Ayahuasca’s Journey: The Path of Globalization & Cultural Memory

Adeildo Shawãdawa is a leader of the Shawãdawa (Arara) people, of the Pano linguistic family, Alto Juruá region, Acre, Brazil. Like other Acre Indigenous peoples, the Shawãdawa suffered dispossession during the rubber boom. In recent decades they have revalued their language and traditions and pressed territorial claims, securing a land expansion still pending final government approval.

Altino Machado is a journalist from Acre known for a career spanning more than four decades dedicated to investigative, environmental, and political journalism, with a strong focus on coverage of the Amazon. His work is characterized by editorial independence, the production of reports in the public interest, and the defense of transparency and the region’s socio-environmental heritage.

Among the key milestones of his career are his stints as a correspondent for major national newspapers — such as O Estado de S. Paulo, the now-defunct Jornal do Brasil, and Folha de S. Paulo — between the late 1980s and the 1990s, covering topics related to the Amazon, agrarian conflicts, the environment, and politics. His work is also recognized for its celebration of the history and culture of Acre, particularly the peoples of the Amazon, local traditions, and the cultural heritage of the state of Acre.

Since the beginning of his career, he has been following and writing about the growing use of ayahuasca. He is the Director of Communications at the Elias Mansour Cultural Foundation and a member of Alto Santo, the birthplace of the Daime doctrine.

Fernando de La Rocque Couto is a Brazilian anthropologist and one of the first people from southern Brazil to meet Padrinho Sebastião in the 1970s, receiving his authorization to bring and disseminate Santo Daime beyond its Amazonian origins. He holds a degree in Social Sciences/Anthropology and a Master's in Social Anthropology from the Universidade de Brasília, where his 1989 thesis examined the ritual use of ayahuasca within Santo Daime. He has since published on shamanism, human rights, legal pluralism, and the ritual use of ayahuasca, and has taught Anthropology and Sociology in Brasília.

Carlos Suárez Álvarez is an independent ethnographic researcher. He holds an M.A. in Amazonian Studies, awarded cum laude, from the National University of Colombia. He has conducted fieldwork throughout the Peruvian, Brazilian, and Colombian Amazon among numerous Indigenous peoples.

His extensive body of work includes the Ayahuasca Trilogy, which comprises the multimedia book series Ayahuasca, Iquitos and Monster Vorax, the photobook Ayahuasca Between Two Worlds, and the novel Ayahuasca, Love and Meanness. His ethnographic account of Shipibo youth, La Edad del Desarrollo: Señoritas y Muchachos en la Selva que se Acaba, was published by the National University of Colombia.

Since 2020, he has been an Associate Researcher at the ICEERS Foundation, where he has authored several reports on ayahuasca and traditional medicine. His journalistic work in the Amazon has received financial support from the Pulitzer Center through the Rainforest Journalism Fund.

His website, www.suarez-alvarez.com, provides free access to the books, articles, documentaries, and photographs he has produced over more than two decades of living and working in the Amazon.

Luis Eduardo Luna (n. 1947) nasceu em Florencia, Colômbia. É formado em Filosofia e Letras pela Universidade Complutense de Madrid (1972), possui um Mestrado Interdisciplinar pela Universidade de Oslo (1980), um Doutorado em Religiões Comparadas pela Universidade de Estocolmo (1989) e um Doutorado Honoris Causa pela Universidade de St. Lawrence, Canton, NY (2002). Dr. Luna foi Leitor de Espanhol na Hanken School of Economics de Helsinki (1979-2011) e professor de antropologia (1994-1998) na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brasil. É autor de Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (Estocolmo 1986), coautor com Pablo Amaringo de Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (Berkeley 1991), coeditor com Steven F. White de Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (Santa Fe, 2000, 2016), e coautor com Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz e Ede Frecska de Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (Rochester, Vermont 2008). Dr. Luna foi curador de exposições de arte visionária em diversos países. É Diretor do Centro de Pesquisa sobre Plantas Psicointegradoras, Arte Visionária e Consciência, em Florianópolis, Brasil (www.wasiwaska.org). Atualmente é Pesquisador Honorário do Departamento de Filosofia e Antropologia da Universidade de Exeter, Inglaterra.