As the Amazon Shrinks, the Message Grows Louder

“The Amazon has never fallen so low,” the artist Santiago Yahuarcani told me as I shook his hand. We were at his house in the town of Pebas, in the Loreto region of Peru, this past September. His words alluded to the unusual drop in the Amazon’s water level, caused by the intense drought that was affecting the area, which had hindered my travels by boat the previous day.

Climate change is only one of many factors that have transformed the life of his nation, the Huitoto.¹ These include the genocide of Indigenous groups perpetrated by the Peruvian Amazon Company at the end of the 19th century in Colombia, those groups’ exodus to Peru amid territorial conflicts between the two countries, and the persistent lack of public health infrastructure, which has exacerbated the impact of pandemics like COVID-19.²

These factors inspire Yahuarcani’s paintings, which he creates on llanchama, a fabric made from the bark fiber of native trees that he himself processes.³ Beyond these historical influences, his artworks affirm an urge, expressed through painting, to “feel and experience” as his ancestors did, and to confront the present as they would have done. With care and discernment, his works reveal stories and ways of knowledge that prior generations of the Huitoto preferred to safeguard within the community.⁴

During my visit, photographer Hernán Hernández Kcomt created images of Yahuarcani as the painter spoke to me about his work, the Huitoto, and capturing spiritual experiences in painting.
—Horacio Ramos, former Mellon-Marron Fellow, The Cisneros Institute

Este artículo está disponible en español.

Santiago Yahuarcani working on a painting in Pebas, 2024. Photos by Hernán Hernández Kcomt

Santiago Yahuarcani working on a painting in Pebas, 2024

My Spanish name is Santiago Yahuarcani. In my mother tongue, my name is komulla jitó, which means, “child of growth.” When I was eight and in school, I began to paint. I started painting animals like birds, macaws. Later, the municipality of Pebas organized drawing and painting competitions. Since I enjoyed drawing, I entered the competitions and often won first prize. I also painted on llanchama, to sell to tourists. These were small works: in the middle of the canvas, I painted an animal. Later, around 2000, I began painting scenes of our customs, dances, and food. I have painted different kinds of dances: the dance of fruit, of housewarming, of baptism. Beginning in 2010, I also made paintings of the Huitoto cosmology. I had conversations with my mother about the world. How did the sky appear? Where did man come from? We spent weeks discussing these stories and then I painted them. Before, these stories were never shared with anyone outside the community.

My mother, Martha López Pinedo, was a Huitota from the Aimeni̶ clan, the Clan of the White Heron. She brought up me and my brothers as Aimeni̶ because it was very important to her father to keep the clan alive. My maternal grandfather, Gregorio López, came from La Chorrera, Colombia. He managed to escape from there, reaching the Amazon River, in Peru, with a group of young people. He told us about the Putumayo River as well as the rubber production boom and genocide of Indigenous communities that happened at the end of the 19th century. My grandfather was a healer. Most of the old people were healers because there comes a moment when, according to our custom, you have to learn shamanism. Because you’re going to have children, and you’re going to be the one responsible for the care of your family.

Santiago Yahuarcani working on a painting in Pebas, 2024

The paintings I’ve been making in these last few years have to do with shamanism. They are communal practices which the grandfathers and elders carry out by night in the malocas.⁵ Coca and tobacco, processed as ampiri, are the two sacred plants that the Huitotos chew and lick.⁶ You ingest coca and tobacco, and you start telling tales, stories of the community, through the night. It can begin at eight at night and end somewhere around four in the morning. During that time, the speaker and the listeners keep consuming this hallucinogenic brew so they can meditate—watching, dreaming, and learning things. During those hours, they tell stories about the creation of the world and of man, of how to conduct yourself in the community, and other matters. There are also meetings for discussing medicine: which plants to use, when diseases arrive.

When we hear that a disease is coming, the grandfathers and elders meet in the malocas to decide how to confront this evil. That’s what the Indigenous peoples did when COVID-19 reached the Amazon. In one of my recent paintings—Cosmovisión Huitoto (2022)—I portrayed us, the grandfathers. We are investigating: trying to see which herb will be useful for defending ourselves against the new disease, which has never been seen before. We are very worried, focused, dreaming, praying, investigating. This painting is important to me because it will remind our children and grandchildren and every new generation to come of how we defended ourselves by means of our own herbs.

Santiago Yahuarcani working on a painting in Pebas, 2024

Throughout my life, I have wanted to see, study, and feel what a shaman feels. All this was in order to be able to capture it in my paintings. I enjoyed feeling and experiencing many things so that I could tell of them through images. Spiritual things are so extraordinary that one can hardly imagine them. For example, how does a shaman here in Pebas visit a sick person in Lima? This shaman’s spirit goes and visits that person; the shaman knows what disease the person has, and there are many shamans who can cure a sick person from a distance.

Santiago Yahuarcahi. Amor de sirena [Mermaid Love]. 2024

“How do the shamans do it?” I asked my mother. And she told me, “You ingest ampiri and coca, and you get intoxicated. And there comes a moment when your spirit leaves and flies away.” The spirits of the grandfathers appear in the form of a condor or an eagle. “The grandfathers come and embrace you, grab hold of you and bear you up in their wings,” my mother said. I have created two artworks where I’ve tried to represent, to follow, my mother’s spiritual flight.

At the moment, I’m trying to capture my people’s spiritual practices on canvas. Things that in the past were forbidden to circulate. Before, there were Huitoto artists who painted our people’s customs: fiestas, dances, food. But nobody dared make paintings of spiritual matters. These are forbidden topics that you can’t talk about very much. Only on your own, through study, can you develop this knowledge. And sometimes there are sacred things I cannot touch: I ignore them. But other stories are so strong that I wanted—I needed—other people to know about them.

Work in progress at Santiago Yahuarcani’s studio in Pebas, Peru

Santiago Yahuarcani pictured with some of his paintings in Pebas, 2024

The world should have access to parts of our knowledge. So they can know what we believe, what we think. Know about our history and origins. So I wanted to put that history into images, so that people would have more questions about us. So that people who don’t know our stories would look at an artwork and say, “What’s this? I’ve never seen it before.” So that young people who come after me can see my work as a mirror. Because we, as older people, are reaching a point where we will soon not have any more stories to paint. But young artists can see our artworks, our stories, and find their own styles. We are leaving a road they can follow and move forward.

Santiago Yahuarcani’s painting Cosmovisión Huitoto is currently on view at MoMA in Gallery 215: Clandestine Knowledge.