Today it is hard to find someone who has not heard of the infamous hallucinogenic plant mixture called ayahuasca commonly prepared from the stems of Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of Psychotria viridis or chacruna. The brew, well known for its purging and visionary…
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English + Español
When we arrived it was still daytime. It had taken us twelve hours to get there, almost twice as much as expected. As I got off the bus, I felt a heat wave slap me on the face. The air was humid,
Maya women were the artisans who invented a panoply of ancient beverages and sauces containing cacao. This association between cacao and women extended to an association with certain Maya goddesses. While originally introduced from South American, the…
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English + Português
A mestiça born in Brazil, I had many worlds from which to choose. I could have selected that of my Sicilian ancestors, those immigrant Librandis who came to São Paulo eager for honest work of nearly any sort. I also could have chosen the Hakimes, Syrian immigrants who…
In 1909, Emilia Snethlage, a German ornithologist working for the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, arrived at the Curuá River in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. Just five years earlier, Snethlage (1868-1929) had received a Ph.D. from Freiburg University at a time when women…
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