“Stop using wild San Pedro”: 5 Questions for Josip Orlovac Del Río

Del Rio discusses threats to San Pedro, a cactus that contains mescaline.

From a young age, Josip Orlovac Del Río’s life was built around Peruvian traditional plant medicine, herbalism, and spirituality. His grandfather was dedicated to worshiping Andean mountain gods known as Apus and Del Río’s grandmother came from a Peruvian Amazonian tradition. Del Río’s family used plant medicines including ayahuasca, a brew of various vines and shrubs, and San Pedro, a cactus that contains mescaline, and is called huachuma in Peru. 

Del Río eventually became an apprentice to a local maestro huachumero, and participated in many private and communal huachuma ceremonies. After over two decades as an apprentice, Del Río decided it was time to plant and cultivate his own San Pedro cactus. In the wild, San Pedro cacti can only grow in specific environmental conditions where it is threatened by factors like increased cattle ranching, poaching, climate change and over harvesting. It can also be cultivated.

To help protect San Pedro and the culture surrounding its traditional use, Del Río joined with other growers and practitioners to create the Huachuma Collective, a non-profit alliance working to protect and conserve the plant while also supporting local communities. The group collects seeds and has a San Pedro nursery. In December 2023, the Huachuma Collective released a statement calling for a halt to the use of wild San Pedro and demanding recognition and support of local Andean communities. “Huachuma Collective calls on practitioners of San Pedro ceremonies in Peru and around the world to stop using wild San Pedro and instead start cultivating the plant en masse from cuttings and seeds,” the statement reads. The Microdose spoke with Del Río about the future of San Pedro in Peru and beyond. 

In 2022, the Ministry of Culture of Peru designated the traditional knowledge and uses of San Pedro as what it calls “Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Nation.” Peru’s Ministry of the Environment has also labeled the two main species of San Pedro as endangered. What effects do those government efforts have on the protection of San Pedro in Peru? 

We, the curanderos, the people who work with huachuma in Peru received the declaration of cultural heritage with a lot of gratitude and happiness. But the first time that we read the document, we understood immediately that this document does not speak in any way, not a single word, about the legal protection of the plant itself in its wild habitats. And on the side of the Ministry of the Environment, it is recognized that the plant is endangered, which is something that also happens to many other species of plants and animals in Peru. The Office of the Forestry Service of Peru, which is the entity that protects these plants and animals, is very small and has a small amount of resources. And so it practically makes their protection of the plants ineffective. There's no way for the forestry service to fully protect these species. It's in name only. 

There's also a large pressure from the local and international markets for the use of these plants. In our community work we have noted that there's a lot more protection of the plants when the communities themselves, the Indigenous communities of the Andes and the coast, understand the value of these plants, their cultural importance and the problems that they face in this country. And so this is what is leading us to work directly with the communities in the areas where San Pedro is being harvested most rapidly and where it is being exploited most quickly. Working with the communities in these areas is providing better protection for the plants than the local and regional governments can do. 

We have seen a similar trend with other plants, including peyote, where psychedelics' growing popularity can sometimes lead to cultural, economic, and environmental harm. Given that the global interest in San Pedro only seems to be increasing, how can you manage that while also continuing to protect both the plant and the people who have traditionally used it? 

I don't think anybody wants to keep people from getting to know huachuma. We found that one of the best ways to change the current situation of the overexploitation of huachuma is to help people understand that medicine that is planted, cultivated, and harvested by a facilitator is better medicine than wild medicine that has been poached. 

Because when you plant your own medicine, it generates a relationship of years of reciprocity with that plant. And the time that people wait for their plants to grow also gives them time to learn from the plant itself and to be able to appreciate and understand its life cycle. And so we are finding that it's very important that the Andean communities who are close to huachuma are supported to plant and cultivate their own. 

It’s important to make sure that the people who are consuming huachuma understand its conservation state and the state of its culture in order to make better decisions about their consumption of the plant. The problem is that people who have businesses and are thinking about money aren't telling anybody where their huachuma is coming from. 

I wanted to ask about some of the other threats to the plant, like cattle ranching, agribusiness, mining, and climate change. These issues are often interconnected, especially when it comes to environmental issues and Indigenous peoples. What is your perspective on how those challenges have impacted San Pedro in Peru and how they might be countered?  

In the last 25 years, Peru has opened its economy to mining. The mining roads created new access to many populations of San Pedro which used to be far away. Just the fact of the construction of a road affects the ecology of the habitat of San Pedro, which is very specific. The plants can deteriorate very quickly. These same roads have also given many people from Andean communities access to the large urban markets of the coast, which meant that many new lands are beginning to be used for agriculture and ranching. And anywhere that community members find land that can cultivate potatoes or other crops, they feel huachuma is taking up space that they need to grow food. And this happens because the value that huachuma has in the markets of Peru is absolutely disequilibrated from the market value in the international community. It has very low value at the markets here in Peru. When a person is coming from outside to buy San Pedro from them for around $3 per dry kilo, that same dry kilo of San Pedro could cost about $150 in Cusco, and about $300 to $500 in the international market outside Peru. And so for the communities who are beginning to understand what is happening with how little they're being paid, they are understanding that this is abuse and this is exploitation. 

How is the growing global popularity of psychedelics influencing San Pedro? 

The new spirituality and the new boom of psychedelic culture definitely is a problem that is distorting not just the conservation of the plant, but also the culture of the plant. For example, there are certain new customs which are pasting themselves over the culture of San Pedro with a flavor of absolute truth. This is because there are groups with economic interests in controlling the narrative around these plants. For example, for a massive spiritual center, it's much easier to offer huachuma ceremonies during the day. They don't need to use resources such as fire, they don't need to have someone taking care of the house, and they don't need to work at night. So in the last 20 years, the myth has been created that huachuma is a plant that is drunk during the day. In the traditional culture, we know that huachuma is always drunk at night. There's a big misinterpretation of huachuma’s culture which these economic interests created to satisfy the needs of spiritual tourism. 

The pressure from spiritual tourism and psychedelic tourism that comes to Cusco and the proliferation of spiritual centers in places like Costa Rica and California is also creating a bigger problem for the plants today because it means that a lot of San Pedro is being exported illegally in the form of powder and chips. 

What do you want people to protect the plant and its traditions? 

Everybody who signed the collective statement wants the world to know huachuma and to use huachuma. But at the same time, we know that it won’t be a medicine for the world anymore if we don't protect the plant and its natural environment. I think the first thing that people who have drunk huachuma can do to help the plant and the culture is to ensure that the plant they are drinking is coming from a sustainable source. They can ask their facilitators or people they trust where the huachuma they are drinking comes from. We believe if there are more people worldwide who understand that the origins of the practice with huachuma is in the healing arts of North Peru, there may be more people who would honor and support these communities so that their traditions do not disappear. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.