San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi) is used in traditional Andean medicine for both human and veterinary use and is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant.
A constant in the various artistic manifestations of pre-Inca cultures is related to the magical-religious purposes of a columnar cactus called “Achuma” or “San Pedro”. Which was the central axis of these ancestral practices.
USE OF SAN PEDRO
In Andean medicine, San Pedro continues to be used by different ethnic groups. Community members who know how to use medicinal and hallucinogenic plants are outstanding people. And the medical system of these communities is a mix between ancestral indigenous knowledge and modern medical methods. San Pedro is part of the therapeutic tools available, although many other plants and techniques are used. Consequently, San Pedro is understood as a protector of the family, marriage and peaceful coexistence between relatives, and for this reason it is usually cultivated near homes.
The use of San Pedro is the central and defining feature of the curanderismo of northern Peru. This implies a religious system with its own characteristics, conditioned by its pharmacological action. “These practices are supported by systems of thought that have a specific and special internal logic. Which makes their understanding from the outside difficult.” (Menacho, 1988: 25). For this reason, its study is an ethnographic specialty that requires a “shamanic” vocation of the anthropologist.
Its initiation, the participant observation in rituals -as an apprentice to one or more teachers- for a prolonged time. They are a process that to see “from within” the religious system inherent in the use of the San Pedro.
At present, San Pedro is used openly and without any logistical restriction in divination ceremonies and traditional Peruvian medicine. It is used for diagnoses with therapeutic purposes based evidently on the psychoactive properties of the plant. Likewise, its use has been reported for the treatment of mental illnesses. In which the healer or shaman tries to identify the origin of the evil that afflicts the patient by relating it to cases of witchcraft.
