Witchcraft in the Amazon

            
             There are different types of people that use hallucinogenic healing in the Peruvian Amazon. These witches are known as brujos to the people that live in Peru. Clients who think they have been bewitched visit these brujos just as they would any other ayahuasquero (Dobkin de Rios 93).
             Many witches use the hallucinogenic drugs in the Peruvian Amazon as a way to harm others rather than help them, in contrast to the other ayahuasqueros who use these drugs. People with love problems come to brujos for charms or pusangos to bewitch the man or woman they love (Dobkin de Rios 93). They use techniques on the ones that think they have been bewitched such as singing, whistling, and blowing tobacco smoke over the "sick person". .
             The witches specialty however is evil-doing. One such example is about a jungle farmer named Alfonso. After mourning the death of his beloved Clothilde, whose father made her run away and get married to another man, he felt as though he should take revenge on her father. He went to the man while he slept and put an evil spirt that witch controlled, which produced an unknown and incurable illness. He then went to the man who was to marry Clothilde and .
             entered his genitalia (Dobkin de Rios 95). This caused them to swell extremely large in size. No one could find anyone to cure him. .
             Very few ayahuasqueros will admit to being witches. Most of the tales of these spells that witches put on people usually end with the person dying a sudden death. There are two kinds of ways that seem to cause these unexplainable deaths. One kind is when a person believes he is bewitched he goes into a state of shock and dies (Dobkin de Rios 95). Another kind accounting for these magical deaths could be poisoning. .
             There are many types of plants found in the Amazon that cause these poisoned deaths to occur. Some of them kill quickly and others produce flu-like symptoms and then the person slowly wastes away.