Tea party
There are signs that the Brazilian government might intervene in a cultural-religious practice in the Amazon: the consumption of an halucinogenic beverage called ahyauasca.Taken during ceremonies by some cults, these "rites" have been occurring since the 30's when the Santo Daime was created after being inspired by traditions from Peruvian Indians.
Katheryn Gallant
A middle-aged Englishman named Gordon Sumner spent five days in Brasília last December, in complete anonymity. This would not be anything extraordinary, except that Gordon Sumner is better-known as Sting, pop star, activist for ecological causes, and advocate for indigenous peoples throughout the world. Sting, who has sung to enthusiastic crowds in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, did not come to Brasília to perform. But how could an international celebrity go incognito for so long in the capital of one of his favorite countries?
Edison Saraiva Neves, president of the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, has the answer: it was his religions who brought the singer in total privacy to the federal capital. Neves says that Sting, who has long been concerned with the Amazon and with spirituality, became fascinated with the religion developed by rubber tappers and cashew-pickers in the western Amazonian state of Acre, and all but demanded an invitation to find out more first-hand.
While at the headquarters of the União do Vegetal, located in the Brasília suburb of Planaltina, Sting participated in the holiest ritual of the União do Vegetal and 21 other officially recognized religious sects in Brazil. He drank ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea made from extracts of the mariri or jagube vine (both regional names for Banisteriopsis kaapis) with the leaves of the chacrona or rainha plant (Psychotria viridis). The combination of these two flora gave the name to the religion.
Sting's participation in the rite leaked out to the press and brought suspicions that the singer had decided to convert. Romeo Elias, a lawyer who is a mestre (literally, a master or teacher, but in this context, a spiritual leader) at the center, denies this. "Like anyone else, he was invited to participate in a session. This doesn't mean that he committed himself to our religion." Elias says that Sting's real interest in the União do Vegetal is Novo Encanto (New Enchantment), a church-sponsored ecological project in Acre. "He was a little stressed-out and took advantage of a session held especially for him," Elias states.
When most Brazilians think of a religious sect which has the use of ayahuasca as a sacrament, they do not immediately think of the publicity-shunning União do Vegetal, which has 5000 adherents in 60 centers throughout Brazil. Instead, they think of the far more flamboyant and controversial group that goes by the name of Santo Daime.
The Santo Daime sect was founded in the 1930s by the Maranhense (Maranhão state native) Raimundo Irineu Serra, who worked in the Amazonian rain forest with Marshal Cândido Rondon (after whom the state of Rondônia is named). After Peruvian Indians who used ayahuasca for ritual purposes gave him a sample, Irineu had mirações (as he, and his followers, came to call ayahuasca-induced visions) of Our Lady of the Annunciation. She told him that she was the queen of the rain forest and made him the second Christ.
Mestre Irineu (as he was henceforth called by his followers) told his growing band of disciples that they should all drink ayahuasca. The name Santo Daime ("St. Gimme") comes from one of their hymns which begins, "Dai-me força, dai-me luz..." ("Give me strength, give me light"). Mestre Irineu died in 1971 at Colônia Alto Santo, Santo Daime's first commune, located near Rio Branco, capital of Acre.
In the following years, the sect grew. There are now Santo Daime churches in the US, Europe, and Japan. However, the cornerstone of daimista ritual could be kicked away in its country of origin. Luís Matias Flach, president of the Federal Narcotics Council (Confen) and national Secretary of Narcotics, wants ayahuasca to become illegal again. Flach has a dossier which alleges marijuana use in religious ceremonies, the brainwashing of followers, exploitation of the sect for touristic purposes, and illegal export of ayahuasca.
José Costa Sobrinho, Coordinator of Mental Health for the Federal District and counselor for Confen, is preparing a lawsuit against Santo Daime. Costa Sobrinho discovered that ayahuasca is being exported to Santo Daime churches abroad, to be sold at prices between 35 to 40 dollars a liter. In one of the sect's communes in Amazonas, approximately 400 followers spent a month preparing 700 liters of ayahuasca for foreign consumption.
An example of Santo Daime's commercial self-exploitation is a tourist brochure in English which invites foreigners to stay at the Colônia Céu da Montanha in Visconde de Mauá, near Rio. A complete package, including air fare, room and board, and participation in Santo Daime services, costs $10,000.
In order to better accomodate tourist groups, José Rosas, leader of Céu da Montanha, built two pousadas on commune grounds. In November 1994, 14 Americans visited the commune, taking part in Santo Daime services and doing spiritual works commanded by Rosas. On the 15th and 30th of every month, when services are held, followers not only drink ayahuasca, but also smoke marijuana, which is praised in hymns as "Santa Maria."
Even more controversially, Alícia Castilla, an astrologer who was a daimista for ten years, has accused the sect's leaders of brainwashing her 18-year-old daughter Verônica, who left her mother four years ago to live on a Santo Daime commune in Acre.
According to Alex Polari, leader of Santo Daime (and an ex-terrorist who helped to kidnap the German and Swiss ambassadors to Brazil in the late '60s), Alícia Castilla is merely out for revenge. "She had a combative relationship with her daughter and asked us to help. Now, she wants to attack us," Polari says. Marco Gracie Imperial, leader of a Santo Daime commune in Pedra de Guaratiba, Zona Oeste, met Verônica Castilla in October 1994, when he visited Acre. "She's a pretty girl and is very happy there. I only saw her crying twice, and that was when they told her that her mother wanted her to go back home." As for brainwashing, Imperial says that it does go on, but in a positive sense: "With Daime, I was able to wash my brain of the bad things which I had known before."
Suspicious deaths have also occurred in Santo Daime communes. One of these cases is that of Jambo Veloso de Freitas, a 19-year-old who set himself on fire in June 1991, less than a month after he arrived at a commune in Amazonas. Polari says that the young man was struggling against cocaine addiction. "Things happen against our will. Unfortunately, he killed himself in a Daime commune. If he had been drinking guaraná, none of this would have happened."
Polari thinks that the sensationalistic news coverage of Santo Daime is due to ignorance about the sect's true aims. "I'm not afraid of the truth. Whoever wants to know about Daime will see that we have only good things. Daime never made anybody crazy. We're doing charitable work." And what is that charitable work? Polari replies that Santo Daime has cured physical illnesses, alcoholism, and drug addiction among its adherents.
Wilson Costa, a psychiatrist who was on a Confen panel that approved the ritual use of ayahuasca, fears that the prohibition of the beverage would discriminate against law-abiding sects like the União do Vegetal. "That type of accusation is only emerging from the Daime. The other sects cannot be harmed. I think that the Confen should be very careful and not generalize."
Nelson Saraiva Neves would doubtlessly agree. In an interview with the Brasília newspaper Correio Braziliense, he insists that the only thing the União do Vegetal and Santo Daime have in common is the use of ayahuasca. While Santo Daime is composed of autonomous churches that have little contact with each other, the União do Vegetal has a hierarchical structure. The União do Vegetal also restricts ayahuasca drinking to adults who are not in a psychotic state. No more than 150 milliliters of the drink, which is only allowed during the bimonthly services, can be consumed at a time.
As for Sting, one thing is certain. He came, he saw, he drank the sacred tea of the Amazon, but did not convert. He remains faithful to the (non-hallucinogenic) five o'clock tea of his homeland.
The LSD connection
Ayahuasca (Quechua for "wine of the soul") is prepared from the woody stem of Banisteriopsis kaapis and the leaves of Psychotria viridis. After the stem and leaves are cut and boiled to release the alkaloids from the plant tissue, the plant material is discarded. The remaining liquid is boiled down to a concentrate which can be mixed with water to produce a potent herb tea.
Traditional among the indigenous peoples of the Amazonian rain forest, ayahuasca was first popularized in Brazilian urban centers in the 1930s by Irineu Serra, founder of Santo Daime. In the '50s and '60s, American authors William R. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg wrote about their encounters with ayahuasca and other mind-expanding drugs. By the mid-1970s, when Jack Epstein (a former Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil) wrote Along the Gringo Trail: A Budget Travel Guide to Latin America, backpack travelers were warned that shamans, fed-up with the deluge of North American and European tourists in search of a drug trip without the traditional spiritual underpinnings, were slipping "jungle Mickey Finns" to unsuspecting gringos, thus necessitating stays in remote hospitals until the bad trip wore off.
Werner Jourdan, a journalist from Stuttgart, Germany, unwittingly had the same experience that Epstein had warned about nearly 20 years before. According to an article that Jourdan wrote for the newsweekly Der Spiegel, Jourdan paid 500 Deutsch-marks for ayahuasca smuggled into Germany by two renegade members of Santo Daime. Jourdan says that at first he saw marvelous images with his eyes closed — "rich ornaments, gold, silver, precious stones. I felt as if I were flying."
After a day, though, Jourdan found it so hard to breathe that he thought he was going to die. A week after he had taken the "sacred tea," the German journalist still had the hallucination that people's heads were not connected to their necks. When Jourdan took a urine test in a Stuttgart lab, he discovered that the ayahuasca had been contaminated with a synthetic narcotic.
In 1985, based on anonymous accusations that marijuana was being used during Santo Daime services, a committee established by the Federal Narcotics Council (Confen) began to investigate ayahuasca. In 1989, it was removed from the list of toxic substances published by the Medical Alert Division of the Ministry of Health. In 1992, the Confen committee unanimously approved the use of ayahuasca for 22 religious groups.
The chemical composition of ayahuasca is as powerful as LSD. It has three alkaloids which cause a high degree of psychic dependence. However, a psychiatric evaluation by three doctors of the Paulista Medical School concluded, after examining members of an unnamed religious group which uses ayahuasca, that "there does not exist any standard of dependence, abuse, overdose, or social damage" for its users.
Despite recognizing the hallucinogenic effects of ayahuasca, Wilson Costa, a psychiatrist who was a member of the Confen committee, prefers to call the substance an entheogenic, or a "producer of a divine moment." Edison Saraiva Neves, president of the União do Vegetal and also a physician, has a slightly different view: "Actually, the tea is a dishallucinogenic. We're already hallucinating."
Santa Maria
(Hymn in praise
of marijuana)Quem não conhece Santa Maria
Faz uso todo dia
E vive sempre em agonia
Mas agora chegou como eu queria
Meu senhor São João Batista
Jesus Cristo e São José
Agora chegou como eu queria
Agora chegou como Deus quer
Chegando como Deus quer
Daí tudo fica bem
Chegando como meu pai quer
Chegou como eu quero
Na vontade da Virgem Maria
Ela agora vai vigorar
Ela é do meu comando
E manda eu comandar
Eu comando aquele que crê
Em Jesus Cristo e São João
Que esta é verdade
Que temos em nossa união
Holy Mary
Whoever does not know Santa Maria
Uses her every day
And always lives in agony
But now she came as I wanted
My lord St. John the Baptist
Jesus Christ and St. Joseph
Now she came as I wanted
Now she came as God wills
Coming as God wills
Therefore all is well
Coming as my father wills
She came as I want
In the will of the Virgin Mary
She's going to be in effect now
She's under my command
And orders me to command
I command those who believe
In Jesus Christ and St. John
That this is true
That we have our union