Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (55 page)

NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN BRAZIL

Discussion of the Upper Amazon culture area would be incomplete without
some reference to its most recent eastward extension-the several new syncretic religious movements of Brazil in which ayahuasca plays a central sacramental role.37 The Upper Amazonian contribution to these movements was
the use of the basic ayahuasca drink, made from the ayahuasca vine andexclusively-chacruna; no other companion plants, and no additional plants,
are used in the drink. Other aspects of the Upper Amazon culture area, including its shamanism, were not imported; anthropologist Edward MacRae has
specifically pointed out that Santo Daime has not incorporated such features of Amazonian shamanism as virotes, arcanas, phlegm, or Amazonian ideas
of the moral ambiguity of the shaman.38 Rather, ayahuasca was incorporated
as a sacrament into a folk Catholicism that had already been profoundly influenced by spiritism and Afro-Brazilian culture.

These religions began in the 1930s, when many Brazilian immigrants
moved southwest to the Amazon seeking work tapping rubber trees. Most of
these impoverished Brazilian immigrants became sedentary seringueros, but
came in contact not only with indigenous Amazonians but also with itinerant mestizo caucheros from the Upper Amazon. Three of these Brazilian immigrants-Raimundo Irineu Serra (1892-1971), Daniel Pereira de Mattos
(1904-1958), and Jose Gabriel da Costa (1g22-1971)-founded new religions,
mixing African Brazilian, spiritist, and Christian elements with mestizo and
indigenous use ofayahuasca.39

Santo Daime

The first Christian church to use ayahuasca as its sacrament was founded by
Irineu Serra, a seven-foot-tall illiterate African Brazilian rubber tapper, the
descendant of slaves. When he first drank ayahuasca, probably in the borderlands between Brazil and Bolivia, a woman appeared to him, calling herself
the Queen of the Forest, whom Irineu identified with the Virgin Mary. She told
him that ayahuasca was the sacred blood of Jesus Christ, giving light, love,
and strength to all who would use it. Ayahuasca was henceforth to be called
daime, "give me," as in "give me love, give me light, give me strength."

Toward the end of the 1g2os, Irineu started to organize sessions in the
town of Rio Branco, in the Brazilian state ofAcre. Although he could not read,
write, or transcribe music, his hinos, hymns, were soon put into written form
by his followers. He became known as Maestre Irineu, the first great leader
of the Santo Daime movement.41 So important is his person that the doublearmed cross of Caravaca, under the name cruzeiro, has been imported into the
Santo Daime tradition, where it is present at all Daime works, and the second
arm of the cross is held to refer to the second coming of Christ in the person
ofMaestre Irineu.41

As the number of his followers increased, Irineu organized his church and
established its Christian-spiritist doctrine, which included belief in reincarnation and the law of karma. Christian elements included unconditional love
for one's neighbors, veneration of Catholic saints, a belief in Jesus Christ as
the Savior, and an understanding of Santo Daime as the doctrine of the Virgin
and of Jesus Christ and of daime as the Blood of Christ.42 In fact, the doctrine of Jesus Christ secreted itself within the sacred vine and leaf as Christ Consciousness-a seed that was destined to be replanted in humanity by Master
Irineu.43

Irineu also instituted a specific ritual for the drinking of daime, with men
and women separated in concentric circles, singing a set program of hymns.
Santo Daime services center on healing. The structure is hierarchical and paternalistic; the main emphasis is on the doctrine as codified in hymns and
ritual. The central focus for these Santo Daime ceremonies is the singing of
hymns, which Serra claimed to have received while within the "force" of the
daime.44 Members of Santo Daime typically dance in an intricate two-step
with men and women separated.45

Irineu died in 1971, but his center remained active. In 1972, one of his followers, Sebastiao Mora de Melo (1920-1990), created a new center called the
Centro Ecletico de Fluente Luz Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra, the Raimundo Irineu Serra Eclectic Center of Fluid Universal Light (cEFLURIS). Other
Santo Daime groups tracing their lineage to Irineu compete for the title Alto
Santo, Holy Heights, after the location of the original Santo Daime church and
community; none numbers more than a few hundred members.46 Among other reasons, the split was sparked by differences about the legitimate successor
to Irineu. The new center also adopted additional esoteric spiritist teachings,
especially those of the Circulo Esoterico de Comunhao do Pensamento, a
group based in Sao Paulo.47 In addition, CEFLURIS, as opposed to Alto Santo,
incorporated marijuana into its ayahuasca rituals, calling it Santa Maria, the
plant of the Virgin Mary-a feminine spiritual force counterbalancing the
masculine daime, which is God the Father.48

Under the charismatic leadership of Padrinho Sebastiao, CEFLURTS began
to operate in urban areas of many Brazilian states and later expanded into other European countries, the Americas, and Japan.49

Barquinha

Daniel Pereira de Mattos-called Frei Daniel by his followers-had been a
friend of Irineu and a member of Santo Daime. In 1945, he developed his own
religious movement, now known as Barquinha, Little Boat, based on the idea
that adherents are sailors on the holy sea aboard the little boat of the Holy
Cross.5° Along with Santo Daime and the rural folk Catholicism of Brazil,
Barquinha incorporated spiritism and West African spirit possession, especially from the Brazilian syncretic religion Umbanda. Among the spirits of
Barquinha are pretos velhos, spirits of black slaves who had lived in Brazil, and encantados, beings such as mermaids and dolphins, borrowed from the Upper
Amazon, as well as wood spirits and dragons.

In Barquinha services, participants drink daime while the leader sings the
long Barquinha psalms, invoking the Catholic saints and the Barquinha spirits.51 Men and women dance together, in a long snaking line. Barquinha rituals are directed primarily toward healing sickness, including serious physical
disease, removing evil spirits, and countering witchcraft.52 When spirit possession occurs, the spirit only partially occupies the body of the possessed,
a process called irradiacao, irradiation, for otherwise the possessed would be
unable to withstand the experience.53

Uniao do Vegetal

Jose Gabriel da Costa, known as Mestre Gabriel, created the Uniao do Vegetal
in ig6i, after drinking ayahuasca near the Bolivian border. At the end of 1965,
he went to Porto Velho, where he had earlier worked in a hospital, in order to
develop his new religion, initially distributing ayahuasca to his followers in a
small brick factory that he owned, and eventually building the first Uniao do
Vegetal (uw) temple there, now called the Nucleo Mestre Gabriel. Shortly after his death in 1971, the movement took on its official name, Centro Espirita
Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, and, in 1982, moved its general administration
to Brasilia.

The UDV has a highly hierarchic and initiatic structure, with the doctrine
transmitted orally to selected candidates, who progress through the ranks by
memorizing the exact words of the teachings and complying with strict rules
of appropriate behavior. The church rejects any kind of spirit possession, as
well as any emphasis on healing; the goal, instead, is, as the church puts it,
an amplified degree of perception that permits the comprehension of reality
with greater clarity and transcendence. UDV followers use the term burracheira-as opposed to the mestizo term mareacidn-to describe the effects of the
drink; burracheira is described as a strange and unknown force, the combination of the force and the light of the ayahuasca-called hoasca or vegetal-in
consciousness. 54

The church combines a belief in reincarnation with the assertion that Jesus
Christ is part of the divine totality and his word reveals the true path to salvation
for humanity. At its services, the mestre distributes hoasca while participants
remain seated, almost as if in a Quaker meeting, with long periods of silence,
during which participants seek self-knowledge through balanced mental concentration, aided by the vegetal, alternating with sermons, teaching, and question-and-answer sessions with the leader. The UDV emphasizes the
oral tradition in its doctrine, and during the rituals, the teachings of Mestre
Gabriel are given in ways intended to foster individual transformation; hymns
are sung, and chamadas, calls, similar to mantras, are chanted.55

The UDV has been particularly successful; it now has more than eight thousand members among all socioeconomic classes in more than forty urban
centers throughout Brazil and has achieved a modest expansion outside the
country as well. 51

The Ayahuasca Drink

Under the auspices of Santo Daime and Uniao do Vegetal, the use of ayahuasca has spread both to Europe, especially the Netherlands, and to the United
States, especially San Francisco and Hawaii.57 Approximately ten thousand
regular participants take part in these new religions, typically twice a month
and sometimes once a week.58 This does not count the number of European
and North American people who drink ayahuasca in ceremonies patterned,
closely or loosely, on those practiced by Amazonian mestizo or indigenous
ayahuasqueros.59

Followers of Santo Daime and Barquinha call their sacred drink santo daime
or simply daime. The ayahuasca vine, which they call cipo, vine, or jagube, is
the masculine, solar aspect of the drink; the added leaf is called chacrona, or
rainha, queen, or simply folha, leaf, and is its feminine, lunar aspect. Followers
of UDV call the drink hoasca or vegetal. The vine is called mariri, representing the masculine forca, power, and the leaf is called chacruna, representing the
feminine luz, light, in the combined drink. The UDV use of the word mariri in
this context-the word is used by mestizo shamans to refer to both rarefied
phlegm and magic songs-is striking.

IQUITOS

Dona Maria lived in the city of Iquitos, in the middle of the bustling Mercado
Modelo. Don Roberto lives much of the time in the port town of Masusa, at
the mouth of the Rio Itayo, in the Mainas district, not far from Iquitos. They
are both tied to Iquitos, although it is fair to say that dona Maria was far more
urbanized than don Roberto, who maintains a close relationship with his jungle village and garden.

Iquitos is very noisy, because it is filled with three-wheeled motorcycle
taxis, most of them with defective mufflers. There are few automobiles. Cars,
like most consumer goods, must come to Iquitos up the Amazon from Brazil,
and are thus very expensive. Iquitos can only be reached by air or river; until
recently there were no roads; all the traffic to and from the surrounding jungle
areas was by boat. Now there is a single sixty-mile road from Iquitos to the
port of Nauta, which becomes impassable in the rain. In the Peruvian movie
Pantaleon y las visitadoras-directed by Francisco Lombardi, a well-known and
well-awarded filmmaker, starring Colombian film goddess Angie Cepeda and
adapting a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa-Iquitos is depicted, in the words of
one commentator, as "a steamy, prostitute-infected, Amazon river town in
Peru full of cell phones, satellite dishes, and IBM laptops."' This is not far off
the mark.

This is the city as it lives in the mestizo imagination-noisy, crowded, full
of movement, driven by money, without plants. Iquitos, if you recall Werner
Herzog's movie Fitzcarraldo, is where crazed rubber baron Brian Sweeney
Fitzgerald, played by Klaus Kinski, dreams of building an opera house. The
contradictions remain. The people who inhabit the jungles surrounding Iquitos have no electricity or running water except the river. Yet they can watch the latest North American programs on blaring old televisions when they come to
town, by dugout canoe, to pick up supplies or sell jungle produce.2