SAVING THE 'VINE OF THE SOUL'

NARINAL, Colombia - Putumayo state in the northwest Amazon region of
Colombia is dense, green and humid. Its lush rivers and jungles are a
vision of a tropical paradise, home to untold species of fauna and flora
still awaiting discovery. They are also perfect cover for underground
fighters, as well as the peasant farmers who toil in labs hidden under
leafy canopies, turning coca leaves into the white paste that will be
processed into cocaine.

So it was with a sense of unease that my guide and I set out in a rented
4x4 for the tiny village of Narinal, nestled along the Guasmuez River, two
hours from the Ecuadorian border. We departed at noon, hoping to return
before nightfall, when Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries
patrol in the moonlight.

But it was not coca farmers we were going to meet. It was a group of Kofan
Indians who for centuries have been tending another, even more exotic plant
that grows on the margins of the coca fields and in the dense rain forests
beyond.

The Kofan are the custodians of what some consider the most potent plant in
the jungle apothecary, a twisted vine with tiny pink flowers called
Banisteriopsis caapi, more commonly known as yage (ya-hey). Holy and
mysterious, yage is said to have telepathic and medicinal properties so
powerful an American drug company spent 15 years trying to patent it.

Those who ingest yage tea, prepared with secondary plants to enhance the
effects, say they are transported through fields of light on epic journeys
to grand cities past and future. Many under its influence feel they are
witnessing the origins of humankind and compare the plant to an umbilical
cord linking human beings to their primordial beginnings.

"Yage is an internal voice that speaks all languages. I see what will
happen and what has happened," said Alejandro Paitecudo, a Huitoto Indian
and respected shaman from Caqueta, in Colombia's Amazon.

Rumours of the plant's powers and tremendous pharmacological potential have
filtered out of these jungles for years. Some consider it the world's next
miracle drug. Others are tempted by the promise of mystical and telepathic
experiences. The poet Allen Ginsberg experimented with yage, as has the
musician Sting, and followers of the religious cult Santo Daime use yage as
a sacrament.

Loren Miller, director of the International Plant Medicine Corporation, of
California, is convinced his strain of the psychotropic vine could be used
in psychotherapy, or in treating cancer or angina pectoria. After years of
legal wrangling, Mr. Miller was finally awarded a patent for his specimen
early this year, to the horror of the Indians, who say patenting yage is
akin to patenting holy water.

The appropriation of yage by outsiders threatens to further undermine the
fragile culture of the Putumayo region, already devastated by 37 years of
civil war. Colombia's billion-dollar U.S.-backed campaign to rid the
country of its coca fields and end narco-terrorism has already wreaked
enormous havoc on the Indians' lives.

Villagers and Indians gathered recently to protest the government's
defoliation efforts, which have destroyed 50,000 hectares of coca. They
complain the anti-narcotics battalions spraying glysophate on coca fields
are killing legitimate crops, including yucca, corn -- and yage.

For these people, the claim on yage by an American is perhaps the final
indignity. "Everyone in this zone of violence suffers, and we take yage to
try and help us understand," said a shaman from Putumayo. "We are the king
of the yage. And we don't want it to be in the hands of the narcos or the U.S."

To learn about yage's secret powers, I needed the sanction of a shaman.
Nelson Quintero, a Kofan Indian I met in La Dorada, a tiny town in the
south of Putumayo, had agreed to take me to meet his.

The 4x4 careened to Narinal along an unpaved road so rough the driver's
teeth clattered as his head hit the roof. The humidity covered us like a
damp towel. Nelson spoke in broken Spanish to me, putting off my questions
about yage for his shaman to answer. "Just a few more minutes and we'll be
there," he assured me again and again, smiling.

The 1,300 Kofan and hundreds of other Indians in the region are wary
travellers. Half the country's coca crop grows here, and the villagers,
innocent bystanders in the narco-war, have witnessed some of the worst
battles in the country. Entire towns have been kidnapped at gunpoint, and
there have been many bombings as leftist guerrillas have vied with
paramilitaries for control of the trade. Last year, the roads were closed
for months.

The driver persevered. After a half-hour, the road narrowed, and Nelson
decided to abandon the vehicle at the side of the road, apparently
unconcerned it might be stolen. Instead, he hitched a ride for us in a far
less robust-looking transport, an open-ended minivan weighed down with live
chickens and farmers hauling sacks of provisions. The rickety vehicle took
us deeper into the dense tropical forest.

The van finished its run at the end of the road, and we continued on foot,
following a crude pathway cut into the jungle. We walked for an hour under
a dense canopy, accompanied only by the sound of birds and insects overhead
and the fluttering of giant sky-blue butterflies. Creeping vines and plants
clogged the red earth trail, parts of which were submerged in ankle-deep water.

I reviewed what I'd learned about yage.

The Ecuadorian geographer Villavicencio was one of the earliest explorers
to write about yage, in 1858: "The beverage appears to excite the nervous
system ... I've experienced dizziness, then an aerial journey in which I
recall perceiving the most gorgeous views, great cities, lofty towers,
beautiful parks and other extremely attractive objects; then I imagined
myself to be alone in a forest and assaulted by a number of terrible beings
from which I defended myself."

A century later, the testimony was similar. When the American writer
William S. Burroughs tried yage in 1953, he encountered "larval beings"
that passed before his eyes in a blue haze, "each one giving an obscene,
mocking squawk." After rolling about vomiting, he was later transported to
what he termed a "composite city" of all human potential.

The vine contains the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Yage is usually
combined with the leaves of a relative of the coffee plant called
psychotria viridis, which contains chemicals that heighten the strength and
duration of the intoxication. Purging, a common reaction to yage, is
considered a necessary part of the experience, cleansing initiates' minds
and spirits of evil.

Those under yage's influence say the experience is deeply introspective.
Some relive treasured childhood memories -- or come to terms with past
transgressions. Others hear music and see jaguars, waterfalls and heavenly
scenes.

But the greatest power attributed to yage is telepathy. Olga Criollo, a
29-year-old woman who carried her baby in a large, coloured scarf tied to
her back, says she once derided claims of the plant's potency until she
drank the yage liquid as a teenager.

"I laughed at yage, and then I had a powerful vision," she said. "I saw a
large party of men in the street, dressed in elegant suits. Standing on the
edge, covered in dirt, was a man I'd never seen before. I was told, 'You
will marry this man.' Days later, I met him. He arrived at my house, this
time dressed very nicely, and he later proposed."

One man told me he had seen cities of the world while on yage, among them
the wide boulevards and backlit buildings of Madrid, which he had never
visited.

Not all the visions are reassuring, as one shaman related: "I have seen the
violence of our country. There will be recriminations. There will be more
killings and death. This ground will be burnt," he said, pointing to the
earth at his feet.

After an hour of trekking in the oppressive jungle heat, we arrived at last
at a languid brown river where children cavorted and Kofan mothers bathed
their infants. A woman slid into one of the dugout canoes tied to the
riverbank and ferried us 15 metres to the other bank.

When we reached the shore, a guide directed us to the village school.
Sitting in a semi-circle, talking in hushed tones, the Kofan elders awaited
us. Nelson and I stood before them as the elders listened to my request to
view their yage vines. After consulting with each other in their native
tongue, one of them acquiesced. Eliseo Queta, a 35-year-old Kofan with
dark, tousled hair and an intense gaze, took me back down to the river.

We paddled across, then walked again through the forest, leaping from
puddles to loose wooden planks laid out on a path, swatting at sandflies
all around. Finally we arrived at a clearing where a house on stilts stood
in a field of mango trees and palms, a small plot of coca behind it.

Colombia's Kofan Indians are officially permitted to grow a small amount of
coca for domestic use, as they have for centuries. Most also grow a few
yage vines near their coca plots, as well as in hidden areas deeper in the
jungle.

By this time, yage had taken on Triffid-like qualities in my mind. I had
read with wide eyes about its mythical properties, its description as the
"vine of the soul;" "flesh of the Gods;" "rope of death."

I scanned the coca plot, but could make out no "rope of death" among the
short, squat coca plants.

Then the shaman pointed.

There, barely discernable under a tree, was a spindly green plant about
three feet tall. With its triangular, floppy leaves, this infant yage plant
could have been mistaken for a garden weed, the kind that appears overnight
after a rain and can be nimbly plucked away.

And yet Mr. Queta was sombre, almost reverential, when he spoke of the
forlorn specimen before us: "Yage is very sacred, very mystical and very
jealous," he warned.

Only male shamans are permitted to scrape the plant's bark, he explained,
after which it is mashed and boiled into an oily, phosphorescent liquid,
while the shamans recite prayers.

Mr. Queta said he and another shaman drink the brew once every 10 days, and
use it often for spiritual inspiration as well as to divine remedies for
stomach ailments, parasites and headaches.

"We talk to God. We find out how to have a peaceful life, how to live
better," he said. "You need a lot of spiritual concentration to be able to
communicate with ancient doctors and spirits."

He said yage also induces visions that show him how to treat illnesses that
are magical or psychosomatic in origin. He determines the roots of evil
spells, then neutralizes them, dispelling the symptoms.

Alejandro Paitecudo, the Huitoto shaman, spoke of similar qualities. "I
hear songs that tell me where to construct our maloca, our sacred communal
house. It tells me the location, what wood to use, what day to build it and
how to construct it," he said, silver rings glinting on his stained fingers.

"We mix yage with as many as 12 different plants. Sometimes we use plant to
understand if someone is causing the illness, like a spell.

"Yage is the strength of the Indian people, its power."

Women and children as young as 10 are allowed to sip the brew -- so long as
a shaman is present to control the visions and administer an antidote if
the child becomes unwell.

But women who are menstruating or pregnant are banned from yage ceremonies.
And if a woman so much as looks at a yage plant, its mystical power
evaporates -- at least according to Mr. Queta's tribe, which, I was
assured, would not use the plant shown to me.

Loren Miller thought he had an easy victory in 1986, when the U.S. patent
office declared his strain of yage, called Da Vine, officially his. Since
finding the specimen in a domestic garden in the Amazon rain forest, Mr.
Miller, who is the sole director of International Plant Medicine
Corporation, had made it his life's mission to patent yage. On his
application, he wrote that the plant could be used to treat everything from
post-encephalitic Parkinsonism to angina. But in the 15 years since his
first patent was granted, Mr. Miller has yet to discover any miraculous
cure. He did on one occasion make plans to build a drug-processing
laboratory in Bolivia, but in the end nothing came of it.

When native groups discovered the patent in the mid-1990s, they were
furious. "To obtain a patent for a Colombian plant is ridiculous," said
Augusto Perez, director of the Colombian government's anti-drug program.

The natives argued it was sacrilegious for an outsider to obtain
intellectual property rights over a plant that is at the centre of a
religion, culture and traditional medicine.

The Co-ordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin
(COICA), an umbrella group of 100 leaders from nine South American
countries, hired a Washington lobby group to argue their case. COICA
denounced Mr. Miller as an "enemy of indigenous peoples" and banished him
from aboriginal territory.

The battle began in earnest as internationally renowned botanists debated
the flower petal colour and herbarium specimens, signed affidavits and
testified at patent hearings. In 1998, COICA appeared to have won when, in
an unusual move, the U.S. patent office revoked Mr. Miller's patent, not
for reasons of cultural appropriation but on the grounds Da Vine was not an
original species.

Mr. Miller, however, filed a request for re-consideration, producing an
affidavit from a botanist showing his strain of yage was indeed unique.
This time, the PTO agreed and quietly restored the patent in January. (The
patent covers only his particular species of the Caapi vine -- not all yage
hybrids.)

"The indigenous people feel this is an insult to their way of life to
patent such a holy product," Glenn Wiser, a lawyer with the Centre for
International Environmental Law, said recently. "The indigenous people are
now fearful that if they share their plants and medicinal products with
outsiders, they will figure out ways to make millions of dollars and remove
their control over the product."

As the paper war has played out in the soulless suburban patent offices in
Arlington, Va., something remarkable has been happening in the sweltering
jungle thousands of kilometres away. In a sign the medicine men are
fighting to reclaim what is theirs, shamans have begun making the journey
from their vine-choked villages in the Amazon to urban centres in Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador, treating people for all manner of ailments from
cancer and abdominal cramps to depression.

With Thermoses of yage tea tucked into their woven wool shoulder bags, the
medicine men light candles and incense in urban living rooms and administer
the brew to poor Indian migrants and rich suburban housewives alike. (Some
wealthy Colombians have taken to hiring shamans to host yage ceremonies at
luxurious fincas in the hills of Bogota. On occasion, clients from New York
or California fly in to join them.)

There is now a periodical, Nuevo Shamanismo, and yage conferences, such as
one held recently in Bogota that attracted traditional healers from around
the country. Mr. Paitecudo, the Huitoto shaman, was among them, using the
occasion to visit several patients, including one with hepatitis and
another with abdominal pain. "When we use yage, we become part of the
Father-Creator, and nothing is hidden. Yage takes care of you," he
explained. He claims to have treated many other illnesses, such as AIDS and
hemorrhoids.

Bogota's intellectuals, artists and professionals have embraced the yage
tradition, as have some physicians who, convinced of the plant's medicinal
benefits, are referring patients to shamans.

Fernando Libreros, a Bogota businessman who is writing a book on yage,
plans to establish a non-profit centre in the city where shamans can come
and treat patients. "I will help to bring yage to the people. I believe it
is the best and least well-known of all the medicinal plants," Mr. Libreros
said. "This sacred plant has been misunderstood."

The Colombian government has hired Carlos Alberto Uribe, a professor of
anthropology at the University of Los Andes, in Bogota, to study these
so-called "magical pathways" or networks of shamans travelling from the
jungle to the city. "Yage has caught the imagination of all sorts of
sufferers," Mr. Uribe noted. "People feel their minds are clarified. Their
existential dilemmas, their misfortunes, their sorrow, their pains. The
drug illuminates all these things."

Of course, yage's medicinal potential is as yet unproved. Dr. William
Anderson, a botanist at the University of Michigan, and the world's
foremost expert on the B. caapi family, agrees the psychoactive properties
of the plant can have a strong effect on the mind. "But to establish that
something can cure boils or cancer is a big job. Lots of folk remedies have
been put to trial and found not to be effective," he said. "On the other
hand, any plants with these kinds of chemicals may well be."

Still, the anecdotal evidence is captivating enough to interest not just
Mr. Miller but U.S. government officials. According to the Indians, they
have taken away samples of the vine to study.

So, apparently, have some narco-traffickers. Which gives rise to another,
darker concern: that yage could be processed as an illicit drug and bring
shame on those who use it for healing and enlightenment.

Experts point out, however, that the potential street value of
non-addictive yage cannot be compared to the ravenously addictive cocaine.
"When you can make millions of dollars from cocaine, why would you get
involved in yage? We are more worried about our society," Mr. Perez, of the
anti-drug program, confided.

Yage may yet survive the assault on the coca crops, and elude control by
U.S. corporate concerns. But if it is inevitable that yage should leave its
traditional home, then it is fitting that those in charge be not drug
traffickers or gringo businessmen but the kings of the yage, who have
revered and guarded its secrets for centuries. Without them, the plant's
mysterious powers will be lost.