Colombian healer held as a dealer in Houston cell

[Richard D]

Source: Houston Chronicle



When Juan Agreda-Chindoy arrived at the U.S. customs screening point at Bush Intercontinental Airport last month, an officer thought he looked nervous and singled him out for added scrutiny.

Inside his luggage, federal agents found a certificate stating that Agreda-Chindoy, 42, is a licensed medicine man in Colombia. They also found four plastic bottles of what his supporters describe as "ancestral medicine," a concotion called ayahuasca. Laboratory tests showed the little bottles contained Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a potent hallucinogen and a controlled substance in the U.S.
Agreda-Chindoy's Oct. 19 arrest on a federal drug charge has caused a stir in the Colombian news media and prompted an Internet-based campaign by supporters to raise money for his defense.

On a Web page launched after his arrest, Algreda-Chindoy is described as "one of the few remaining indigenous spiritual leaders in the world that holds the ancestral medicinal knowledge of an ecosystem that is rapidly disappearing."

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7281812.html

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This is the second arrest of an indigenous healer and elder in as many weeks for Ayahuasca. There's just so much wrong with this and so much mis-information in this article.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Just when I think they cannot get any more stupid.

What arrogance.

[1monster]

2. The video SHAMANS OF THE AMAZON explores the Amazon indigenous peoples and

the use of Ayahuasca for medical reasons. The video is fascinating and well worth the fifty-two minutes it takes to watch. (link below)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3201192063603104128#

[Richard D]

3. My error

This isn't the second arrest. Just another look at the same person who was arrested last week. So it's not really LBN.

[AlbertCat]

4. Well, it is a controlled substance here in the US.

If he's gonna travel here, he should know that and go thru whatever processes he must to bring the stuff over. Just because it's "ancestral" doesn't mean squat. His "spiritual" status is of no importance. Unless you think snake handlers should be able to travel all over the place with poisonous snakes or gurus or Rasta spiritualists can travel anywhere with ganja. That may be alright with you, but not with certain nation's laws.

[boppers]

6. Actually....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._O_Centro_Espirita_Beneficente_Uniao_do_Vegetal

[Selena Harris]

5. I have heard of a wheeler dealer,but....

NEVER ,a healer dealer!