Javier Arevalo Shahuano, 40 years old, was born by the Rio Napo in Northern Peru in a village called Nuevo Progresso. He has 2 brothers and 4 sisters. Javier comes from a long lineage of curanderos, many of them Bancos (Master curanderos). His Father, Julio Arevalo was a well known curandero in the area, so was his Grandfather, many uncles and one aunt. When Javier was very young he used to watch his family heal many people, began to understand what caused illnesses and watched his family regularly working with Ayahuasca and medicinal plants. This fascinated him. His Grandfather took a keen interest in Javier explaining that working with Ayahuasca could open him up to many other worlds that exist alongside the one he could see around him.
At 14 years old, Javier drank Ayahuasca for the first time. He had many visions and considerable purging and did not know at the time how to control it. His Father and Grandfather stated at the time that in the future he would be a curandero. By 14, Javier had also started showing a strong interest in hunting and fishing and did not want to dedicate his time to learning to become a curandero.
He continued drinking Ayahuasca in order to cleanse his body from 14 to 16 resulting in clear visions that he would one day be healing many people although far away from his village. His Grandfather confirmed this although warned him never to forget his people / village. At 16, Javier entered compulsory military service and went to Iquitos. He worked as a border control guard checking boats on rivers and guarding frontiers. He then left at 19 finally with a certificate of Peruvian citizenship (beforehand poor mestizos from the villages were not "official" citizens of Peru).
He returned to his village where he then started drinking Ayahuasca once again and working with his Father / Grandfather helping them prepare medicinal plant treatments for their patients. His Father eventually moved to Iquitos to work as a curandero and Javier followed him. Javier's Father unfortunately then died due to an attack from a Brujo (Julio had succesfully treated someone who had been attacked by a brujo and the brujo sort revenge, ultimately killing Julio by an attack of a spiritual dart lodged into Julio's throat).
This obviously caused great upset to Javier who then decided finally to take up a serious apprenticeship with his Uncles and Grandfather. He wanted to get revenge. He soon lost this hatred after working with Ayahuasca although was commited to fighting brujeria and to working in the light / healing people.
He then went deep into the jungle (so did 12 of his cousins) for a dieta of 2 years of complete isolation (only 3 people
successfully completed the dieta). On his return to his village, he found most people had moved away. He then decided to return to Iquitos at 23 where he started working as a curandero.Javier became well known for his ability to heal in the area.
At 25 he healed a local patient whose husband worked with a large tourist company. The husband asked Javier if he would like to run an Ayahuasca ceremony for gringos (foreigners) of which Javier readily accepted. Curanderos at that time were typically kept aside from the local people, often looked down on and misunderstood due to the brainwashing of the "West, new medicine and Catholicism. The opportunity to work with interested foreigners excited Javier and he began to run ceremonies with various pioneering Western ethnobotanists and truth seekers.
More and more people came to work with Javier and he would often take groups up to 25 people, working in various different lodges in the rainforest, for various different organisers. This continued for many years and was interspersed with trips where Javier would return back to the jungle for 3 to 4 months for dietas and to learn from numerous different indigineous shamans from many different tribes. Javier built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of the plants and varying different methods of healing.
Javier also finds it important to help people looking for spiritual growth. He gently controls his ceremonies, without ego, with beautiful icaros introducing his participants to Mother Ayahuasca and safely guiding them through the ceremonies. He also continued to heal local patients looking for help outside of hospitals and has to date cured many forms of serious, sometimes fatal illnesses, often after doctors had stated that there was no hope. There are too many cases to describe although from cancers, rheumatism, osteoperosis, paralyisises, heart conditions, severe diabetes, scerosis, Javier has always been successful in healing his patients.
He then began to work with a retreat organiser from the UK for a number of years, even travelling to the UK to hold ceremonies although eventually became frustrated that he ultimately couldnt work the way he truly wanted to, to heal people his way, and offer a deeper understanding of his work. Instead he had to adhere to a certain program. Javier held a deep desire to have a space opened for teaching, with no diversions or noise interuptions of ceremonies (road and river traffic noise) and no control over what he could and couldnt discuss with his participants.
Javier dreamt of opening his own spiritual centre operated in a traditional, authentic way, filled with light humour / laughter and offering a deeper understanding and level of working with the plants / Ayahuasca. To provide a facility for more serious spiritual development, individual healing and a school for serious apprentices wanting to learn about becoming curanderos themselves.
This was prompted by his belief that the West now needs to return to and relearn the wisdom held by Nature and the Shamans working with the plants. Javier is concerned that so much is changing around him and worried about the current state of our planet. Most of his fellow villagers now live a meagre existence away from their roots in the rainforest, working in Iquitos or other large cities. Most of the new generation in the Amazon are turning their back on the traditional ways / plant medicines and the wisdom held by the curanderos for millenia is slowly being lost. Many of the medicinal plants are starting to become more scarce, certainely around the growing towns of the Amazon and local people are slowly losing their time honoured connection to the rainforest and the spirit world, replacing this with a driving desire for material gain and Western lifestyles.
