What Huachuma Wants

On commodified 'sustainability' and the Way of Reciprocity

Volume VIII | July 2022

“If we speak of sustainability, we already don’t know what reciprocity means.”

Dr. Monica Gagliano shared these words with a roomful of the world’s best plant pharmacists at the ESPD55 psychedelics conference in Dorset, UK. Josip and I were there presenting our phytochemical research on San Pedro, and advocating for the diversity and sustainability of the plants – so when Dr. Gagliano spoke, the words made my hair stand on end.

They helped me understand a very specific communication problem we have always had when sharing our work.

When we talk about sustainability and others talk about sustainability, we are often talking about two different things.

It’s because what we are really discussing at Huachuma Collective is reciprocity.

Let me show you what I mean.

Several years ago, the first time a big pharma guys became intensely interested in our conservation work, we really thought we were getting through. It turned out he was only interested in identifying compounds in the plant which would allow him to create a synthetic analogue of the medicine, combining alkaloids into the “perfect” brew of hua-pharma. “With the end goal of helping the plants,” he explained charitably. “This would make sustainability a non-issue."

We politely declined to collaborate on such a venture.

He politely declined to donate the tens of thousands of R&D dollars that such a project would cost to our on-the-ground conservation efforts with Andean communities.

This scientific wizard-saint figure, we soon would learn, is not the exception, but the rule. He believes he can outsmart nature in his race toward bigger-faster. He would ‘save’ the plants by disconnecting from them entirely. It’s the logic that leads to the most common practices in Huachuma cultivation:

• Cutting the head from a fast-growing San Pedro and Frankensteining (I mean…grafting) on a slower-growing variety. Or peyote. Robbing the plants of their own root systems in the name of speed.

• Prematurely cutting the heads from young plants to force them to pup and propagate more quickly.

• Pumping the plants full of artificial light (sometimes 24 hours a day) and synthetic nitrogen to supercharge their growth.

• Mixing synthesized mescaline into cactus brews to make them “stronger.”

From a perspective which ignores…well…all of nature, these are perfectly logical “sustainability” solutions. But from the plants’ perspectives, they are madness. They all use disconnection – whether by knife or drug or artificial sun – to force the plants into human agendas.

And the wizards have the nerve, knife in hand, to call San Pedro “master plant.”

It has never been our goal, in advocating for the wild plants, to discourage people from drinking the medicine. Quite the opposite: drinking the medicine and listening to the plant is one of the best ways to shatter the illusion of human supremacy and disconnection from nature. But so is growing the plants yourself. Getting your hands dirty and bloody. Putting skin in the game, as the plant does for you.

We cannot truly protect another being until we love them, and we cannot love them until we know them. Deciding not to drink Huachuma at all for the purpose of “saving” the plants is a noble idea, but one ultimately rooted in disconnection rather than in relationship.

But it is true: wild San Pedro is currently overharvested and unsustainable by any measure.

We’ve said it before and we will say it again and again until it ceases to be true: most practitioners and centers offering San Pedro to groups are not doing so in reciprocity with the plants themselves. Most are taking wild plants and giving little or nothing in return. Most have never even traveled to the plants’ wild habitats, harvested plants with their own hands, or come into relationship with the Indigenous communities whose lands they grow on. Most have never planted more than a few token plants to decorate their retreat centers; nor have they seen their cacti in flower; nor have they tasted their sweet fruits.

It’s San Pedro, but without the blood and dirt and sweat that come with actually caring for the plant.

It’s San Pedro, but without the unspeakable light of plants you’ve loved for a decade flowering at last.

Ignorance is not harmless.

The future for these plants that Josip, Felipe, and I dream into is not simply “sustainable.” It is reciprocal.

The Andean communities that guide and collaborate with our planting work are not interested in another multinational corporation establishing monoculture plantations on their land. They are not interested in helping retreat centers get gold-star “sustainable medicine” stickers. They could not care less about “novel cultivation methods” which “maximize profits.” They know how to grow cacti, and more importantly, they know how to love them. (Check out our essay ‘Psychedelic Fences’ to learn more about Indigenous planting methods for San Pedro).

They know, as they have always known, that the plants themselves teach the people how they wish to be cared for. All we have to do is get serious about listening.

When we turn our ears to the onshore wind at sunset, we begin to hear the whispers of another way.

The wind speaks of a network of Andean communities revaluing the plant that grows on their land, rejecting the colonial and religious forces that have told them it is the devil. It tells of a time when the streets of every tiny town on the Peruvian coast are so full of San Pedro that wild plants are only be harvested for the most sacred, important purposes. It shows the most potent plants proliferating on stone fences as an integral part of the landscape in every corner of the Andes. Communities teaching each other planting techniques and building the infrastructure to receive San Pedro tourism. Young people with the opportunity to stay in their communities and learn about the plant instead of leaving for the cities by necessity. The wind whispers of the plants as the threads that keep people tied fast to the bedrock of their culture.

This vision leaks like light from a thousand small snapshots in the Andes:

A grandmother in Cajabamba still pulls the petals from her fading roses most nights to scatter them at the base of the San Pedro her father planted 50 years ago.

A young man in Huancabamba works for the local government by day before going to work in ceremony all night with his maestro. He will apprentice for another ten years before taking clients himself.

A three-year-old at the banks of the river he has grown up on points and stretches his arms toward the sky until his mother lifts him up to smell a blooming Huachuma flower.

San Pedro sings a song of connection, prosperity, and balance.

It’s the heart of the work we do at Huachuma Collective.

Holding this vision will take every single person who loves, knows, and listens to the plants. Supporting Andean communities as they lead this charge is the most urgent help we can give to the plants. It is not the shortcut to cheap sustainability - it is the long, patient, sturdy path of reciprocity.

Thank you for being here.