Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon

Luis Eduardo Luna is an anthropologist, and this academic book, published by Almqvist and Wiksell International, studies vegetalismo, the plant based shamanic healing tradition among mestizo populations of the Peruvian Amazon, based on Luna's own fieldwork living among and interviewing practicing vegetalista healers. Its strength is direct ethnographic access to a tradition that blends indigenous, mestizo and other influences and that was, at the time, not well documented in academic literature, gathered from the healers' own accounts of their practice and training. Its limit is that it documents the specific mestizo Amazonian tradition Luna studied in a particular period, distinct from indigenous Amazonian shamanic traditions that have their own separate practices, so it should not be treated as representing Amazonian shamanism as a single uniform whole.