Extractivism in Iquitos: From Rubber to Ayahuasca Literature

Abstract

César Calvo explores the Peruvian Amazon through a shamanic consciousness in his autobiographical Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo y otros brujos de la Amazonía. Like the other authors considered here, as Calvo tells a story of personal adventure, he also relates a critical history of the violence caused by outsiders seeking enterprise in Amazonia. Calvo presents the entheogenic plant-based brew known as ayahuasca as a vehicle to escape colonial ideology and forge a different future for the Amazon, but this chapter proposes that Calvo also replicates some of the manoeuvres that he criticizes. Chapter 4 argues that Las tres mitades’s critique of the material extraction of resources from Amazonia nevertheless becomes an instance of spiritual extraction. I draw connections between the novel and the ayahuasca tourism industry that has expanded throughout the Iquitos region.