unheard in philosophy.
Is the sequence of hot and dry days that Europe just experienced related
to our actions or to variables deemed natural? Will the flood be a result
of the spring or of an aggression? Undoubtedly, we do not know—or
rather, all our knowledge based on models difficult to interpret,
contribute to this indecision.
The Cartesian affirmation that man must become master and lord over
nature, just like Bacon’s idea that nature must be forced to yield its
secrets like a woman, becomes hegemonic in the development of the West
(acquiring its own forms, independently from the context of the works in
which they are told).
This process of the desecration of the world, with the negation of any con-
cept of transcendence, marks a progressive separation between the sacred
and the scientific, which these thinkers considered a necessary condition for
the rise of capitalism. Unger writes:
Leonardo Boff observes that a truly fantastic industrial machine was assem-
bled for this purpose, investigating, torturing, and perforating the earth so
that it would deliver all of its secrets. “A systematic assault was organized
upon its riches in the soil, in the subsoil, in the air, in the seas and in the
outer atmosphere. The war was taken to all fronts” (1999:104).
For Nancy Unger, as a synthesis of this process, the rationalizing ego
becomes the deciding criterion, a true “tyrannizing” of reality “or, as it were,
to become every time more self-centered and arrogant, modern man comes
to understand his humanity in the explicit purpose of his capacity to domi-
nate and manipulate the world and other men” (1991:55).
These authors agree that there is no way to ignore this relationship
between the domination of nature and the domination of man by man. In
the same vein, His Holiness the Dalai Lama identifies pride and exaltation
as the engine of destruction, to the extent that they promote human self-ido-
latry and the transgression of social and environmental limits.
This situation is characteristic of a civilizational crisis marked by socio-
environmental injustice that distances us from buen vivir, with severe
affects on the mass of human environmental refugees as well as non-
human refugees, providing evidence that our civilization has lost its sense
of limits.
In this approach, the expression buen vivir (or sumak kawsay in Quechua)
can be translated as complete wellness and corresponds to a principle of the
Inca Empire, under which the state, including government and people,
should promote conditions for everyone to live well.
In Latin America, this crisis has environmental consequences that affect
not only traditional populations but that also contributes significantly to the
aggravation of the global ecological crisis. One example is the large volume
of carbon emitted through illegal deforestation and the associated impacts,
facilitated by the leniency of the state. On the other side of this process,
the loss of moral, spiritual, aesthetic, and interpersonal values constructed
over thousands of years by native populations has impoverished us
culturally.
We can find an example of this phenomenon by examining the history of
the Inca Empire in the Andes, which formed a kingdom of great geographic
extension, with populous cities and advanced social organization.
When the Spanish arrived in the city of Cusco, the capital of the Inca
Empire was larger than Paris and London. In European cities, the sewage
ran in open air, whereas there was already a sanitary sewage system in Cusco.
In addition, the Incas left behind a system of agricultural management,
208 anthropology of consciousness 27.2
The natural law dictated the laws of the State, regulating the rights and
duties of the sovereign and subjects. In Peru, only the productions
necessary to subsistence of men were recognized as true riches (. . .) The
Constitution of an Empire with so wise and deep targets, formed the
order of a government more prosperous and more equitable. [cited in
Cordeiro 1995:79; free translation of the authors]
It was in this empire that buen vivir, or in the language of the Incas, sumak
kawsay, came to be considered a structural principle of the state—the wise
and deep objectives that Quesnay identified. All of this existed in a context
and reality very distant from the state of socio-environmental malaise of the
present day, where the cycle of predatory exploitation of nature and people
seems impossible to break.
The fact is that breaking the cycle of these schemes of domination and
submission requires a deep examination of the elements of this crisis. It
requires us to reevaluate the posture with which the human being inserts
himself in reality. It also requires an ethical revision of our relationship with
other living beings, including nonhuman beings.
In the following section, the relationship between Hoasca and sumak kaw-
say is addressed by discussing how in a commoditized world, dominated by
utilitarian logic, the concretization of buen vivir is an arduous battle but
finds a powerful tool and ally in Hoasca. The third section demonstrates how
sumak kawsay is in its essence, a concept that transcends South American
societies and is a way out of the global civilization crisis that faces humanity.
The fourth section narrates the fight of the Beneficent Spiritist Center Uni~ao
do Vegetal (UDV) to legalize the use of ayahuasca in Brazil and abroad
within a religious context. Even as ayahuasca is a South American heritage
that offers the possibility to realize buen vivir through a profound knowledge
of the meaning of life, state intolerance as well as prejudice and disinforma-
tion still needs to be overcome. The fifth and closing section insists on how
ayahuasca and buen vivir foster deep changes in human behavior leading to
a new ethic of respect for living beings and nature essential to surmount the
present crisis.
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 209
&
Xavier Alb o (2009) points out that buen vivir is not to be confused with liv-
ing better. Among the Aymara people, to live better implies a comparison;
that is, an individual or a people live better than others and at the cost of
others. In reality, buen vivir requires the capacity to coexist and to support
each other. That is, the ones who live well are the ones who coexist well,
because they are welcomed by all and know how to welcome all and collab-
orate. This is something that cannot happen individually, but only in groups.
This difference is substantial and invites us to rethink our plans and devel-
opment propositions, according to a new paradigm that focuses on recogniz-
ing buen vivir as constitutional rule.
Zaffaroni (2012) recognizes that more than 500 years of colonialism, neocolo-
nialism, genocide, and domination were unable to erase the Andean people’s
culture and the ideal of the harmonious coexistence of sumak kawsay. Today,
removed from oppressing walls—this ideal returns to the surface with a message
to the world and its people, which are at risk of collapse and extinction.
From this perspective, Caroline Barbosa Contente Nogueira and Fernando
Antonio de Carvalho Dantas (2012:34) point out:
Among the principles to achieve sumak kawsay are balance, harmony, cre-
ativity, and the wisdom of how to live. These principles must be observed in
personal relations and relations with nature, because buen vivir requires com-
plementarity. We need each other. More than that, we need the eye contact
of our brothers so we can truly see ourselves. In other words, in the eyes of
our brothers we can project and see our reflections and our deficiencies. In
the work of self-discovery, hoasca is a tool that offers the expansion of con-
sciousness and, in reducing the ego into its insignificance, reconnects
humans with the meaning of humanity.
The Letter of Principles of the New Enchantment Association for the
Preservation of Nature,3 the ecological branch of the UDV, highlights the
gravity of the ecological crisis, especially another side of the crisis that sepa-
rates humans from sumak kawsay, the distance between man and nature:
Beyond this immediate plan, there is a graver threat: that humans forget
the true meaning of humanity. Humans have been served, nourished by
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 211
The New Enchantment “Letter of Principles” states that the experience with
hoasca teaches fundamentally that the only dominion that helps the human
being to develop is the dominion over his own destructive and self-destructive
impulses within his own human nature.
In this way, the human being is also opened to a new experience of re-
enchantment with the world and a non-mercantilist relationship with nature
that permits him to overcome his mental, psychic, effective, and human
underdevelopment.
Boff (2002:91) points out that the same logic that exploits classes and subju-
gates nations is that which pillages ecosystems and justifies the pillage of pla-
net Earth:
&
conditions. They need to form a homogenous society; to learn and trust one
another and to communicate amongst one another; to wish to share a com-
mon future and pass on resources to their heirs; and to be capable to orga-
nize and govern themselves. While experiencing the effects of hoasca in
UDV, these conditions present themselves as obvious. On the other side, the
elite need to have ethics in their governing of the state and the political
courage to take necessary measures to resolve this crisis before it becomes
catastrophic. Courage is necessary because such leaders risk exposing them-
selves to criticism and ridicule for acting before the necessity of these mea-
sures becomes evident to everyone.
Of note is the similarity between the UDV’s notion of sumak kawsay and
the set of conditions articulated by Diamond. Experience with hoasca can
give human beings more clarity to confront the crisis of civilization that is
happening.
For centuries in South America, sumak kawsay has been buried by colo-
nialism, neocolonialism, and the domination of capitalism. Through the
resurgence of the ideal of sumak kawsay, together with the rebirth and expan-
sion of the use of hoasca, will we be capable of contributing to the reinstitu-
tion of more equilibrated societies?
It is interesting to note that the population of North and South America
together (approximately 950 million people) is less than the population of
India (approximately 1.2 billion people). At the start of the adventure of colo-
nization, the Europeans decimated the original inhabitants of the Americas.
The repopulation of these lands is new, but nevertheless, in a territory greater
than India, the warning signs of the exhaustion of nature are present, as
much in the North as in the South. What were the conditions that allowed
India to have a greater population than that of South America? How will this
continent support, as has India for thousands of years, such an extensive pop-
ulation without entering into collapse?
Brij Gopal, an Indian researcher specializing in humid regions, furnishes
some elements of the solution. He says that in India and in other parts of
Southeast Asia, people depend on humid regions for a great variety of food—
both plant and animal. Furthermore, the plants of humid regions of India were
the only food consumed during religious days because people believed and
still believe that agriculture harms other living beings (Gopal, 2012, pers.
comm., 9 November). Various animals from humid regions were and still are
revered as gods or their associates. Bhagya, Ramakrishna, and Sridhar (2013)
and Shish Anthwal et al. (2010) describe the use of plants and animals of the
forest, from the southeast of India through the Himalayas, in the ritual festivals
of Hinduism and other religious sects. This dependence on humid regions
and forests for sacred plants and food was, to a great extent, responsible for the
conservation of nature on the subcontinent over the course of millennia.
214 anthropology of consciousness 27.2
More and more world leaders. . .are talking about the importance of well-
being as a guide for their nations and the world.. . .This report offers rich
evidence that the systematic measurement and analysis of happiness can
teach us much about ways to improve the world’s well-being and
sustainable development. [Helliwell et al. 2013:5]
A South American particularity is the use of the hoasca tea that offers an
additional contribution to attaining sumak kawsay.
&
The UDV is a religion that was born within a rubber tree grove, in the
frontier with Bolivia in 1961. Its history is linked to Brazil’s history, tied
to the history of the rubber cycle, with the northern agricultural
expansion and with the urban expansion seen in the country after this
period. Although the UDV has grown in urban areas, it maintains its
roots planted in the Amazon forest and in the caboclo culture.
[Bernardino-Costa 2011:65]
This is the way that the Communion of the Vegetal has been implemented
since its origin by the UDV. Though structured within a hierarchical and
participatory form and in an institutional format, it maintains its principal
objective to work towards the spiritual evolution of the human being.
This work also includes an action in defense of the right to a healthy envi-
ronment for the benefit of present and future generations, made by Asso-
ciacß~
ao Novo Encanto (New Enchantment Association), a civil nonprofit
organization considered of public interest by the Brazilian government.
The New Enchantment has three conservation areas in the Amazon rain-
forest, the largest with about 7,500 acres and additional areas in other regions
of Brazil (in the Atlantic Forest and Savannah biomes). In this area, in addi-
tion to maintaining a genetic bank, the Novo Encanto Association develops
environmental education and agroforestry cultivation and ecologic tourism.
Also, this association promotes support to indigenous groups actions, espe-
cially in the Xingu National Park with activity aimed at improving the quality
of life of native populations.
Other actions of citizenship in defense of water resources and more sus-
tainable cities are taking place in several cities in Brazil through Novo
Encanto, in technical cooperation with the UDV.
Scientific Endorsement
In pursuit of institutional recognition of Hoasca, there was the need to study
its biochemical aspects and its effects on the physical and mental health of
its users. A renowned group of scientists became involved in a research pro-
ject entitled “The Human Pharmacology of Ayahuasca,” organized by
University of California professor Charles Grob, involving nine institutions
over three continents. The researchers conducted a series of neuropsychologi-
cal exams with a group of hoasca users after ingesting hoasca, and compared
them with a control group of people who had never drunk the vegetal.
The personality–structure analysis found that the hoasca users were more
resolute, reflective, loyal, with calm temperament, more orderly, persistent,
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 217
Since 1995 there has been an explosion of interest in Hoasca, and much
has been learned from the scientific point of view, although science has
not been able to say much about the divine nature of this singular
experience, nor of its impact regarding individual or societal use.
[Bernardino-Costa 2011:76]
experience that can only be reached when drinking the tea in an appropriate
context. It is due to this unique experience that a relatively small number of
people have continued to maintain this technology through the years.
About the usage of what he considers a technology (the combination of
two plants in the preparation of the tea), Callaway (Bernardino-Costa 2011, p.
80) emphasizes the importance of religious context in the use of the vegetal:
Perhaps you cannot even imagine the importance of this decision for
religious freedom in the United States. It is not only for you, members of
the UDV in the United States or for the people present in this room, but
for all people of the United States. . .This decision involves maintaining
the principle that the government simply has to stay out of religious
decisions. It is a question that has nothing to do with the government.
220 anthropology of consciousness 27.2
The State has to stay away from the regulation of religious conduct,
unless they are prepared to prove there is an excellent reason to interfere,
which did not happen in this case. The executive power over religion and
human freedom is not an unlimited power. This decision is extremely
important because of this. [Bernardino-Costa 2011:216]
Item 24: It is, therefore, ratified that the legitimacy of the religious use of
Ayahuasca as a rich and ancestral cultural manifestation that, exactly by
the significance of its historical, anthropological, and social value, is
worthy of State protection, pursuant to art. 2o, “caput”, of Law 11.343/06
and of art. 215, §1°, of CF.
For the hoasca societies, this recognition does not mean that the still-linger-
ing prejudice and disinformation has been overcome nor does it exhaust the
struggle involving other issues that are being confronted. For example, the
sustainable use of plants that these groups use for the preparation of a sacra-
ment is a challenge; beyond the issues that divide them, such as commercial
and irresponsible use of ayahuasca.
However, this approved resolution opened the path for the necessary insti-
tutional recognition of ayahuasca as an intangible heritage of the Latin-Amer-
ican people, considering it to be a rich manifestation of culture and ancestry,
and of historical, ecological, anthropological, and social value.
In this regard, the Ministry of Culture began the inventory work with a
view to nationwide recognition, which represents another step towards the
consolidation of this right, with respect to the cultural diversity and identity
of the people who compose the multinational Brazilian state.
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 221
These barriers (disturbances along the secular history of the use of hoasca),
summarized here, also lead us to the concept of resilience expanding its eco-
logical use to the sociocultural, in the ability to resist and overcome distur-
bances and to remain in the system. There is a long way to go until the use
of the vegetal is effectively recognized as a cultural heritage of the Latin
American people, and before the prejudice is overcome.
&
final considerations
The planetary crisis reaches the scale of a crisis of civilization.
The promise of progress and peace, espoused by modernity, has been
revealed as rhetoric. The technological advances did not remove us from
war. On the contrary, modern warfare involves every citizen and produces
untold destruction. On the other hand, the dangers of the recent industrial-
ization and the unprecedented pressure on natural resources confront the
modern man, with the potential for self-annihilation.
Philosophers, sociologists, lawyers, ecologists, and contemporary thinkers
investigate the roots of the current technocratic model and question the one-
dimensional and fragmented rationale that places man in conflict with nat-
ure.
This portrait of multiple crises, and the malaise of civilization that follows
it, demonstrates the necessity for a new paradigm that frees us from this age
of global risks.
In this approach, the analysis of this new paradigm is complemented with
the evaluation of the possible contributions that the Incan tradition, summa-
rized in the principle of buen vivir and in the use of ayahuasca, can offer
humanity at this moment of necessary change.
As noted, the relationship between ayahuasca and sumak kawsay is not
only historical, because they were present in the construction and splendor
of the Inca Empire, but both also have a spiritual dimension; that is, the
experience of transcendence provided by the ritualistic use of hoasca also
opens a door to buen vivir.
For its multicultural character and its historical and spiritual significance,
hoasca constitutes an intangible heritage of the Latin-American people, yet it
continues to expand beyond the limits of the Amazon, where it maintains its
roots.
In the history of hoasca, the recognition of the right to its use in Brazil
and abroad is directly linked to the actions of the Uni~ao do Vegetal. These
actions justify the analysis of scientific studies that supported the defense of
the religious use of hoasca in North America and in the European Union.
222 anthropology of consciousness 27.2
&
acknowledgements
We express our gratitude to Jose Gabriel da Costa, Master Gabriel, who
inspired the struggle for the official recognition of the right to ritually use
ayahuasca in Brazil and other countries where this message from the Ama-
zon forest is arriving. We are also grateful for the support of Clovis Cavalieri
ayahuasca and sumak kawsay 223
&
notes
1 James Cameron is director of the movie Titanic and was quoted in Dave Gardner’s
article: “The Titanic Code”. Available at http://steadystate.org/titanic-code/
[Accessed 02.10.2016].
2 Dave Gardner is author of GrowthBusters documentary: Hooked on Growth,
nonprofit, produced in celebration of 40 years of the Relatory “The growth limits.”
His commentary is in the article: “The Titanic Code.” Available at http://steadys-
tate.org/titanic-code/ [Accessed 02.10.2016].
3 Available at http://novoencanto.org.br/carta-principios.php.
4 Cornelio Tacitus (In latin: Publius Cornelius Tacitus) or simply Tacitus (55-120) was a
historian, Roman orator and politician. His statement is quoted by Diamond (2007).
5 Descendants of mixed European, African, and indigenous ancestors, who have
spent most their lives in forested regions -Rizek and Morsello, 2012 - http://
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10745-012-9506-3/fulltext.html#CR13).
6 Many articles have been published on the use of ayahuasca to treat alcohol and
drug addiction. To know more: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/
02791072.2013.873157; http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cdar/2013/
00000006/00000001/art00004 [Accessed 02.10.2016].
7 Available at https://www.diariodasleis.com.br/legislacao/federal/66172-dispoe-sobre-o-
uso-religioso-e-sobre-a-pesquisa-da-ayahuasca.html [Accessed 02.10.2016].
8 To know more: http://udvusa.org/supreme-court-case/ [Accessed 02.10.2016].
9 In A globalizacß~ao da espiritualidade cabocla. FGV EASP. Available in: http://
gvces.com.br/globalizacao-da-espiritualidade-cabocla?locale=pt-br [Accessed 02.
10.2016].
224 anthropology of consciousness 27.2
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