Paradoxes of ayahuasca expansion: The UDV–DEA agreement and the limits of freedom of religion

Abstract

This article comments on the agreement signed in 2010 between a US branch of the Brazilian ayahuasca religion União do Vegetal (UDV) and the US Drug Enforcement Agency. This document settles a dispute regarding administrative issues involving ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew used by this group as a religious sacrament. The government originally confiscated this substance in 1999, and the matter went to the Supreme Court, which handed down a decision favourable to the UDV in 2006. Despite the fact that this group prevailed, the agreement reveals that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) views ayahuasca not as a religious sacrament, but as a toxic and hazardous compound. This article also contextualizes this agreement in relation to the history of the UDV, which has been expanding beyond the Amazon since the 1970s. This process entailed increasing levels of institutionalization, formalization and bureaucratization. In its search for social legitimacy and legal conformity, the group has gradually shifted from its popular Amazonian origins. This process reached its peak with the current agreement with the DEA. Nevertheless, the agreement surpassed the levels of control and interference that would be tolerated by these religions in Brazil. It raises serious concerns for all those interested in human rights, religious freedom and cognitive liberty.

Notes

Notes

1. One of the most outstanding parts of the UDV's institutionalization process can be found in the cooperation established between the UDV and medical, psychological and pharmacological experts in two research projects: the ‘Hoasca Project’ (Callaway, Airaksinen, McKenna, Brito, & Grob, 1994; Callaway et al., 1996, 1999; Grob et al., 1996; McKenna, Callaway, & Grob, 1998) and the ‘UDV Adolescents’ (Da Silveira et al., 2005; Dobkin de Rios et al., 2005; Doering-Silveira, Grob, et al., 2005; Doering-Silveira, Lopez, et al., 2005). The UDV chose to actively support biomedical scientific research in anticipation of its legal and political problems. In fact, the ‘Hoasca Project’ was quoted during court proceedings in the USA (Meyer, 2006). Perhaps this is the best example of how modernity imposes the view that these cultural and religious expressions are in fact ‘drug use’. Even if the UDV supports these studies in hopes of proving that the ‘use of ayahuasca in a ceremonial context is safe’, this almost instinctive self-disciplining approach, including conforming to biomedical and legalistic paradigms, paradoxically suggests the adoption of a world view that is foreign to the legacy of Amazonian shamanism, a core element of the UDV tradition. This foundational component ultimately contributes to the UDV's legitimacy as a ‘folk tradition’, and furthers its chances of being recognized as a ‘religion’ deserving exemption from US drug laws (for further reading on this topic, see Labate, Rose, et al., 2009; for the pharmacologization present in the idea of ‘ayahuasca religion’, see Labate et al., 2010; Meyer, 2008).