page_title: Manuel Córdova-Rios
section_title: Chief Xumu and ayahuasca
hierarchical_section_title: Manuel Córdova-Rios / Life in Huni Kui village / Chief Xumu and ayahuasca
caption_attribution_description: English: Urarina Shaman photographed by Bartholomew Dean, 1988
context_page_description: Manuel Córdova-Rios was a vegetalista of the upper Amazon, and the subject of several popular books.
  As a young mestizo of Iquitos he joined in a company to set up camp in the surrounding Amazon forest and cut rubber trees. He was captured then by a native tribe, among whom he apparently lived for seven years. The elderly chief taught him in intensive private sessions traditional knowledge, e.g., about medicinal plants of the jungle, and about ways of leadership. From the small tribe he learned skills for hunting in the jungle and acquired the name Ino Moxo. The chief also led night-long group sessions under the influence of ayahuasca to sharpen prowess in the hunt. After the chief's death, Córdova was acknowledged as leader of the tribe for some years.
  He then returned to Peruvian life, married and raised a family. Eventually he became well known in the upper Amazon for his success as a curandero, by using the chief's herbal teachings. He also regularly sent medicinal plants to New York.
  In the early 1960s he met an American forester, Bruce Lamb, a veteran of many years in the Amazon.
context_section_description: In the group ayahuasca sessions, the nature and timing of the visions seen by each member was significantly influenced by the purposeful chanting of the guide. The group would join in these songs, called icaros. In his guiding role, chief Xumu Nawa apparently employed different chants or icaros in order to steer and coordinate the subjective imaginations of individual tribal members, so that the ayahuasca sessions would become a shared experience among those participating. "Soon subtle but evocative chants led by the chief took control of the progression of our visions. Embellishments to both the chants and the visions came from the participants." An anthropologist of the upper Amazon wrote:
  "Córdoba-Rios' account evokes for the reader the immense importance that plant hallucinogens can have among groups where they are centrally incorporated into all aspects of social life. [He] illustrates how non-literate groups... use the visionary effects of the plant to intensify perception of forest animals, their habits and peculiarities, and to increase their awareness of individual interactions within the group, thereby facilitating political control in the absence of formal leadership structures. ... The preparation and use of the plant is ritualized and accompanied by musical chants... [managed] by the guiding shaman to control the progression of visions and, in effect, to program them toward culturally-valued stereotypic patterns which aid in specific problems... ."
  Lamb commented that chief Xumu led the Huni Kui "with great finess and subtlety, seeking consensus on every important action after long discussion with his people." His practice in guiding ayahuasca sessions with carefully timed icaros undoubtedly assisted his ability to persuade. When the hunters would gather to tell their tales of tracking and encountering game, Xumu might also recite a story of his own. Often he then would speak of the former chief, Awawa Toto. Chief Xumu employed these ayahuasca sessions to augment his authority.
  "I sense, my friend", Córdova said to me, "that you find it difficult to grasp the significance of the influence that a maestro ayahuasquero has over the minds of a group of people who participate with him in a vision session of the kind I have described. This power once exerted, though perhaps subtle in its effect, does not easily disappear. As you know, in my youth I was held in its spell for several years."
  Following chief Xumu's death, Córdoba followed his instructions and assumed the duties of tribal chief. Eventually he discovered, while conducting a group ayahuasca session, by using icaros, "that the visions obeyed the songs and chants, or perhaps it would be better to say that by means of the chants it was possible to influence the course of the visions". At the next ayahuasca session in which he guided tribal members, Córdoba tested his new understanding about the steering of the visions beheld by the group. He states, "I chanted what I wanted to see and found that each time... no matter how involved or strange the visions, they obeyed my wishes as I expressed them in song." Accordingly, his authority increased. "Once the men realized that I had achieved domination over their dreams, they considered me a true magician, a position superior to theirs."
caption: Shaman of Urarina tribe, 1988. Comparable perhaps to Xumu of the Huni Kui, who seemed both shaman and chief. Nearly a century later, this shaman wears western clothing with his tribal gear. The Urarina of the Peruvian Amazon appear to be not closely related to Huni Kui.[77][78]
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