[PREVIEW] 02.16 Carlos Suárez Álvarez onAyahuasca, Iquitos & Monster Vorax

Carlos Suárez Álvarez is a Spanish journalist and ethnographer with a degree in Amazonian studies from the Unversidad Nacional de Columbia. Since 2007 he has lived in the Colombian city of Leticia on the banks of the Amazon River. He is the author of the Ayahuasca trilogy which includes the project “Ayahuasca, Iquitos and Monster Vorax”, a series of multimedia books that studies the phenomenon of ayahuasca in Iquitos Peru, a shamanic mecca where the local collides with the global.In our conversation we talk about the impact that the global interest in ayahuasca has had on the people, culture and ecology of Iquitos and the surrounding areas. Since my first visit to Iquitos in 2017 I’ve wanted to better understand what’s going on behind the scenes of the ayahuasca industry, and I was happy to find Carlos’ work. I found it to be a very balanced view of the situation and appreciated how he allows the people who work in the industry to tell their story. In his multimedia book, you hear not only from westerners who travel to Iquitos to participate in ceremonies and those that decide to open their own ayahuasca lodges, but you get to hear directly from the Peruvian healers, and their support staff and suppliers how the ayahuasca boom is affecting the way ceremonies are done, the way the ayahuasca is brewed and how the increased global demand has affected the price and availability of ayahuasca.If you’re interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how the global ayahuasca phenomenon is affecting people on a local level, this interview will serve as a good overview of Carlos’ work, which I highly recommend checking out.Carlos’ website: ayahuascaiquitos.com