Le Santo Daime

In Brasil’s state of Acre, bordering Peru and Bolivia, the end of the world as the Brasilians themselves put it, a new synchretic religion was born at the beginning of the century. A mixture of Catholic religious rites, the candomble dance-trances of African origin and the hallucinogenic practices of the Amazon Indians. In Acre, the cult is followed by fifteen percent of the population – seringueiros (rubber tappers), “indigenists” (defenders of Indians’ rights), managers, shopkeepers and partisans of a multicultural but united Brasil. All of them have given body and soul to a new religion, which draws its essence from a magic drink, the Santo Daime.