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PSYCHEDELIC
RESEARCH
AND ITS
BIOCOLONIAL
LEGACIES

María Sabina & R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico

By Ernesto Schwartz-Marin, Osiris Gonzalez-Romero, Patricia
Murrieta-Flores, Christine Hauskeller & Maríana Favila-Vázquez
ABOVE: To sit in the library at the Linnean Society and listen to the 70-year- claims are incorrect, as almost half a millennium prior to Wasson’s
Psilocybe Mexicana, or old recordings of María Sabina performing a healing ritual is an arrival, various Spanish missionaries had referred to rituals involving
teonanácatl, like other experience that pushes any researcher to reflect upon the benefits sacred plants and fungi (Sahagún 2005, 2000; Glockner 2015).
species in the Psilocybe brought by the global circulation of knowledge. An encounter with Nonetheless, the claim formed a strategic narrative that reinforced
genus, is known for its Robert Gordon Wasson’s beautiful book The Wondrous Mushroom the tropes of Terra Nullis, and of the pioneer or explorer. Such
psychoactive properties. (1980), in which he provides a detailed ethnographic account of a framings of intercultural encounters by way of an untouched primal
© Wikipedia/Alan unique ritual encounter (including recording of chants and prayers) experience with the lands and customs of indigenous ‘others’ have
Rockerfeller with Mazatec ritual healer María Sabina in Mexico, is an aesthetic historically served to legitimise claims of discovery and novelty
experience. In this book, Wasson ruminates on the Life article about central for colonisation agendas.
BELOW: ‘magic’ mushrooms he published back in 1957, and the effect it
María Sabina was had on the practice of psychedelics and on the Mazatec people
ill-treated after being that shared with him their knowledge. The story is a reminder of
seen as ‘disclosing’ how much of our memory depends on archival practices, but also
indigenous wisdom. of the inherent asymmetries inscribed in our historical records.
© Flickr Here, we will briefly explore the encounter between Mazatec ritual
master María Sabina and R. Gordon Wasson in order to speak
to the larger issue of the colonial practices and ideas that still
shape bioprospection, psychedelic research, and engagement with
indigenous knowledges today.

Until Wasson published his piece in Life magazine, scientific

literature believed that ceremonies involving ‘magic’ mushrooms had
disappeared. In 1939, ethnobotanist Richard Schultes published
a paper in which he reported that the mysterious sacrament
described in pre-Columbian codices, teonanácatl—‘flesh of the
gods’ in Nahuatl—was a psychoactive mushroom (Schultes 1939).
This attracted little interest until 1952, when Wasson, an amateur
mycologist, received a letter about Schultes’ paper on the subject
from the poet and scholar Robert Graves (Sheldrake 2020). María
Sabina’s reputation within her community led to her encounter
with Wasson in 1955. Wasson travelled to Oaxaca, Mexico, as
well as to Huautla (Huautla de Jimenez) and other villages, asking
about the ancient rituals with sacred mushrooms. According to
Wasson’s memories: ‘There is no indication that any white man had
ever attended a session of the kind that we are going to describe,
nor that white man had ever partaken of the sacred mushrooms
under any circumstances’ (Wasson 1980: 10). However, these
2 PULSE
 Imbalances of power Patenting, appropriation, and pharmaceutical
The encounter between María Sabina and Wasson was marked entrepreneurship lie at the heart of the current
by profound imbalances of power. Wasson was a former banker- psychedelic renaissance, which is currently
turned-vice president of J. P. Morgan bank, with considerable reproducing colonial logics, and scientific
resources to finance his ethnographic research trips to Mexico agendas that endorse a rationality of
and the Mazatec Sierra. María Sabina was a recognised sage in ‘discovery’. Political and regulatory agendas
her village, though she did not charge any fixed amount when she that seek to protect indigenous communities
performed her healing ceremonies with sacred mushrooms. The from the banalisation of psychedelics, amidst
municipal trustee of Huautla had pressured her to agree to meet the so-called ‘psychedelic renaissance’, risk
Wasson. Some years later, in an interview with Alberto Ongaro in reinforcing dichotomies that are constitutive
1971, Wasson acknowledged that María Sabina had been asked of biocoloniality (Schwartz-Marin & Restrepo).
to perform the ritual by the trustee, Don Cayetano García, and she For example, by framing indigenous
felt she had no choice—‘I should have said no’ (Wasson 1980: 8). knowledge as belonging to nature and
The pressure put on María Sabina was later evident in an interview tradition, but presenting biomedical research
she gave to the Mazatec writer Álvaro Estrada in 1976: as a novel therapeutic intervention fuelled
by capitalist investment, and clinical trials.
It is true that before Wasson, no one spoke so freely about the
holy children [sacred mushrooms]. None of our people revealed A new historiography
what they knew about this matter. But I obeyed the municipal The authors of this article are currently
trustee. However, if the foreigners had arrived without any collaborating to analyse, through natural language
recommendation, I would also have shown them my wisdom processing, key colonial texts in Mexico that provide early
because there is nothing wrong (Estrada 2005: 42). ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological accounts of
psychoactive plants. By bringing this knowledge together
Reflecting on the popularity psychedelics had gained after with anthropology and philosophy of psychedelics, we seek
the publication in Life magazine, Wasson lamented that the to contribute to a new historiography that is already being
‘activity of the riff-raff of our population that no longer follows, crafted by Mazatec indigenous scholars and Mexican
or is even aware of the deep spiritual significance of the anthropologists working with renewed interest in ‘los niños santos’.
consumption of ‘magic’ mushrooms for the Mazatecs’ (Wasson We are acutely aware that, despite our decolonial historiographical
1980: 17) had launched a banal psychedelic revolution. efforts, synthetic or genetically modified psilocybin is again being
a Nonetheless, Wasson won recognition and worldwide prestige
for ‘discovering’ the sacred mushroom ceremony; in contrast
produced to be patented for psychotherapeutic use, as new
profits seem to be ripe for the taking.
ez María Sabina was shamed for ‘disclosing’ indigenous wisdom
and secrets. She was not acknowledged for her expertise, and
intense anger was directed towards her in Huautla de Jimenez;
unknown people burned down her house, and a drunken
man shot her and murdered her son. In 1985 she died in
impoverished conditions, without having been appropriately
credited for her contributions to psychedelic research.

Reinforcing biocoloniality?
Wasson’s work constituted another instance of salvage
ethnography, a practice that seeks to save vanishing indigenous
peoples and disappearing knowledge due to globalisation, which
has been criticised as part of neocolonial strategies of extraction,
and biopiracy. Wasson was aware that his publications constituted
a betrayal of the secrecy and mysticism shrouding ‘los niños
santos’ (‘magic’ mushrooms) in Mazatec culture. Yet, he also felt
it was his duty to share this knowledge with the world before it
disappeared in the wake of the relentless advance of modern
civilisation (ibid: 17−19). Modern civilisation took notice of ‘magic’
mushrooms indeed, and:

within two years of the story's publishing, psilocin and TOP RIGHT:
psilocybin, the main active compounds in the mushrooms, The Linnean Society library holds copies of recordings of María Sabina’s sacred rituals.
were isolated, characterized, synthesized, and named by © The Linnean Society of London
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz pharmaceutical
company. Sandoz quickly patented the extraction procedure ABOVE:
and a method for ‘therapeutic tranquilization’ marketing pills Wasson’s article ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’ in Time, 1957.
under the trade name Indocybin (Gerber 2021: 573−577). © Wikipedia

References
Estrada, A. 2005. Vida de María Sabina. La Sabia de los Hongos Sahagún, fray Bernardino de. 2005. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva
(México: Editorial Siglo XXI) 42. España, Biblioteca Porrúa, tomos 8-11, México.
Gerber, K, et al. 2021. Ethical Concerns about Psilocybin Intellectual Property. Sahagún, fray Bernardino de. 2000. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva
ACS Pharmacol Transl. Sci. 4: 573−577. España, tomos I-II, version íntegra del texto castellano del manuscrito
Glockner, J. 2015. La Mirada Interior: Plantas Sagradas del Mundo Amerindio conocido como Códice Florentino, studio introductorio, paleografia, glosario
(Mexico: Debate) y notas de Alfredo López Austin y Josefina Garcia Quintana, Conaculta, Cien
de México.
Schwartz-Marin, E. & Restrepo, E. 2013. Biocoloniality, Governance, and the
Protection of ‘Genetic Identities’ in Mexico and Colombia. Sociology 47(5): Sheldrake, M. 2020. The enigma of Richard Schultes, Amazonian
993−1,010. hallucinogenic plants and the limits of ethnobotany. Social Studies of Science
50(3): 345−376.
Schultes, R. E. 1939. Plantae Mexicanae II. The Identification of Teonanácatl,
a Narcotic Basidiomycete of the Aztecs. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Wasson, R. G. 1980. The Wondrous Mushroom: Micolatry in Mesoamerica.
Harvard University 7: 37−56. New York: McGraw Hill Books

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