Dear Member,
Yesterday, after crossing the world’s highest paved mountain pass, we descended from the Andes into the Amazon basin. Snow-capped mountains turned to forest, then forest to jungle. The pave road turned to dirt and eventually the dirt road ended. Then we went by boat, deeper into the jungle.
On the Rio Perene – which flows into the Amazon – shaken and weathered, but in good spirits, we arrived at Puerto Ocopa, the last jungle outpost, our destination and home to the Ashaninka. (Pronounced: a-SHA-nin-ka)
The Ashaninka natives welcomed their old friend, Octavio with open arms. Octavio introduced us and almost immediately, an Ashaninka woman offered me a gourd of masato – their traditional brew reserved for special occasions.
Masato is a milky, lumpy concoction made from yucca plants. The women make it by chewing on yucca root and spitting the mixture of plant and saliva into a big pot. The spit supplies the bacteria to start the fermentation. They crudely filter it, and serve it up in gourds.
When they passed me the giant gourd, with the Ashaninka men watching, it felt like a man thing. So I smiled big and gulped down the whole gourd. This just made the natives laugh. Our party watched me drinking the spit brew smirking to each other. They didn’t realize I already knew about masato – and how it’s made.
Anyway – When in Rome, right? And far be it for me to seem like a wimp in front of my jungle hosts. So… I asked for seconds. This time I stood, cradled the huge gourd with both hands and let the excess spit brew run down my face and chest. I don’t remember too much after that.
I will always remember our meeting though. And, I’ll remember how warm and genuine the Ashaninka were to me. With a history going back thousands of years, the Ashaninka have a profound knowledge of the healing herbs of the Amazon. But it may be the last chance to preserve that knowledge. Their natural habitat is all but gone.
The plight of these natives stretches back to the Spanish invasion. The Spanish conquered most of the Andean highlands but never succeeded in overcoming the fierce Ashaninka resistance in the jungle for over 300 years. A fierce uprising in 1742 drove out the missionaries and no Catholic missionary or soldier dared to enter their jungle for over 100 years to come.
Then in 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ashaninka were enslaved by well-armed rubber plantation owners who exterminated close to 85 percent of their population. During the 1970s, the communist guerilla group – The Shining Path – kidnapped and enslaved many of the Ashaninka and occupied their lands. Later, to help drive out The Shinning Path terrorists, the Peruvian government leased their lands to non-indigenous Peruvian farmers. Their agriculture was not native and after 2-3 years, the farms failed leaving little in their wake. Now, the Ashaninka number just 25,000 to 55,000. And today, we walked for miles in their native lands without seeing a single animal.
Octavio told me that just 30 years ago, the Ashaninka were still a thriving people in this same area, with their traditions, diet and culture still intact. During the mid 1970s, one of his professors went into this region of the jungle and made a documentary of Ashaninka. His film footage made it back to Lima. But sadly, his plane crashed somewhere in the Amazon.
But all is not lost. Through Octavio interpreting the Ashaninka native language, we are collecting what we can still salvage of the wisdom of this all but extinct ancient culture and what they know about the Amazon’s medicinal herbs.
For example, I was most impressed with the native una de gato, or cat’s claw. A vine that grows in the highland rainforest, cat’s claw gets its name from large thorns that allow it to scale around trees – sometimes reaching a height of 100 feet or more. It has a powerful effect on the immune system and the Ashaninkas have used it for thousands of years to treat arthritis, inflammation, sinus and digestive problems.
We are looking into formulations and doing more research on this remarkably versatile plant. I am putting this information all together in a book I’m working on. You’ll be the first to know when it’s finished.
I have also become involved with another partner in the rain forest to help reforest as much of the Ashaninka land as we can. It will employ the Ashaninka as caretakers of the forests and give a portion of the land we buy back to them. At least it’s a start. I’ll tell you more about that later…
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD