Crossing Continents: Ayahuasca: Fear and Healing in the Amazon

How increased numbers of tourists are travelling to the Peruvian Amazon to take ayahuasca, a traditional plant medicine said to bring about a higher state of consciousness. When Olivia Arévalo, an admired ayahuasca healer, was shot dead in 2018, light was thrown on a growing tension around the sacred medicine's rising popularity. Her alleged killer - later lynched by a mob of locals - was a Canadian who had come to the region to take ayahuasca. Some locals saw Olivia's death as an example of the malign influence of the commercialisation and globalisation of ayahuasca. As Simon Maybin reports, a group of indigenous healers from Olivia's Shipibo people are now fighting back against what they see as the exploitation of their cultural heritage by foreigners - who run most of the ayahuasca retreats popular with tourists