At Chacruna: Drinking Yagé to Resist Capitalist Violence

Pedro Musalem, Ph.DEthnic groups in southern Colombia, such as the Siona, are using yagé (a local name for ayahuasca) to do politics in a context of capitalist violence, updating through new ways ancient political traditions, that have been used for hundreds of years to contest and resist imperial and colonial violence.¹ Recently, I have been living among the Siona and have seen how they are able to resist and contest, relying on collective yagé encounters, the plans of an multinational oil company that intended to pursue oil exploration in their territories. As we shall show here, the ability to “see” and “heal” associated with yagé is not only used to help individuals, but also to benefit groups, organizations, and territories... continue reading.