Iñaki Berazaluce, autor en Plantaforma para la Defensa de la Ayahuasca

‘Yuriana’s Garden’: A Magical Realism Tale as an Offering to the Wisdom of the Amazon Jungle

04/12/202404/12/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

“A dead hummingbird appears in Yuriana’s garden, a girl with communication difficulties who lives in the Peruvian Amazon. That day, her world changes, and she must face all her fears to finally find her voice.”

This is the synopsis of Yuriana’s Garden, a fictional short film shot with minimal resources and immense enthusiasm by Luis Solarat and Natalia Mejía, two passionate lovers of the Amazon rainforest who wanted to return all they have received from the forest and its inhabitants through this beautiful story.

The filming of Yuriana’s Garden took place over six months in Madre de Dios, a region of the Peruvian jungle, with non-professional actors, in a dreamlike setting: a wooden house on the banks of the Tambopata River, deep in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon.

“When you smoke Bufo, you’re doing a dress rehearsal for the moment of your death”

16/10/202417/10/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

Journalist, traveler, writer, therapist… Fernando Miguel has been organizing retreats for some years with visionary substances to facilitate therapeutic processes, including Incilius alvarius (erroneously known as Bufo alvarius). Recently, Fernando has traveled to the Sonoran Desert, in northern Mexico, to get to know this fascinating species in its natural habitat and experience firsthand the healing rites of the Comcáac nation, guardians of the toad.

Jeremy Narby: “When it comes to ayahuasca, psychiatrists are still in kindergarten”

20/09/202420/09/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

Jeremy Narby (born in Montreal in 1959) has spent his life trying to reconcile scientific knowledge with the traditional knowledge of Amazonian peoples. This effort can be seen in two of his books: the recent “Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Quest for Knowledge” (2021) and the famous “The Cosmic Serpent,” where he attempts (and succeeds) to connect shamanic visions from various ancestral cultures with the double helix structure of DNA, first described in 1953.

Narby recently participated in The Onaya Project podcast, part of The Onaya Science, a project led by Dr. Simon Ruffel, a member of a new generation of researchers who have grown on the shoulders of giants like Narby. Ruffel shares with Narby the effort to build bridges between both knowledge systems: scientific and shamanic.

‘Voices of Ayahuasca’: A Documentary Series to Advocate for the Amazonian Beverage

15/05/202415/05/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

Over a year ago, we asked for your help from the Ayahuasca Defense Platform to record a series of documentaries about the Amazonian sacramental beverage.

The reason that prompted us to take this step was to defend the ayahuasca community from a campaign of attacks by the Spanish police and certain media outlets, a strategy orchestrated to stigmatize the practice of ayahuasca.

In these 14 months, we have recorded and edited the first two episodes of the series ‘Voices of Ayahuasca’, namely, ‘The Science of Ayahuasca’ and ‘Santo Daime, the Religion of the Forest’, which, as we promised at the time, can be viewed for free on our YouTube channel.

Researchers from around the world call for an end to the persecution of ayahuasca in Spain

15/05/202415/05/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

The repeated cases of police raids on ayahuasca ceremonies are part of an intentional campaign of “fear, mistrust and misinformation” aimed at calling into question an ancestral practice that offers numerous benefits for its participants, benefits repeatedly supported by science.

The harassment of Amazonian drink facilitators in Spain has raised a wave of rejection among the international scientific community. More than a hundred leading scholars, psychologists, anthropologists and activists have endorsed the article/manifesto published by the Chacruna Institute and signed by Bia Labate, Henrique Fernandez Antunes, Galuber Loures de Assis and Clancy Cavnar with the title ‘A Call for Public Support Against the Current Demonisation of Ayahuasca Practices in Spain’.

Among the signatories of the manifesto are Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS; David Bronner, CEO of Dr. Bronner; anthropologist Edward MacRae, leading scholar of the Santo Daime cult; Helle Kaasik, Ayahuasca researcher; Doctor of Pharmacology José Carlos Bouso; psychiatrist and writer Ben Sessa and Spanish researcher Carlos Suárez Álvarez.

ICEERS’ innovative course to ‘cross-pollinate’ best practices in ayahuasca sessions

11/03/202411/03/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

On May, ICEERS begins the 3rd edition of the course ‘Increasing safety in ayahuasca sessions’, a pioneering training for guides and facilitators of ayahuasca work in non-native environments to learn the best practices around ayahuasca to reduce risks and increase benefits during sessions.

The course lasts six months and its format is mixed: one hour of video and live dialogue every two weeks to chat and ask questions to the instructors, namely David Londoño, José Carlos Bouso, Constanza Sánchez Avilés, Marc Aixalà and Jerónimo Mazarrasa, all members of the Barcelona-based NGO and its Support Center, which has been attending “hundreds of cases” of people who have suffered some kind of mishap during or after the ingestion of ayahuasca for several years.

Don Rómulo, the Penultimate Guardian of the “Hidden Science” of Ayahuasca

14/01/202414/01/2024Iñaki Berazaluce

Don Rómulo Magin has small, lively blue eyes, glassy due to advanced cataracts. At 94, Don Rómulo wakes up at dawn every day in his house/maloka in the Peruvian Amazon, takes up his machete, and opens paths in the jungle, or identifies medicinal plants he will use in his healing practices. His vision may be weak, but he still precisely recognizes hundreds, perhaps thousands of plants, which will be part of the diet for visitors and disciples at his center.

Don Rómulo was born in Ecuador and belongs to the Aguaruna people, related to the Shuar, and, as he says, direct descendants of an Inca lineage. His father and grandfather were healers. His mother tongue is Quechua, in which he speaks and ‘ikarea’. His Spanish is rudimentary, sprinkled with jungle idioms and Quechua terms, so his son Winister helps us with the translation into Spanish. Winister, like his son Winister Jr., was born in Peru, in the Loreto region, so their main language is Spanish. However, they continue to use Quechua in their ‘ikaros’: “The ‘ikaro’ must be done in Quechua,” explains Winister, “so that the medicine can do its work, Spanish is not suitable.”

“90% of Spanish police officers have not heard of ayahuasca”

07/12/202307/12/2023Iñaki Berazaluce

Recent police operations in ayahuasca ceremonies have caused justified alarm among the ayahuasca community, who are questioning the motivations behind this offensive against a practice deeply rooted in Spain, and which to date, has not caused any serious health problems and is legally protected by current legislation and by recurring judicial rulings based on it.

Who orders these police operations? For what purpose? Is the excessive use of force, as shown in videos released by the police themselves, justified? These are some of the questions asked by facilitators and practitioners of ayahuasca, following half a dozen police operations that, to date, have not resulted in a single judicial conviction.

In this context, the participation of a police officer in a recent symposium on shamanism at least partially revealed the police perspective on ayahuasca and answered some of the previously asked questions. The event took place last May in Tarragona, thanks to ICEERS, which invited sub-inspector Marcos Quinteiro to participate in the colloquium ‘Shamanism, Science, and Knowledge: Challenges of the Globalization of Master Plants,’ featuring prominent members of the Barcelona-based NGO, as well as teachers and researchers from the Medical Anthropological Medical Center (MARC) at the Universitat Rovira i Virgil, which hosted the meeting. All videos from that event are available on ICEERS’ website.

“When you pollute the last river, when you cut down the last forest, we will also be out of this Earth”

07/09/202307/09/2023Iñaki Berazaluce

Nixiwaka Biraci Yawanawa, the leader of the Yawanawa people in the Amazon, delivered a passionate speech at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, Colorado, which was organized by MAPS, a key player in the ‘Psychedelic Renaissance.’ His speech echoed the sentiments found in the 1854 speech by Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe to the first governor of Washington Territory. He emphasized the urgent need to consider the environment and indigenous perspectives in the context of the ongoing Psychedelic Renaissance.

“When you pollute the last river, when you cut down the last forest, we will also be out of this Earth”.

Nixiwaka Yawanawa did not miss the opportunity to remind that the so-called ‘Psychedelic Renaissance,’ in which MAPS is one of the main actors, is taking place without listening to indigenous peoples, “the true guardians of many medicinal plants, of sacred plants”.

“There is no bigger drug cartel in the world than big pharma”

17/08/202317/08/2023Iñaki Berazaluce

The psychedelic renaissance is the talk of the town, currently enjoyed on therapy couches and meditation mats of a privileged few. Albert Casasayas tackles issues such as like inequality in access to psychedelics and the so-called “psychedelic exceptionalism” in his new book ‘Luces y sombras del renacimiento psicodélico’, which has been published by Revista Ulises and available for free on the Universo Ulises website.

Albert Casasayas teaches Spanish and Latin American Studies at Santa Clara University in California. He admits he’s a newcomer to psychedelia or, according to Juan Carlos Usó, who wrote the book’s prologue, a “neo-convert.” This fresh look at psychedelics is one of the book’s greatest strengths. The book is not intended to be academic, but rather a “middle-ground” perspective, distinct from those deeply involved in the psychedelic community but also beyond the “very biased mainstream media with its anti-drug discourse.”

Speaking via Zoom from California, Albert is preparing for the imminent academic year while continuing to delve into the complex, fascinating, and often paradoxical world of visionary drugs.