"Men," "shaman," and "ayahuasca" as overlapping clichés in the Peruvian vegetalismo

This chapter presents the construction of the idea of a "Male-Shaman-Who-Heals-With-Ayahuasca" as an emergent myth in societies from the political North - a myth which asserts powerful meaning in a global world. This myth is related to power relationships between people and plants that are commodified and embedded in the context of capitalism and patriarchy. Guided by a reflexive empirical approach, the authors bring together four nodes of the myth (1) the male, 2) the shaman, 3) the one who heals, and 4) the ayahuasca) in order to compare them systematically with key chosen aspects. Within the results of a historical approach and long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Lowland Peruvian Amazon, the aim is to provide tools for the deconstruction of this myth by examining social, cultural, and historical roots of Peruvian curanderismo. Four aspects are considered: the local dynamics of gender, the diversity of the specialist practitioners, the complexity of ideas about healing, and the centrality of plants in a local pharmacopoeia in which ayahuasca is but one plant among many. This chapter presents the construction of the idea of a "Male-Shaman-Who-Heals-With-Ayahuasca: as an emergent myth in societies from the political North - a myth which asserts powerful meaning in a global world. It exposes the four nodes that interweave within the concept above as being: the male, the shaman, the one who heals, and the ayahuasca. The chapter evaluates the over-representation of the masculine gender in the field. It discusses the limits of the concept of "shamanism" as a tool for grasping the actual reality of the Peruvian curanderos. The chapter analyzes the over-focalization by current studies in the field on the therapeutic aspects of ayahuasca, an over-focalization that fails to represent the local diversity of uses of this plant, such as witchcraft, production of diseases, and spells. It argues that ayahuasca is far from being at the core of the traditional health system in the Peruvian Amazon Lowlands.