Iquitos, Peru: Seating Ayahuasca at the Cannibal Banquet (Part 5.1)

Norman Gorman, the big light of ayahuasca drug tourism in the Amazon, has survived one nasty bout of flesh eating disease that nearly cost him his life. The disease might yet cost him his leg, what's left of it.

OK, his name is actually Peter Gorman. Gorman is the author of the highly popular "Ayahausca Bible" known officially as Ayahuasca in My Blood. I couldn't read it, and I read almost anything that passes by. Not that Gorman's book is badly written. One the contrary, Peter Gorman writes very nice prose, flowing and clever, succinct character sketches that are vivid and fun, and dramatic episodes that come alive on the page and in the mind's eye. He's a talented writer. I've been reading shit that I cannot believe ever passed an appraiser's eyes. I've been reading shit that one would think rejection slips were created for. Bad shit. I can't find the energy to describe the shit novels I have read in the past year of living in Iquitos. But I couldn't read Gorman's book. I tried. I tried and failed badly, having read such awful shit otherwise that I was nearly suicidal from it. But not Gorman's book. Could not do it.

I tried to write about the man and his book earlier, and till now I've left it as a draft, which I publish below. Next, a bit about the man I know as opposed to the caricature of a man I disliked when we had our second encounter, the first being some forgotten explosion of personalities that lasted a couple of minutes before I stormed off in a major huff and didn't see the man or even recall the incident again, though others who witnessed our encounter did recall it in detail.

Here is what I wrote then. It's true. It isn't is the whole truth. I won't claim to have gotten that far, but today I can write that I know Peter Gorman far better than I did, and that it doesn't take jungle drugs to know good from bad. That kind of knowledge takes some experience and an open mind. I can be a monstrous prick, but I like to think I'm a prick with an open mind. I learned something valuable in knowing Peter Gorman. In some slight sense I have made a new friend. That, more than anything I could gain from taking drugs, is what makes my life good: knowing a man to be a good man when I thought otherwise. I like learning. I like people. I like learning that I am totally wrong sometimes. I think I was dead wrong about Gorman. First the bad news. Then my revised opinion of a man I got to know a bit. And then the story of Gorman's encounter that nearly cost him his leg and his life while I sat beside him reading Elmore Leonard novels Gorman lent me.

My second encounter with Peter Gorman and some follow up with a seminar on ayahuasca.

Gorman. I called him Norman. His name is Peter. He wrote the “Ayahuasca Bible,” Ayahuasca in MyBlood: Twenty Five Years of Medicine Dreaming.[1.] The man drives me nuts*, and I can't read his book for the life of me. He's a fine writer regardless. He is only to happy to agree, shouting on the cafe patio at the river side Malecon Tarapaca at Iquitos, Peru about the fancy journalism awards he's won. Drives me nuts. He's a goateed New York Irishman from Queens, now in his mid 60s, which is amazing because he's a hardcore alcoholic and he must be pickled to the roots to stay so long on his feet. Gorman isn't a long haired guy so much as a man who looks like he hasn't had a haircut in the past four months, shaggy, his grey locks hanging over his ears and down the nape of his thick neck and curling toward his bullfrog throat. His thick eyebrows accentuate his wild but unfocused eyes, and in all, if not for the obesity that should soon give him a world-class heart attack, he's a handsome fellow in the style of bit-part television actors who didn't quite make it, second assistant hit man on daytime detective show reruns. Drunk. All the time dead drunk. Drives me really nuts. In the evening after a long hard day of guzzling aguardiente he's so drunk as he sways in his chair outside at the patio on the Malecon that he looks to be in danger of falling yet again onto the concrete. But he catches himself just in time – this time – and he bellows to the uncaring world: “I, Norman Gorman and Alan Shoemaker [sitting quietly beside him] made this town. If not for us, this town wouldn't eck-thiss-tt!” The man drives me fucking nuts and he drives all those seated at the cafe to other places, anywhere but around the hero of the ayahuasca crowd.

Gorman is talented and could have made it as a writer of women's romance novels if he had the discipline, but he clearly doesn't and likely never did. He's a massive drunk. The man is totally fucking nuts, and he drives me nuts right out of the area. He's falling over, and there is no stopping him. There he goes, a heavily obese middle aged man falling in slow motion down on the pavement at an outdoor cafe as two elderly local ladies watch without expression, Gorman falling, too drunk to get up again. Some hero.

The price of small fame: Norman Gorman dead drunk at Iquitos, Peru, June 2013

Gorman is a big part of the Modernist ayahuasca drug tourism industry in Iquitos, and perhaps central to it, being in the business for close now to 30 years. He started as an alcoholic tour guide in the jungle, taking folks out for an unfamiliar drug that he would soon popularise to the point it is today mainstream, at least in South America, and is well-known, it seems, in the Modern world if one judges by the sheer number of tourists who sit at local cafes and babble about “The Medicine” and their healing ceremonies at luxury resorts where they are pampered and babied by Mother Ayahuasca's handmaidens of cold hard cash.

Gorman is in the ayahuasca business. So are many others, one of whom was having a public presentation at Dawn on the Amazon cafe. Gorman was so drunk that he couldn't have made it even if he'd wanted to. I took it in just because. Lots of blah-blah and endless ya-ya. 

"It's not a drug, it's a medicine."

I fail to forget my own language, and thus I am offended by those who can and do say such a thing to my face as if I will nod and smile, perhaps agree, and maybe even go all out and say something deeply spiritual in line with them, “And Father Anaconda visits me in my visions and tells me that my chakras are blocked but with the work of a shay-Mahn I too can heal."

No, I am simply offended by the conformist idiocy of babble. I'm offended, but it's not my place to offend others who offend me just because. I let it all pass. In fact, offended or not, I even seek it out sometimes so I can perhaps learn more about the subculture that has over-run my nation and its people to the point I am now convinced I will never return to my home. Still, like a train wreck beside me I find myself drawn to stare at the wreckage, my voyeurism never seemingly satisfied. I must know more and see ever deeper into The Heart of … “Oh, man, are you kidding me?” I sit and watch and listen and examine. “It's not a talk on ayahuasca: It's a seminar exposing the crypto-fascist sociological narrative informed by a dominant ideology of the corrupt white male establishment.” It's not English, it's babble. So I go to listen to one who is informed about ayahuasca, to the local gringo hangout where I will sit for an hour listening to a doctor from American tell me and us about The Medicine. It's not a drug. It's not a drug. It's not a drug.

I head off to Dawn on the Amazon restaurant with Chuck, he feeling alive and fine enough, considering that he is the oldest man on earth almost and is ready to check out some cremation details in town, as well as to spend an evening listening to Dr. Joe Tafur at some point further unknown to me associated with U.C.S.F.'s Psychiatric programme, the doctor who will lecture this evening about ayahuasca, psychedelic medicine, and the spiritual disorder of limbic dysfunction. We arrive a bit early and sit in the soft seats. Chuck orders another beer. I somehow take my eyes off of the young woman seated next to me, she with a shaved head and tattoos encircling her too visible nipple with a ring through it, and I make cooing noises about the little slide projector on the table in front of us. Chuck and I talk briefly about baseball. The room fills with people of all ages and lifestyles, crowding us badly, making me want very much to exit, though by now that is impossible to do so gracefully. I am as stuck as my chakras.

Gandhi would be in Seventh Nirvana to see so much India cotton in one small room as this.

I close my eyes and concentrate on my spiritual health and half-listen to the doctor as he begins to explain how at his resort for ayahuasca healing you too can become a human being without psychic pains if only you check in for a weekly rate of – damn, I didn't note that. But it's not so important at this point because it's all about healing your spiritual disorders, not about the money involved. The money is incidental, though Dr. Joe is not throwing it away on the likes of me who will go to his resort to write about the miracles he performs only if he lets me in for free and doesn't expect much from my report. I open my eyes to see what is likely my first Powerpoint presentation. It looks much like a slide show that my grandparents use to put on to show the neighbours their summer vacation pictures. But this is about Spiritual Disorders, not a week at an anonymous lake somewhere in the mountains where working class old folks go fishing. This is serious, a presentation by a doctor informing us all about our limbic health systems. Gorman is missing all this, his eyes closed too, he having passed out on the street a while earlier beside some dogs.

Enlightenment. I get it. My psychic fucking pains are not that at all: My psychic fucking pains are actually PTSD. I can be cured of this terrible state of being alive if I can just curl up in the lap of Mother Ayahuasca and partake of a healing ceremony. Ayahuasca treatment allows rapid limbic reunion. Now I know. The problem is that I don't understand it. Maybe this is not enlightenment after all. It's my neo-coritcal brain getting in the way of my limbic system. I am at the feet of Mother Ayahuasca, and damned if I get anything more than an unpleasant whiff of toe jam and rotten leather sandals. I am a bad person, I know, and now I know that I could be a better person if only I reunited my limbic system with the rest of my dirty and evil mind. Traditional ayahuasca healing treatments and a proper dieta and many intense sessions with a highly qualified Shipibo [always bolded in print] sha-Mahn with up to 40 years of training in the jungle would, for the low, low price of only – NO! I forgot again to note the price! I do note that ayahauasca with the Shipibo sha-Mahn will restore my limbic reunion and that further, this being the central point of the evening's lecture and question period following, is that with all this medicine and therapy I can really, really, and everyone has see this happen, I can alter my Sacred Geometry so that I am whole again. DNA, I find to my amazement, is that very thing. I learn something new and useful every day.

I try not to step on anyone's toes as I leave for a mapacho smoke outside. I look down the street and see Gorman still asleep on the concrete, he twitching occasionally, though I'm pretty sure he doesn't have fleas. I ponder the last words I heard from Doctor Joe, a decent young man in his early 30s, clean cut and with a full head of lovely black hair. He's a bit awkward in his public speaking mode, but face to face as we were a few days earlier he's relaxed and friendly and treats me like any man running a small business, a man looking for new customers. Gorman don't need no steeeenking new customers. I puff thoughtfully. I try to make a smoke ring, a shot at sacred mapacho geometry, but I choke on the damned stuff. No wonder it terrifies daemons. Down the walkway, Gorman coughs too. Dr. Joe's last words, that he's associated with MAPS.

MAPS is "Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies." I read some of their literature to find out what I can about ayahuasca.

Westerners discontent with their Judeo-Christian heritage have long sought alternative spiritual traditions. In the 1950s, the Beats dabbled in Zen. In the 1960s, the hippies flocked to Hindu swamis. In the 1970s, the Reverend Moon and other cult leaders swayed large followings. In the 1980s, the New Agers embraced Tibetan lamas. In the 1990s, shamanism came into vogue. Perhaps within a few years, the avant-garde of the United States will undergo a mass conversion to Islam in order to assimilate this estranged manifestation of the Other.[1.]

Yes, middle class Modernist cultural imperialism today in Iquitos has settled on Shipibo shamanism and ayahuasca. Much of the rest of Modernity is in the throes of dhimmitude, a close proximate of conversion to Islam itself. For now, for those in Iquitos as drug tourists, cultural imperialists, sensation seekers, and the plain old neurotic anomie-ridden foolish there is today's latest fad, doing what their friends do in Iquitos, i.e. taking ayahuasca and feeling special for a week or so at a “lodge” curing their psychic fucking pains and reuniting their limbic systems. I won't say it's a total scam. But the writer at MAPS is less generous than I, noting that

[A]n enterprising shaman ... earns a couple hundred dollars per month catering to tourists while his neighbors can not even afford a thirty cent taxi ride. He charges thirty dollars to give ayahuasca to a tourist, while the going rate for a Peruvian is about two dollars.[1.]

Other people's money is only of interest to me if I can sell them something legitimate at a profit to myself. I'm even in favour of locals making as much as they can from the gullible tourist.

“While many shamans undoubtedly come to their profession to help others, be aware that ayahuasca tourism is a thriving business in Peru, and that you will likely be treated as just that - a tourist.”[1.]

I'm not so keen on the tourists' moral preening about healing their inner children; and sentimentalising ayahuasca is too much for this plain mountain man. But I am not a scientist like Doctor Joe, so I have to rely for such expertise on writers at MAPS.

If one were specifically interested only in experiencing ayahuasca, it would be more cost-effective to home-brew a batch with ingredients ordered from an ethnobotanical supplier. With the help of an experienced friend as a sitter, one could have an intense entheogenic experience in the safety and comfort of home or in an isolated natural setting. This do-it-yourself approach could potentially be far more enlightening than what one might experience after traveling all the way to South America.[1.]

I'm taking the expert's good advice, which advice is what I had wanted to do from the start. I recently bought a half litre bottle of ayahuasca from an old lady in the back yard of her slum dwelling for $10.00, and I'm going to sit in my own room and drink it alone by myself while my Peruvian friend John sits around listening to music and keeps an eye on me so I don't do anything dangerous.

I stood outside Bill's Dawn on the Amazon cafe and stubbed out my mapacho smoke because it was making me puke. It must have drifted down wind, because it was having the same effect a few doors down on Gorman. Next time I'll puke from ayahuasca.

[1.] R. Stuart, “Ayahuasca Tourism: A Cautionary Tale”

http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v12n2/12236stu.html

*I had a chat with Peter Gorman recently. We pissed away half an hour or so and will likely do so again, assuming people actually read this part of my account of ayahuasca and ayahuasca gringo subculture in Iquitos. It would take just about nothing for anyone at all to quote me slagging Gorman above as if that's the ultimate word delivered from God about the man. Others could easily say that I hate Gorman. Fact is, I like him just fine. To find out what I found out about the man when I took some time out to talk to him, please follow part 5.2 of this account of me taking ayahausca.


I try to be fair. I'm willing to keep at it till I find out what others like about ayahuasca; and I am more than willing to meet Peter Gorman to find out more about the man himself rather than the public figure he is. The funny thing is, when I write my further account of Gorman, a man I like, others might then dislike him. Please wait till I finish before concluding on the basis of what I write about the man. And then keep in mind that my opinion is that of just one man.

Next, a revised view of Peter Gorman.

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

Iquitos, Peru: Dag Tags

My grandmother was seriously upset again, and she told my father to go to the tavern to get my grandfather and bring him back home. She handed my father money for the bus, which he scoffed at, saying he could hardly bring my grandfather, drunk, home that way. He needed taxi fare, he said. My grandmother, a tightly wound Scottish lady from the high islands, parted with a fair bit of money to get the job done. And then she waited. And then she took the bus to the tavern herself where she found my father as drunk as my grandfather. In high dudgeon she told them both to forget about coming home, she never wanted to see either of them again. 

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: Dag Wags His Tale

Chuck has flown the Iquitos coop. This leaves his friends to ponder the next step of our devious plan to arrange a cool cremation for Chuck in his absence, the next step on the road to death and oblivion, which reminds me of my ex-wife.

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: A Dog's Life

Mohammed laid in the dirt and wept like a dog.

Life is so good sitting down at a clean table at an outdoor cafe on the Malecon Tarapaca by the riverside in the Amazon, clean stone paving blocks stretching out to the white painted concrete balustrade, enormous ceiba trees along the bank rising up and overhanging the sidewalk along the riverside walkway, submerged fruit-bearing cercropia trees ranging up to 50 feet visible in high water attract birds of many sorts, and tree limbs are oft times thick with the black feathered and long tailed Smooth-billed Ani (Crotophaga ani), while the river sports the blue and white Ringed Kingfisher (Ceryle torquata), and the city shows off the lowly Blue-headed Parrot (Pionus menstruus), egrets in shallow water, Greater and Lesser Yellowheaded vultures soaring is circles above the scene, a lone man with a blade-shaped paddle carefully coaxing his hand hewn peke-peke boat through the low water to the shore, a serenity enveloping and embracing, a warmth of the day and the slight breezes of evening on the riverside of the Amazon. Life is so good....

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

Iquitos, Peru: Dag Walker's New Book Out Soon (2)

My latest book is almost done, and I am now wrapping up the final four pieces and am sending out the rest for editing as of recently. I have a publisher and printer in Lima. It's looking good.

My new book is titled:

Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close. (A Popular History of Iquitos, Its Culture and People.)

This book should be a 9x6 paperback running about 300 pages. You should be able to purchase this book at Dawn on the Amazon Restaurant on the Malecon in Iquitos, and later I should have an edition available at amazon.com.

That's how it should be. I have no idea what reality will actually bring about.

Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close covers a wide range of topics about this Amazon city from the well-known and highly touted ayahuasca culture to the lesser known charity work that transforms the city and the Amazonian people far more deeply and radically than most would assume. In this book we look at the early Jesuit settlement of Iquitos Indians along the riverside into a village; we see a variety of Spanish explorersm men and women both good and bad; the fabulous rise of the Rubber Boom and its destruction of human life on a grand scale as well as its transformation of the greater world; and we see the remnants of one of the world's premier architectural legacies,the heritage buildings of the city that make Iquitos as impressive a site as Machu Piccu. Further, this book looks at contemporary life in Iquitos as backpacking hippies mingle with Amazon adventurers, wealthy cruise passengers, local hustlers and wild and wonderful expats as all somehow find a good life in the midst of some of the world's worst poverty at Belen, the jungle market set in the heart of the city.

This is such a fine city that one wakes each morning in a state of excitement, wondering just what can happen in the course of the day, some unusual and oft times astounding adventure in the sun and warmth of the palm-lined life of Iquitos.

This is such a pleasant and interesting and lovely city with people I have loved from the first days that writing this book has been one of the high points of my life, and I hope readers will come away with at least some of the love of the city and the people that I have.

I'll continue up-dating the progress as it happens here.

Meanwhile, please consider ordering my book An Occasional Walker at the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

Will update here as things progress. 

Iquitos, Peru: Seating Ayahuasca at the Cannibal Banquet of the Soul (Parts 1-4)

Below are four instalments on my recent use of the Amazonian jungle drug, ayahuasca.

I would like to thank Bill Grimes at Dawn on the Amazon for allowing me space to publish at his site.

These four instalments are the last of a long series. Please consider reading the other 17 pieces before deciding what this is really all about.



http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/2013/05/31/iquitos-peru-ayahuasca-what-happened-to-me-part-one/

http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/2013/06/02/iquitos-peru-ayahuasca-what-happened-to-me-part-two/

http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/2013/06/04/iquitos-peru-ayahuasca-what-happened-to-me-part-three/

http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/2013/06/05/seating-ayahausca-at-the-cannibal-banquet-of-the-soul-part-four/


A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

Iquitos, Peru: Black Days, Red Nights: Riot '98

This post originally appeared at Bill Grimes' Dawn on the Amazon Captain's Blog at Iquitos, Peru.

http://dawnontheamazon.com/blog/

Many thanks to Bill for publishing my work at his very successful blog.

Rumours of war became the realities of battle one late afternoon in Oct. 1998 as thousands rampaged across Iquitos, fires raging, smoke and flame covering the city as bodies laid in the street amid pools of blood and broken glass.

Fury reigned for days. In these later years those who were there say, “Yes, I was there, but I can't remember it.” The dead were buried in the acid soil, the blood was washed away by the heavy Amazon rains, and the thick grey ash blew away years ago on hot winds. Life is now, not then; and the city today is at peace. Days and nights of violence: that is memory long lost. For the locals, the riot of '98 happened, but it was too long ago to think about, or even to recall at all. For some, though, the memories are clear and never-ending. Those memories are the black and red realities in the pale, dim mists of phantom rumours in private lives so hard to recall exactly. The Iquitos Riot of Oct. '98. Some will never forget.

Political demonstrations in Peru can be 'enthusiastic' at the best of times, manifestations, as they're called, and the assembly at Independence Square in Iquitos, Peru's Plaza 28 de Julio, had from the start the basic elements of any bad situation. The point of the mass assembly on 26 Oct. 1998 was to demonstrate against Ecuador having seized a chunk of historically disputed Peruvian territory ranging from the Ecuador border near the Peruvian village of Pantoja to the tiny town at the end of the dirt road leading from Iquitos, Nauta, about 50 miles away into the jungle from the city. Wars have been fought many times over this area, and those men and women assembled that Saturday afternoon at the park were emotionally prepared for another war. By the time people found that the story of invasion by Ecuador was all nonsense it was too late: the dead were already dead, and the city of Iquitos lay under a blanket of ashes, smoke, and ruin. The 'invasion' was maybe someone's idea of a joke. It might well have come to little more than an average manifestation but for one accident that changed the mood and purpose of the crowd into that of a violent mob. For three days, in spite of the lack of an actual invasion by Ecuador, the city was like a war zone. To make matters worse, it seems someone was buying and passing out free beer to the people at the plaza. People were not only angry, they were often drunk. Demagogues had been priming the people for a couple of weeks previous. The rumour of war furthered the cause of those we know not exactly of. There are rumours.

At 5:30 p.m.-- and closing in on 6:00 p.m-- Mike was in the living-room at his first floor apartment at #633 Prospero St. having a beer, lying in a hammock with his feet up, relaxing in his home at the back of the one story building. Not unusual, the electricity went out in Mike's flat, so Mike got up and walked barefoot down the hall and outside to survey the extent of the outage. He stepped onto the sidewalk. He looked down toward the Plaza de Armas in the twilight and saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the city going about its business without light; and then he turned to the opposite direction, toward what would be in the distance the Plaza 28 de Julio. The Plaza is half a mile or more up Prospero with a sharp right rurn down the road even farther. In turning toward the Plaza, instead of the distant park, Mike saw a roiling tidal wave of rampaging demonstrators coming straight at him, angry people who were smashing windows, setting fire to shops, people ripping up and toppling shallow-rooted twelve foot palm trees in terracotta post which they smashed on the street as they came foward, a solid wall of screaming fury on the march-- with Mike in their direct path a matter of meters away.

Of all the horrible sights to see during that three days of blood, fire, and death, one of the worst must have been seeing Mike, middle-age, vastly overweight, and barefoot, running wild-eyed and sweating down the pot-holed Prospero street in the dark toward the Iron House seeking refuge from a mob ready to kill him.

The second floor of the Iron House back in 1998 was the location of the Regal Restaurant, and it was also at the time the residence of Phil Duffy the British consul at Iquitos, Duffy's wife, and young child. In both instances the Iron House served as a place of safety for expats in times of trouble: have a beer while you get your passport sorted out. Over the course of that long weekend the Iron House was home to 18 people wondering if they'd survive at all. Mike ran through the door and up the stairs and, in the same manner he does to this day in ordinary circumstances ordering another beer, bellowed in his broad countryside English accent, “Bolt the doors! They're coming!”

Inside the Iron House on the second floor, looking out through the crack of the shuttered window at the now dark city, one could see smoke blowing across the red domed sky as the city burnt: houses and shops aflame, six of the city's very rare cars on fire, while hotels and government buildings were smashed, looted, set afire and left to burn to the ground from one end of the city to another. People were killed. Mayhem ruled the city. Mike, with 17 other men and women from four nations, trapped and fearing for their lives, said later of those days and nights as he and his fellows refugees waited for savage beatings at the hands of raging mobs and death by fire inside the Iron House, “We had a helluva good time.”

Another witness, Leon Jones, living across town at the time, said he was sleeping at his home and dreamed that he was back in the army, and that he was ducking tracer bullets during basic training training. He awoke to find that basic training over and the war was now real. “It scared the hell out of me,” he said.

The rioting was all about nothing, originally, but in the end it left, according to newspaper reports, a minimum of three dead, with eyewitnesses saying the total was closer to 20. Papers record that 30 were seriously wounded and that over a hundred were arrested. Buildings big and small were destroyed, and property damage extensive and expensive-- in the multiple millions in this less than wealthy city. And yes, surviving such a thing is often the high point of a lifetime, though at the time the only possible beneficiaries of the violence and destruction would have been the organised drug lords whose records were tossed by the armload from the Supreme Court building onto the street, and there the records were burned.

In the immediate beginning of the riot, the Soviet-style concrete block Supreme Court building, nearby to the Plaza 28 de Julio was torched when the demonstrators had finished throwing computers and fax machines and burning papers out the windows onto the street. When the crowd tired of that destruction, they crossed the street and burned down the elegant Neo-classical luxury Rio Grand Hotel. Then the mob turned and marched on the city centre itself.

The English novelist Graham Greene calls it “The Ministry of Fear,” that dark place that houses the secret police of a nation at war against its own people: The Ministry of Interiour. The Orwellian term could be “MINI-CULT,” whose agents wear black trench coats, hard men who arrive silently for the 2:00 am. wake-up call of a jackboot smashing in the door and then muted ride in a small four door black sedan to that place one never returns from because one was never really there and one never really had a name. 'No, there is no such person in our records.' At the Ministry of Fear, all things are known. One knows nothing.

As the crowd protested at Plaza 28 de Julio against the supposed Ecuadoran invasion of Peru back in late Oct. '98, a general from the Ministry of Interiour was having a small, official engagement at the Rio Grande Hotel across the street from the flat and grassy plaza where one of the first of the city's public transport train locomotives sets like a large toy on a concrete block. The crowd in the park were riled up by rumour of war, of betrayal by the generals. The crowd turned their attentions toward the hotel where Minister of Interiour was at his meeting, and he, in a state of nervousness, decided to flee by a hotel side door to discretely avoid the crowd riled to madness over the supposed give-away of their homeland to enemy Ecuador. In his haste to escape the demonstrators, the minister's car ran over and killed Sra. Corina Coral Arana, aged 47. Her accidental death alone could likely have set off the demonstrators, but the general's car also ran over and killed Maria Katerina Echeverria. She was two years old.

The 'Ministry of Fear's' general, Jose Villanueva Rueseta, who later received a nine year prison sentence for massive theft, (convicted of crimes against the public administration,) sped away after killing the woman and child.

The Hotel Rio Grande and the Corte Superior de Justicia de Loreto remained even after the general fled, and they were burned down. With those building in flames and smoke and ashes swirling in the wind above the city the crowd turned its attentions to the rest of the city, and it was then that Mike found himself facing the surging mob coming at him on Prospero street as the sun set on the city and fire lit the night.

Mike was an insurance salesman back home, and as he was trapped in Iquitos' Iron House and the mob outside were smashing at the iron doors to get in to kill everyone, thought of actuarial tables of insurance gave way to, not the well-known and professionally calculated odds of long term survival, but to the thought of the chances of living through the night. Was there any chance at all of living through the next assault from the mob downstairs smashing the doors downstairs?

Along with Mike, the British consul and his family, were two other Brits, two Australians, a few Peruvians, and a handful of U.S. Marines from the Riverine Support Team under the command of Marine Corp Lt. Colonel Michael Pierce, absent that period. Regardless of the skills of professional soldiers, the U.S. Marines would have been under the temporary command of the British consul. Outside, their opponents were under control of the Furies. On the corner of the block by the Malecon Tarapaca Peruvian soldiers stood in formation, nervously pointing their rifles as they faced their own people with the possibility of having to shoot them and kill them.

Inside the Iron House's second story Regal Restaurant and British Consulate, the Marines were far from their suburban base at Moronacocha where they had moved from expensive hotels to be lodged instead in luxury 20 room mansions rented from local drug lords. In a city that to this day has only a few actual cars, the Marines drove around the city in giant SUVS, and sometimes the soldiers were drunk, sometimes causing accidents that required the injured to be flown to Lima to receive the best medical treatment available in the nation. The Marines might well have been party to other accidents, in part because they were given $39.00 per diems for food allowances in a city where to this day one can find a good meal for a dollar. Unsurprisingly, for every Marine there were ten local girls vying for his attention. Perhaps as part of the $47 million per year the U.S. Government put directly into the local economy at least some of that was danger pay for the soldiers, well-earned no doubt when confronting drug smugglers, if not furious local boys who couldn't get a date anymore. To the local lads, seeing the Marines fighting off local girls at the Iron House's Regal nightly, Marines in danger didn't look so dangerous at all. As the local hang-out for Marines, the locals found in the Iron House a fair target to set alight once they'd smashed in the door and made their way partly up the staircase to the second floor. They were intent on burning down the Iron House, its floors and walls and ceilings covered in wood.

Mike and some of the others had watched the crowd on the street below by peeking from the second story windows, but in doing so the inside light gave them away, alerted the crowd to their presence and drew their attention toward the Iron House. Those inside had assembled heavy wooden chairs to hurl down at those coming up to greet them, and Anthony Taggart, an Australian, had ordered a Peruvian waiter to boil water in the kitchen to pour on the mob like a scene from a Medieval siege. The Consul said that such a move would only antagonise the mob who had just burned down television station Chanel Seven. So too, they had burned out Discotecas Caimito y Karaoke bar, whose Korean owners were financially devastated by the fire that destroyed their investment and livelihood, and had burnt down an old school house before proceeding to burn down la Libereria Marisabel and Foto Aspinwell. The mob was at the Iron House, pounding on the metal doors, shouting.

After repeated ramming, the Iron House doors broke open. As the mob made their way up the stairs, Consul Duffy, a man who had at one time unceremoniously snubbed two homesick tourist ladies from his hometown of Wiggan, acted in what could well have been a Charlton Heston scene of Lord Gordon of Khartoum facing down the Madhi army in Sudan. Consul Duffy, dressed in a tee-shirt and short pants, appeared in front of the mob ascending the Iron House stairs and shouted down at them in imperious consular English, “Get. The. Fuck. OUT!”

Stunned, the crowd turned around and quietly went down the stairs and docilely left the building. But outside the crowd kept on burning Iquitos: la Direccion Regional de Agricultura de Pevas not only going up in flames, but the mob also smashed computers, fax machines, and even tossed a refrigerator out of an Agriculture building window, thereby smashing a gaping hole in the concrete sidewalk. The building housing the Department of Mines was burnt, and so too the Department of Fishing. At least 14 building were burnt during the rioting.

Peruvian president Fujimori ordered in five Hercules transport planes filled with black-clad troops, the Aguilar Negra special forces, flown in from Lima and gave them orders to shoot to kill. Luck was with them, as they did not have to wait their turn to land at Iquitos, which in later years would have been the case because planes weren't the only airborne craft with landing rights in local airspace: some years later the garbage dump was next to the aeroport, and thus the skys were filled with vultures from dawn till dusk, each one being enough to bring down a plane if it were sucked into a jet engine. As it was that day, the skys were clear. The Black Eagles had landed. At least one man, 21 year old Jorge Valles Sinarahua, was shot to death on the street.

Sunday was quiet, and by Monday the incident was over. Years and years later Mike recalls it as a fine time. “There were plenty of sofas inside the second floor of the Iron House, and there was no shortage of beer.” For almost everyone in the city today the episode of the riot over nothing is either forgotten or not even known of. People have moved on long since, and this story is but a minor footnote in the history of Prospero St. and the Iron House.

Mike's girlfriend, by the way, waited for the mob to pass by the open door of the apartment building on Prospero St. before she fled to safety in the opposite direction. She got a "Four Flags" tee-shirt, representing people from Peru, Great Britain, Australia, and the United States, saying: "I Survived the Iron House Siege, Iquitos, Peru, Oct. 26-28, 1998." The tee-shirts are now lost to time, as well.

City life resumed, and today, as people move purposively along the sidewalk, there is, as well as a pharmacy on the main story of the Iron House, a trinket shop selling snake skins and postcards and piles of brightly coloured Amazon Indian-style clothing fit for the most fashion-conscious hippies on earth. Upstairs, closed and abandoned, the Iron House restaurant, the setting of more than a hundred years of dramas large and small, sits in silent stillness and gloom, abandoned for now, some memories perhaps collecting dust in the darkness.
 

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: The Great Yellow-headed Vulture

Jorge Samsa awoke one morning to find he had been transformed into a giant vulture.

Being of a philosophical turn of mind Jorge's first thought was, “Thank God I'm not a giant cockroach like my cousin Gregor.”

But then, what exactly was Jorge, now that he found himself to be a big, ugly bird? He looked into the mirror and squawked in horror as he saw that not only was he a two kilogram black vulture, but that in his weird transformation he had rearrived in this life as – Horror! – bald! Jorge Samsa was now a Greater Yellow-headed Amazonian vulture.

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

My book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: Ten Proofs of the Existence of God (and why He lives in IQT)

Ten Proofs of the Existence of God and His Residence in Iquitos, Peru.

Folks often stop me on the street and ask me puzzling questions about stuff, and I, being a writer and general thinker who has an answer for almost everything, say stuff about stuff. This is why I am so often thought of as a genius. Thus, I am the man to provide to all skeptics the definite details that prove the certain existence of God and further to prove that He lives in Iquitos, Peru. I have such solid proof below that even the repulsive atheist Richard Dawkins, who used to be so cool when he was one of Hogan's heroes, will have to agree with us.

In ten points, here's the proof:

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

My book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazo

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

n.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Iquitos, Peru: Taters and Gators

Joeri has had some incredibly bad luck recently, starting with a pick-pocket gang stealing a staggeringly large amount of cash from Joeri's shoulder bag, followed by a middle-aged Spanish scammer helping himself to a thousand euros that Joeri believed the man was going to repay. And recently, at a rave party where Joeri was acting as D.J. at an all night bash after an evening of ayahuasca drinking, someone used Joeri's computer and picked up a virus that wiped out the hard drive. Joeri is currently kind of screwed because his parents are refusing to send him money to return home. You talk about yer bad luck totally undeserved.


I'm lucky. Joeri, as one sees immediately, is a lot of fun to hang out with. Sometimes hanging out with Joeri takes me to places I might not go to myself, such as a dining palace down the dirt road from the low end of town by the docks, to a place that is more than a simple hole in the wall with a rusty tin roof over it. No, this place has chairs, two blue plastic stools, actually, and four broken wooden chairs, one of which with the legs cropped severely is placed outside on the narrow sidewalk and is reserved for the fat shirtless forty year old cafe owners' son who is kind of retarded and sits drooling on his chest outside and we shouldn't talk to him because he's 'unpredictable.' Back inside, the dining room table has a plastic tablecloth cover dotted atop with assorted plastic margarine tubs filled with pickled onions in water and bug-speckled hot sauce for our dining pleasure. Somehow, in a city of half a million people, Joeri found this place to dine at, and it only costs three soles for a dinner of chicken foot soup, entree of rice clumps, roasted cassava chunks, spaghetti clunks, and potato chunkettes, all this with chewy grilled bush meat balls, washed down with a carafe of semicoloured jungle juice. I will say this: "Yum. Yum."

Joeri is dressed to kill as we head out for alligator dinner.

Joeri stops to talk to a local about restaurants

I give Joeri credit: The man is not shy. He talks to people who would know about a restaurant like the one we are off to for gators.

And being fastidious about both dining and attire, he double checks. 

Joeri is pretty happy even when he tells me about the Satanic Oil Companies that are causing chem. trails. He would be angry about the injustice of it all, but he kind of forgets that part as I point out a poster hanging on a wall inside a house with a window ajar just a crack that allows me to spot some nifty looking leftard art work. We walk back a few paces and twist our necks to peer into the crack to get a better look; and when I take a flash photo the home owner springs into action and opens the door and demands to know what's going on, which gives Joeri a chance to spring too, right into the man's home where the three of us stand around and start talking about social justice and I look at pictures and nod and smile while Joeri gets the man's phone number and email address to further carry on the revolution. The jittery home owner eventually ushers us from his very stylish home with modernist posters done quite tastefully, his carved wooded chairs arranged pleasantly around a superiour sound system on polished earth tone floor tiles, crystal glasses gleaming in a sparkling liquor cabinet just this side of the pastel coloured room divider that opens through a clever archway to a designer kitchen beyond.

Jungle, Not Oil, for the People

It's not like we got the bum's rush or something, it's that we have a date with a gator. That's why we found ourselves abruptly on the walk in the dust with dogs.

The Rocket Propelled Spear of the Amazonian Struggle against The Hated Oil Companies

The guy with the nicely framed posters in parchment tone paper of a graphic "Stencilled Dignified Amazon Warrior in Profile Holding a Rocket Propelled Spear of Aboriginal Resistance Against Yanqui Imperialism and Oil Company Greed" over a huge red and dripping blood-like blob was very likely envious of our up-and-coming contact with authenticity at the restaurant to eat us some gator. But fuck him, he's not invited. I say, 'Let him eat steak!' 

Our Destination and Our Destiny

As Joeri and I make our way down the last wooden plank that leads from the edge of the concrete sidewalk to the dust hole that is the street and then up a pile of broken bricks to the restaurant I am atremble, my quivering knees shaking from pain, the excitement too much for my weak condition in this state of dry mouthed gourmet anticipation. I pause for breath, taking in a deep gulp of baking asphalt burning at the next corner on an iron brazier as sweating men huddle around waiting to place their pieces in pots over the blazing open fire to melt.



OK, so he fell over sideways and hurt his head a lot when he connected with some hard stuff laying buried in the dust. He got up and went bleeding to the shady side of the street to vomit, proving he still had some sense about him. Life goes on. Except for our gator, lying dead on the grill.

Too Exclusive for Diners' Club Cards

Gawd, I am such a guy for a meal sometimes! When I saw again the sign over the door of our restaurant, big block numbers, "941," painted on a piece of wood nailed to the open door vent, well, my heart leapt up like a lonely Romantic poet wandering. Dinner time.

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html