Abstract
This chapter will explore globalization, diversity, and issues of social justice by examining the global expansion of ayahuasca religions through a lens of transnationalism, and against the backdrop of international drug control. Politics have often equated cultural groups with particular national boundaries, and, proceeding from this premise, have made legal and cultural exceptions for groups that were seen as specifically situated geographically. A perfect illustration of this is in a provision of Article 32 of the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which permits signatories to make reservations for “plants growing wild which contain psychotropic substances…which are traditionally used by certain small, clearly determined groups in magical or religious rites.” The provision reflects a view that exemptions for psychoactive drug use are acceptable if they are confined to a specific locality, and to a specific culture group. The ayahuasca religions pose a particular challenge to this line of thinking. The Brazilian-based religions of Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal (UDV) have established a global presence with international adherents, followers who are not constrained by national boundaries, and not identifiable as members of any particular ethnic categories. As these religions expand outside of their traditional regional and cultural contexts, they come to be viewed through the Western framework of the “War on Drugs,” and become classified as criminal enterprises. The expansion of the ayahuasca traditions will be used as a foundation for examining issues of international human rights law and protections for religious freedom within the current prohibitionist system and global milieu of cultural transnationalism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is ironic in the sense that the Dutch Santo Daime group, in order to legally defend itself, seemed to foreclose the possibility of developing a local ritual to brew the sacrament in the future. This defensive position, in effect, prevents the group’s rituals from transforming and evolving, and serves as a good example of how external legal impositions can establish a stagnating circularity (or mutual enforcement) between certain cultural manifestations and a specific place.
- 2.
Some good examples include the Opium Exclusion Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1909 that specifically banned opium prepared for smoking, the preferred method of use among Chinese immigrants. A more recent example is the infamous crack/cocaine disparity, where users of crack, predominantly Black, are punished more severely for possession and sale than powdered cocaine users, who are predominantly White (for more information see: Angeli 1997; Helmer 1975).
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Feeney, K., Labate, B.C. (2014). The Expansion of Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions: Law, Culture and Locality. In: Labate, B., Cavnar, C. (eds) Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40957-8_6
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