Houston Archive

Amazonian healer jailed for possession of traditional medicine

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: November 13, 2010Posted in: Colombia, Featured, Houston, Indigenous rights, Spiritual, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Amazonian healer jailed for possession of traditional medicine

By Tracy L. Barnett
Images courtesy of Eduardo Santamaría and Celina De Leon
Free Taita Juan campaign

Editor’s note: Charges were thankfully dropped last week and Taita Juan has been freed. Angela Dodge, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston, told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday that the felony charge against Juan Agreda-Chindoy, 42, was dismissed “in the interest of justice.”

One of my most profound experiences on my journey through Latin America – and indeed, in my life – was an invitation to attend an indigenous ceremony last month with three shamans of the ancient Amazonian tradition of yagé, or ayahuasca.

This herbal medicine, used throughout the centuries by traditional peoples in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador for religious and healing purposes, produces powerful visions – considered by modern science to be hallucinations, but by its native practitioners to be a window onto another dimension.

I felt tremendously honored to witness and participate in a millennial tradition that has been jealously guarded for centuries, to enter that sacred world with these wise souls and to be granted a new perspective on myself, my work and the world around me. It’s a memory I will cherish always.

So it was with no small sense of dismay that I returned to civilization to discover that just two days after my initiation into this ancient world, another Amazonian shaman was being detained at the airport in my hometown of Houston. Taita Juan Bautista Agreda Chindoy was ultimately charged with possession of a controlled substance – DMT, the active ingredient in ayahuasca, designated a Class 1 Drug. Ayahuasca is a controlled substance in Colombia, as well, but certain individuals are authorized to use it, and Chindoy, a fourth-generation medicine man, is one of those individuals.

Unfortunately, as Chindoy was to discover, that authorization is not recognized in the United States.
Chindoy is a widely respected community leader who is in the process of establishing a traditional healing clinic in his village of Sibundoy in the Putumayo region of Colombia. He was on his way to Oregon to visit with some of his followers, individuals who had traveled to his village to receive his treatments.

Those friends have retained a lawyer and launched a campaign to free Chindoy, which will be a complicated and time-consuming process, given the various agencies involved.

The friends have been advised not to discuss the case while it is pending, but have disseminated detailed information about the case, about Taita Juan and about ayahuasca at their website, www.freetaitajuan.org.
Chindoy is “one of the few remaining indigenous spiritual leaders in the world that holds the ancestral medicinal knowledge of an ecosystem that is rapidly disappearing,” the site says.

I reached his attorney, Kent Shaffer, who gave me an update on the case.

Chindoy was finally able to speak with his wife, Carmen, by internet phone 10 days after his imprisonment.

“They’re just amazed,” Shaffer said. “They can’t believe this is happening; it’s like a nightmare for them.”

Shaffer is working to establish Chindoy’s innocence under case law that allows for religious use of controlled substances, including a Supreme Court case involving ayahuasca.

“Where he comes from, he is authorized to use this medicine,” Shaffer said. “It was clearly not his intention to break the law; when the authorities asked if he had anything to declare, he said yes, I have ayahuasca with me,” and he took it out and showed them. He didn’t try to hide it.”

Shaffer was hopeful that Chindoy would be released within the next three to four weeks. Under a best-case scenario, he would be deported. Unfortunately, at that point he may need to go through another set of proceedings to be allowed to leave the country, as his entry with the substance was also a violation of immigration law. Chindoy’s supporters are now seeking supportive families or individuals in Houston who are willing to host him in case he is released on bond but not yet allowed to leave the country.

“The government’s got to understand that not everyone possesses drugs for the wrong reason,” said Shaffer. “This substance was not created in a lab, it was created by combining plants and vines together to make a tea for healing and spiritual purposes, and it’s been going on for hundreds of years in little villages all through the Amazon. Now he comes to us as a healer and all of a sudden he’s branded as a drug dealer.

“We’re trying to get the government to understand this is not a person who comes with bad motives at all. We’re trying to get them to consider the good work he’s been doing for decades.”

The prosecutor in the case, Rick Haynes, could not be reached for comment.

Taita Juan, as he is called by friends and followers – “Taita,” meaning “father,” is a title of respect for indigenous spiritual healers – is the father of four and the godfather of 20. In addition to his traditional medicine clinic, he has established an ethnobotanical garden of Amazonian healing plants to ensure that the native traditions are preserved and passed down to the next generation. In his village, he receives thousands of visitors around the world, some seeking healing, others doing research. He is also a highly skilled artist, and together with his wife, Carmen, he runs a store that markets indigenous artwork and crafts from the region.

“Taita has an incredible sense of humor and the warmth of his spirit and heart extends to those around him,” his supporters have written. “For all his contributions, Taita Juan is esteemed and loved by many.”

For more information, see www.freetaitajuan.org.

James Hansen embodies “never-give-up fighting spirit”

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: December 8, 2009Posted in: Climate Change, Houston, USA, WhyTags: , ,
James Hansen embodies “never-give-up fighting spirit”

By Tracy L. Barnett
The man who’s been called the Paul Revere of climate change, Dr. James Hansen, launched his new book, “Storms of My Grandchildren,” last night at Houston’s Wortham Center to a packed house.

James Hansen

Why would Houston be chosen for this event, you might ask? It’s the No. 1 carbon-emitting city in the nation. Progressive Forum Founder Randall Morton pondered this question out loud as he prepared to introduce the imminent climatologist, and his 13-year-old daughter Eva piped up with a pithy response: “Because we need it more.”

Hansen first emerged into the public eye in 1988, when his Congressional testimonies first put the issue of global climate change into public circulation. For awhile he went back to the laboratory and focused on doing science, as he explains it, hoping that other more eloquent spokespeople would take the ball and run with it. Now that the planet is dangerously close to a point of no return, however, he says, his concern for the future of his young grandchildren has spurred him back into the political arena. He’s been arrested at a protest against mountaintop removal in West Virginia and joined protests in Washington, D.C., England and New York, among others. His militancy has made him a lightning rod for climate change deniers.

As a crusading young environmental journalist in 1988, I was captivated by Hansen’s emergence on the political scene. Already a high-profile climatologist with the NASA Goddard Institute. Hansen’s testimonies before Congress that year and the next outlined an unimaginably grim future if we didn’t join forces to reduce the greenhouse gases we were spewing into the atmosphere.

It seemed to me at the time, young idealist that I was, that Dr. Hansen’s stature and his clear evidence would finally bring our leaders to their senses, and that we would begin to steer our nation’s course in the direction of greater sustainability.

Of course, two decades later, things have only gotten worse. In that 20 years, the Arctic ice has begun to melt; droughts, wildfires, storms and floods have become more frequent and more severe; coral reefs have begun to die as the oceans have acidified. People living in low-lying areas like the Maldives and Bangladesh are already seeing the ocean lapping at their doorsteps. The glaciers that feed the rivers that provide drinking water to billions of people are rapidly melting. Inuits in Alaska and Canada are seeing their villages eroded away as the permafrost melts. The vast body of scientific evidence now available confirms the human genesis of this unfolding crisis, despite the so-called “climate gate” that erupted last week over some leaked e-mails from the Anglia Climate Center in England.

And yet Americans list climate change at the very bottom of their list of priorities – far below the ranking of other nations, particularly those who are on the front lines.

Storms of my Grandchildren

I asked Hansen last night why he thought Americans remain so unconcerned. One reason, he said, was La Nina. This cyclical climate pattern led to an unseasonably chilly summer in the Midwest this year. Despite that, the summer of 2009 was the second hottest on record, he said. The problem is that Americans aren’t seeing it because it’s not happening here.

“It’s hard for the public to recognize that we’re in an emergency,” he said. “What they don’t see is that there’s more in the pipeline; the ocean is 4 kilometers deep on average, and it hasn’t yet responded fully to the changes we’ve caused.”

Hansen’s talk, scheduled to coincide with the opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, was an inconvenient truth taken to the next level.

“We are closer to the tipping point than we had realized,” he warned, referring to a series of feedbacks that could be unleashed by the melting of the Arctic ice shelves, combined with other factors to produce runaway climate change.

Unfortunately, he said, the actions that global leaders are planning to announce in Copenhagen “will have no significant effect on business as usual… Politicians are saying the right words, but their actions don’t follow suit.

Hansen’s assessment of the most likely scenario being floated for carbon regulation, cap and trade, was that it’s akin to the Catholic Church’s selling of indulgences in the Middle Ages, in which sinners could buy forgiveness for their sins.

The idea under cap and trade, he said, is that “you don’t really have to reduce your emissions; you can just preserve a forest in Brazil.”

The problem with that, Hansen said, is that demand for wood doesn’t go away, and so a different forest will be felled to provide the wood.

Hansen’s critique of cap and trade is a controversial one, even among progressives. Yesterday’s New York Times put the debate into sharp relief, with Hansen’s Cap and Fade calling for a carbon tax and citizen dividend, and economist Paul Krugman, normally a fan, delivering Unhelpful Hansen.

Regardless of how it’s done, Hansen makes a compelling case that coal should be left in the ground as we begin to power down from an era of cheap fossil fuels.

Asked how he keeps his hope alive after 20 years on the climate trail, Hansen says he’s inspired by his grandchildren. He told a story about his 4-year-old grandson, whom he queried about his persistent failed attempts to deliver a basketball into a hoop.

“You have to have a never-give-up fighting spirit,” the boy told his grandfather.

“Thank goodness he has that spirit,” Hansen reflected with a wry smile. “He’s going to need it.”

Tracy L. Barnett, www.tracybarnettonline.com, is the founder of The Esperanza Project.