
Living and healing with Shipibo women
I lived in the Peruvian Amazon Rain Forest for over two years. I learned about the Shipibo cultural practices from primarily women. These women continue disseminating their knowledge despite the pressure to 'modernize' their ways of life, and live as leaders in their communities. In recent years their livelihoods have been affected by deforestation, unregulated mining and climate change. This is a compilation of images, observations and conversations that took place while living and working with these women and communities.

Ceremony and starry night (from Sami's journal)
Maestra Enith and Amalia in ceremony.
"When I was a kid, my mom once killed an Anaconda with her machete."
Maestra Enith holding a thank you card by S.H. Nueva Era,
Ucayali (from Sami's Pucallpa images)
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The chickens were missing, and day-by-day more animals disappeared without being noticed.
One day she went to the bathroom and saw something staring at her from the bushes. She jumped out of the bathroom in panic and ran back inside. That's when she knew there was a big animal eating all the chickens.
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The next day my father left in the morning. Meanwhile, my mom sharpened her machete until it was deadly sharp. We waited on top of the deck in total silence for whatever we were to encounter that day.
It was after a of couple hours that we saw the Anaconda creeping into the yard. IT WAS HUGE! It looked more like a log of wood from the river than a snake!
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As soon as it approached the deck, my mom jumped on the snake.
She began hitting its head... that is how you kill an anaconda, you have to get its head.
Swoosh, swoosh, my mom held tightly to her machete.
-Mamee!
I screamed. The snake was bleeding very bad but was not dead yet. At some point it had my mom trapped by her waist. It was strangling her. I could see my mom bathed in blood, but she kept going with her sharp machete.
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I then saw the Anaconda let go slowly and finally collapse on the floor. I couldn't stop screaming. I took a look at myself to see that I was also completely covered in blood...
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Later, my mom invited everyone in the community to skin the snake and cook it for dinner. Some people took the sebum for medicinal purposes, but for the most part everyone just enjoyed the cookout and could not believe my mom had killed the anaconda all on her own.
-Maestra Enith-
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Maestra Enith works with her mother, Amalia. Maestra Enith is open to using and adapting new technologies. She represents the new generation of healers, who are incorporating technological tools into their practices in order to be better informed. She is highly skilled in Shipibo methods but participates in a much larger global conversation about healthcare.
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Enith graduated as a ‘Maestra’ or Teacher, by the time she was nineteen. She was one of the first women to be accepted by her elders as a promising practitioner in their traditional Shipibo methods. Her skillset and ability to move between different cultural and linguistic worlds has taken her across the country and Europe.
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Maestra Enith has many friends across continents, who she keeps in touch with using the latest means of communication, apps. She expands her network, enjoys spreading her knowledge and grows her expertise by being exposed to other healing practices.
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Maestras' kitchen and backyard. Nueva Era, Ucayali (from Sami's Pucallpa images)
in this photo, Aurora on the left, Amalia's cousin, Ida, and Maestra Amalia
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Maestra Amalia holding a thank you card by S.H. Nueva Era, Ucayali (from Sami's Pucallpa images)
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Maestra Amalia lives and works in Nueva Era, Ucayali. She works with plants in the traditional methods she learned as a child. Amalia is a petite woman with the physical strength of a twenty-something year old man. She is not afraid of anything or anyone, and if she is, she still does something about it.

Maestra Amalia collecting plants. Ucayali, Peru
"...Hey lady, put some clothes on!"
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It was always hot when we sat down for a chat. Maestra Amalia, as usual, was doing her chores; cleaning her yard, cooking, recycling, etc.
We heard some voices in the distance, but carried on with our conversation. I was so immersed in the Shipibo Origin of Life story that I didn't hear it at first.
The voices were getting closer and we could barely make out the words in the distance.
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-"Stop, stop!"
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Maestra Amalia dropped her broom and slowly made her way to the front of the house. She crossed the road in the calmest most composed manner. Meanwhile, Maestra Enith and I continued our conversation in the back yard.
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Maestra Amalia stood firmly across the street, with a certain gaze towards the other end of the road.
She suddenly saw them, a lump of chaos like, tornado of dust and voices. The neighbours were running towards her, screaming in desperation at the top of their lungs.
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- "...stop, stop the thief, THIEF!"
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We all then realized what was happening. Someone had stolen something and was getting away with it.
Maestra Amalia stood unalarmed but sure of the ground on which she stood. A blue Motocar appeared to be in a hurry, it was zooming towards Amalia. Behind the Motocar, The neighbors were trying to keep up, running and yelling for help.
Amalia, stood patiently.
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The motocar was two houses away, then one house away
....vroommmmm!
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It was at the moment that this four and half feet tall woman put a foot on the side of the Motocar, jumped on it, grabbed the metal roof pole and dragged the thing to the ground. In a matter of seconds she had taken down a Motocar and a thief all on her own.
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The Motorcar now on its side, made the thief panic and run for his life in the opposite direction of where Amalia stood.
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The neighbors arrived frazzled. The owner of the Motorcar made his way to the front of the crowd.
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- "Hey lady, put some clothes on!" he said looking straight at Amalia, who was wearing a skirt and nothing else but her mighty strength.
This man's first words were not "Thank you."
His first words were not of appreciation or at the very least of respect for the woman who had just saved his means of transportation, his private property. He was more concerned with properly addressing the real problem, Amalia's breasts!
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Maestra Amalia gave him a dirty look, walked away dignified and whispering to herself,
".. next time they rob you, I am doing nothing..."
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- from Sami's journal-
Maestra Amalia spends a lot of her time learning and working with plants. She has a parrot named Aurora, who likes to teach children their a,b,c's. He walks down the road yelling:
"A,E, I, O, UUUUU!" while children run laughing and repeating what he says. He likes to listen to the radio and to learn verses from different songs.

Motocar, the only means of transportation. Ucayali, Peru
San Francisco, Peru
The livelihoods of the Shipibo people have changed over time. In their own communities, it is common to see this layout. It is also common so see quotidian house appliances like a stove and a television.

A home

Maestra Eugenia spends most of her time making ceramic vases and other ornaments. She has connections across Peru who export her work to the US and Europe. She is the head of the household and manages everything related to her business and the finances in her family.
She works with her children and grandkids.
Her husband goes fishing everyday and spends most of his time outside.
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Shipibo household, San Francisco, Ucayali, Peru (from Sami's journal)
Maestra Eugenia's son making a meal.

Shipibo household, San Francisco, Ucayali, Peru
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Shamanic Tourism, an ethnographic view
San Francisco is a well-known Shipibo community outside Yarina. Over the years it has become a tourist attraction for many. It has grown in popularity as Shamanic Tourism expands through South America. Nowadays, it is common to see fully equipped 'healing' Centers, where tourists stay for weeks and experiment with medicinal plants. Most commonly these Centers are owned by commercial shamans and foreign entrepreneurs, who hire local shamans or healers.
In my time living across different communities, I have had the opportunity to talk to both sides of this exchange; foreign tourists and local shamans with experience in this growing market.
For the most part, most of my encounters with tourists fall under three categories. The first is self-explanatory. They are there for Shamanic Tourism. They are there simply for the experience, they are there to buy "shamanic enlightenment." The second kind of tourists are people who deeply search for meaning in their lives and have had previous experience with medicinal plants and wish to continue learning or participating in some way in this line of work. The last is a very small group of people who do have a health issues they wish to resolve and go to these 'centers' with the hope of getting better.

Going to San Francisco, Ucayali, Peru
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On the other side of the story, we have the healers, shamans, and practitioners from diverse traditions. I had the opportunity to interview several healers who make a living from participating in these centers.
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I was helping a small center as a translator. There I met Maestro M. who had received a request to work at a much larger center, for ten dollars a day. He declined because this fee was insignificant; however, other practitioners who do not have other options are forced to take this kind of deal.
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These centers have become lucrative businesses, charging anywhere from a hundred to four hundred dollars per night, per person. Some of the larger, more commercial centers have up to five shamans working at the same time in one room, selling the super-size-me version of finding 'enlightenment' in indigenous cultures and practices.
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On another encounter, I met a father and son who had worked with a foreign entrepreneur in a center in the northern Peruvian Amazon. They expressed how they had so many 'patients' in one room to make it profitable for the owner, that sometimes they could not work on all of them. However, tourists and patients left, thinking that they had been helped during the sessions. They felt helpless in these situations and lived in constant conflict between their duties to their patients versus tending to the capitalist demands of their foreign boss, who needed to maximize profit.
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Later, I met a woman healer, who had worked at a center in the Andean region, owned by a Peruvian business man. In her case, she went because she was curious to see other parts of Peru. To her surprise, the center she worked at was corrupted. In her words:
"...once a South African patient donated a hundred thousand dollars for all the healers that had cured him. He was so grateful and handed the money thinking it would improve our quality of life. We never saw a cent. That is when I knew how much money the center was making off of us. Meanwhile in my rented room, the roof leaked. I was told I could not get a raise"
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She was making eight dollars a day for over two years.
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In facilities like the one I have described, there is little structure to support both, practitioners and visitors/patients. In unregulated facilities that promote 'healing' and wellbeing, where much of the source of knowledge has yet to be fully comprehended, it is easy for patients to be at risk of malpractice. At the same time, more visitors leave with a false understanding or no understanding at all of the consequences their search for enlightenment has on both; themselves and the communities that have nourished these practices. In these spaces, it is easy to have systems of exploitation with harmful power dynamics, much similar to the ones imposed by the colonial ruling powers in the past. The centers seem to continue exploiting and profiting from vulnerable populations, while at the same time posing a facade of authenticity through commoditizing the indigenous experience of health and healing. In this context, I wonder how much of the knowledge that can actually help people is jeopardized and undermined by demands of shamanic tourism and all that it brings with it.
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