Category: Новини

British author Salman Rushdie said he finds it “very difficult” to write after being stabbed last year, in an interview published Monday ahead of the release of his new novel Victory City.

Rushdie, whose “epic tale” of a 14th-century woman who defies a patriarchal world to rule a city hits U.S. shelves Tuesday, said the attack had scarred him mentally.

“There is such a thing as PTSD you know,” the 75-year-old told the New Yorker magazine in his first interview since the August 12 stabbing at a conference in Chautauqua in upstate New York.

“I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really,” he added.

The award-winning novelist, a naturalized American citizen who has lived in New York for 20 years, lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand, his agent said in October.

Rushdie told journalist David Remnick that “big injuries are healed” but he was not able to type very well because of a lack of feeling in some fingertips.

“I’ve been better. But, considering what happened, I’m not so bad,” said the Indian-born author, describing himself as “lucky.”

Rushdie lived in hiding for years after Iran’s first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of The Satanic Verses, published in 1988.

The attack shocked the West but was welcomed by extremists in Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

Words ‘the only victors’

Rushdie was asked whether he thought it had been a mistake to let his guard down in recent decades.

“I’m asking myself that question, and I don’t know the answer to it,” he said. “Three-quarters of my life as a writer has happened since the fatwa. In a way, you can’t regret your life.”

Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey with roots in Lebanon, was arrested immediately after the attack and pleaded not guilty to assault charges.

“I blame him,” said Rushdie, simply.

Victory City purports to be a translation of a historical epic originally written in Sanskrit. It’s his 15th novel and was penned before the attack.

The much-anticipated work tells the tale of young orphan girl Pampa Kampana who is endowed by a goddess with magical powers and founds the city, in modern-day India, of Bisnaga, which translates as Victory City.

While not personally promoting the book, Rushdie has begun to communicate via social media on Twitter, most often to share press reviews of his new novel.

An icon of free speech since he was subjected to the fatwa that forced him into hiding, Rushdie is still an outspoken defender of the power of words.

His new work follows a heroine on a mission to “give women equal agency in a patriarchal world,” according to publisher Penguin Random House’s summary.

The book tells the tale of Pampa Kampana’s creation of a city and of its downfall.

A triumph

“Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power,” it added.

The novel concludes with the statement: “Words are the only victors.”

U.S. author Colum McCann wrote in The New York Times that his friend Rushdie was saying “something quite profound” in his new novel.

“In the face of danger, even in the face of death, he manages to say that storytelling is one currency we all have,” said McCann.

The Atlantic magazine called it a “triumph — not because it exists, but because it is utterly enchanting.”

Born in Mumbai in 1947, Rushdie published his first novel Grimus in 1975, and gained worldwide fame six years later with Midnight’s Children, which won him the Booker Prize.

Victory City will be released in Britain Thursday.
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Centuries-old weavings from the Caucasus, Iran and Turkey show the individual stories and intertwined histories of the region in a museum exhibit in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story.
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Iran-based singer Shervin Hajipour’s Grammy Award for a song he produced last year in honor of Iran’s peaceful protest movement against Islamist rule has prompted an outpouring of positive reactions from Iranian social media users.

U.S. first lady Jill Biden announced Hajipour’s win of the U.S. Recording Academy’s first-ever Song for Social Change Special Merit Award at Sunday’s annual ceremony in Los Angeles.

Hajipour produced the award-winning song “Baraye” in September with lyrics drawn from social media posts in which other Iranians stated what they were protesting “for” and “because of.”

The song, which he posted on his Instagram account, became an instant hit and a protest anthem, garnering 40 million views in its first 48 hours. But it also led to his arrest by Iranian security forces on September 29. He was released on bail on October 4 but still faces charges of spreading anti-government “propaganda” and “instigating violence.” He also has been barred from leaving the country, according to Iran’s Human Rights Activist News Agency.

Social media reactions to Hajipour’s Grammy were overwhelmingly positive, as observed by VOA Persian.

The singer was seen reacting to his win early Monday morning Iran time in an Instagram video posted by his friend Amirparsa Neshat.

The video showed Hajipour with several other people in the living room of a home inside Iran, watching a TV screen showing the U.S. first lady announcing his award. The people in the room erupted in cheers and embraced the singer, who appeared to wipe away tears.

Neshat also posted a video of himself hours later saying, “Wow, I cannot believe it. We didn’t sleep from last night. It was worth it. It was a great feeling. I hope when you are waking in the morning, you get the good news instead of [execution] news!”

Hajipour’s own response to the award was a simple “We won” message posted to his Instagram account along with a black-and-white photo of himself.

Some Iranians loyal to the country’s ruling Islamist clerics tried to discredit Hajipour’s award, posting social media messages calling it a political move. 

But in a sign of how much the song resonated within Iran, an Iranian activist posted an audio clip Monday on Twitter with a recording of what he said was a group of prisoners in the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary singing “Baraye” in a phone call made from the prison sometime in the last few months.

The activist who posted the video, Shahriyar Shams, was recently freed from prison after being jailed for his involvement in the protests that began in September.

In the recording, the voices singing the song are interrupted several times by a recording that appears to be a typical automated announcement of a phone call being made from the prison to someone on the outside. 
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Manchester City was accused by the Premier League on Monday of providing misleading information about its finances over a nine-year period when the club was attempting to establish itself as a force in English and European soccer following its takeover by Abu Dhabi’s ruling family.

The explosive development came at the end of a four-year investigation by the world’s most popular soccer league in the wake of leaked club emails and documents from City officials that were published by German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2018.

The Premier League released a long statement detailing a list of about 80 alleged breaches of its financial rules by City from 2009-18, the first nine full seasons under Abu Dhabi ownership. In that time, the team won three Premier League titles — in 2012, 2014 and 2018 — in what has become the most successful period in City’s 143-year history.

The league also accused City of 30 more breaches relating to its alleged failure to co-operate with the investigation since December 2018.

The league said it has referred the breaches to an independent commission ahead of a confidential hearing.

In a statement, City said it was “surprised” by the allegations, “particularly given the extensive engagement and vast amount of detailed materials that the EPL (English Premier League) has been provided with.

“The club welcomes the review of this matter by an independent commission to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position,” City said. “As such we look forward to this matter being put to rest once and for all.”

The Premier League has accused City of breaching rules requiring provision “in utmost good faith” of “accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position” between 2009-18 and failing to give “full details of manager remuneration in its relevant contracts” from 2009-13. Roberto Mancini was manager during that period.

The third and fourth offenses are a failure to comply with UEFA regulations from 2013-18 and the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules from 2015-18.

For the fifth offense, City is accused of breaching rules requiring clubs to “co-operate with and assist the Premier League with its investigations” from December 2018 to the present day.

City, the defending Premier League champion and a team owning some of the world’s top players like Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne, could be at risk of severe punishment. The league’s rule book gives a disciplinary commission powers to impose a range of sanctions plus the wider scope of “such other penalty as it shall think fit.”

A large fine seems inevitable if the charges are proven. Also in play is a point deduction, a title nullified or even being expelled from the league, according to league rules.

City never disputed that the documents leaked by Der Spiegel were authentic, but has argued the evidence was stolen and reported out of context.

While City was under investigation by the Premier League, the club had a two-year ban from European club competitions overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020 after UEFA ruled City committed “serious breaches” of financial fair play regulations from 2012-16. That case arose on the back of the leaked information, too.

City was not fully cleared of wrongdoing, though the court said some of the allegations were not proven or could not be judged because of a statute of limitations in UEFA rules. There are no such time limits on the finances under investigation by the Premier League.

CAS also fined City 10 million euros (then $11.3 million) for failing to cooperate with investigators. The club’s “blatant disregard” should be “strongly condemned,” the court’s judges said.

City has been transformed into an English soccer power since being bought in September 2008 by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family.

Under its Abu Dhabi ownership, City — which previously lived in the shadow of neighbor Manchester United — has won six Premier League titles, two FA Cups and six English League Cups.

The team is in second place in the Premier League midway through this season, five points behind Arsenal having played one game more.
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The success of the critically acclaimed 2022 film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has put a spotlight on Asian representation in the U.S. film industry. Now, an American actor of Hmong descent and a Cambodian American filmmaker have made a new movie about the Asian experience in the United States. VOA’s Chetra Chap reports.
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Beyonce’s four wins were one of many highlights of Sunday’s Grammys, making her the artist with the most Grammys ever.

Beyonce, the Queen Bee, can now proudly wear the crown of most decorated artist in Grammy history, breaking the 26-year record held by the late Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti.

However, she was not in the room when she broke Solti’s record. Host Trevor Noah said she was stuck in traffic, clearly news to some of her Beehive fans, and showing that the Queen suffers some of the same problems as mere mortals.

Beyonce was up for album of the year but was beat out by Harry Styles for that honor.

Sunday’s show was a lively mix of music, musicians, fans and U.S. First Lady Jill Biden.

In fact, a 70-plus-year old fan read the card announcing Styles’ best album victory.

Earlier in the show, there was video of the senior citizen fan attending a Styles concert with her granddaughter.

Beyonce bypassed Solti’s record with her win for best dance/electronic music album for “Renaissance.” After thanking her family in her acceptance speech, she also thanked “the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre.”

Biden introduced a new category — Best Song for Social Change category. She also announced the Grammy for best song.

The first winner of the social change category was Iranian singer and songwriter Shervin Hajipour for the song Baraye which Biden described as a “powerful and poetic call for freedom and women’s rights.” It contains the phrase “women, life, freedom” that has become synonymous with the Iranian protests.

Biden also presented Bonnie Raitt with the best song Grammy for “Just Like That.”

Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” won for best pop duo-group performance. Petras told the audience that she is “the first transgender woman to win the award.”

Another highlight of Sunday’s show was a wonderful array of hip hop artists celebrating the 50th anniversary of the genre. What could be better than The Roots playing for Missy Elliot, Salt ‘N Pepa, Queen Latifah, Run DMC, Busta Rhymes, Grandmaster Flash, and Public Enemy.

Actor Viola Davis won a Grammy in a part of the show that was not televised. Her Grammy for the narration of her memoir initiated her into that rarified EGOT group — artists who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

 
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Here is a list of winners in key categories for the 65th annual Grammy Awards, which were handed out on Sunday in Los Angeles.

Beyonce led the field with a total of nine nominations and scooped up four awards, making her the winningest artist in Grammys history.

Harry Styles won the Album of the Year award, while Lizzo, Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Brandi Carlile and Bonnie Raitt also took home golden statuettes.

 

Album of the Year: “Harry’s House,” Harry Styles

Record of the Year, recognizing overall performance of a song: “About Damn Time,” Lizzo

Song of the Year, recognizing songwriting: “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt

Best New Artist: Samara Joy

Best Dance / Electronic Music Album: “Renaissance,” Beyonce

Best Dance / Electronic Recording: “Break My Soul,” Beyonce

Best Pop Vocal Album: “Harry’s House,” Harry Styles

Best Rap Album: “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” Kendrick Lamar

Best Rock Album: “Patient Number 9,” Ozzy Osbourne

Best Pop Solo Performance: “Easy on Me,” Adele

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: “Unholy,” Sam Smith and Kim Petras

Best Americana Album: “In These Silent Days,” Brandi Carlile

Best Country Album: “A Beautiful Time,” Willie Nelson

Best Music Video: “All Too Well (The Short Film),” Taylor Swift

Best Global Music Album: “Sakura,” Masa Takumi

Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media: “Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok: Dawn of Ragnarok,” Stephanie Economou

Artists with Most Wins

Beyonce – 4

Bonnie Raitt – 3

Kendrick Lamar – 3

Brandi Carlile – 3
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— Best alternative music performance: “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg

— Best alternative music album: “Wet Leg,” Wet Leg

— Best rock album: “Patient Number 9,” Ozzy Osbourne

— Best rock performance: “Broken Horses” by Brandi Carlile

— Best rock song: “Broken Horses” by Brandi Carlile

— Best rap performance: “The Heart Part 5,” Kendrick Lamar

— Best rap song: “The Heart Part 5” by Kendrick Lamar

— Best melodic rap performance: “WAIT FOR U” by Future featuring Drake & Tems

— Best R&B album: “Black Radio III,” Robert Glasper

— Best R&B performance: “Hrs & Hrs” by Muni Long

— Best traditional R&B performance: “Plastic Off The Sofa” by Beyonce

— Best progressive R&B album: “Gemini Rights,” Steve Lacy

— Best audio book, narration and storytelling recording: “Finding Me” by Viola Davis

— Best traditional pop vocal album: “Higher,” Michael Buble

— Best solo country solo performance: “Live Forever,” Willie Nelson

— Best country duo/group performance: “Never Wanted To Be That Girl,” Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde

— Best country album: “‘Til You Can’t,” Cody Johnson

— Best jazz vocal album: Samara Joy

— Best dance/electronic recording: “Break My Soul,” by Beyonce

— Best metal performance: “Degradation Rules” by Ozzy Osbourne featuring Tony Iommi

— Best engineered, non-classical album: “Harry’s House,” Harry Styles

— Best compilation soundtrack for visual media: “Encanto”

— Best score soundtrack for visual media: “Encanto,” Germaine Franco

— Best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media: “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok,” Stephanie Economou.
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For Wilfred Cadet, buying soup on Sunday is the equivalent of going to church.  

Seated on plastic chairs next to a street food stand tucked in an alleyway, the 47-year-old Haitian slurps orange-colored soup out of a metal bowl next to his 9-year-old son.

Haitians mill past them cradling larger plastic containers, each eager to get a giant spoonful of the stew boiling in two human-sized pots behind them.

Made of pumpkin, beef, carrots, cabbage – ingredients produced on the island – soup joumou is a cultural staple in Haiti.

And in a moment of deepening crisis in the Caribbean nation, it’s one of the few points of enduring national pride.

To this day, when you mention the soup, Haitians are quick to crack a smile.

“It’s our tradition, our culture. It makes people proud. No matter what happens (in Haiti), the soup is going to stay around,” said Cadet.

During the colonial period, slaves were banned from eating the spicy dish, and would have to prepare it for French slave owners.

But Haitians claimed soup joumou as their own in 1804 when they staged one of the biggest and most successful slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere.

The uprising put an end to slavery in Haiti far before much of the region, and the dish gained the nickname “independence soup.”

In 2021 – the same year the country spiraled into chaos following the assassination of its president – the soup was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, the first cuisine Haiti has on the list.

“It is a celebratory dish, deeply rooted in Haitian identity, and its preparation promotes social cohesion and belonging among communities,” reads the UNESCO entry.

It’s traditionally eaten on Sunday mornings, and on Haitian Independence Day in early January.

That’s when customers begin filing through a pair of black metal gates into 50-year-old Marie France Damas’ makeshift restaurant at 7:30 a.m.

Tucked behind rows of parked cars, a brick wall with a painted sign reading “Every Sunday: Soup Joumou” and a pile of local pumpkins, Damas labors away over her two big pots just like she has for the past 18 years.

Her husband weaves between plastic tables taking orders while her daughter chops vegetables behind her. It’s a family affair, but Damas is clear.

“I’m the boss of the soup,” she said with a grin.

The business has allowed her to put her children through school and give a good life to her family in a place with some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the region.

To each Haitian, the cuisine means something different.

For Cadet and his son, it represents one moment of an escape from the day-to-day pandemonium of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

It has also allowed Cadet to pass on a cherished part of Haitian culture at a time when they’re slowly fading away. Celebrations like Carnival that once took center stage on the island have withered due to deep gang violence tearing apart the nation.

“The violence in the country is making everyone leave, and over time, we’re going to lose a lot of cultural traditions,” Cadet said. “My son, of course, (will go). Right now, he doesn’t like Haiti.”

He hopes that when his son goes, he’ll remember their Sunday mornings together.

To others, like 35-year-old Maxon Sucan, it’s a way to reconnect with family and home in the countryside.

He grew up in a rural town in western Haiti in a farming family cultivating the very vegetables used to make the soup.

He came to Port-au-Prince 13 years ago to support his family, and works as a manager at a nightclub.

He would once visit his family six to eight times a year, but because of kidnappings and gang control of the countryside, he’s now unable to go home.

So Sunday mornings, he drinks the soup just like he once did as a kid, and he thinks about his daughter who he sometimes goes weeks without speaking to.

“She’s 3 years old and it hurts me that I can’t see her,” Sucan said. “(When I eat soup joumou) I remember my family.”

As he gets ready to leave the restaurant alone, cradling a large Tupperware filled with steaming soup, he pauses.

“When I go home today, I’ll call her. And when I do, I’ll ask if she ate the soup,” he adds.
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Pop superstar Beyonce, winner of more Grammy awards than any other female artist, has never taken home the coveted album of the year trophy at the music industry’s highest honors.

That could change on Sunday, according to industry experts and awards pundits, although it is not a sure thing in a formidable, wide-ranging field that includes Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, pop musician Harry Styles, singer and flutist Lizzo, and disco-era Swedish hitmaker ABBA.

Winners will be announced during a ceremony that will be broadcast live on U.S. broadcast network CBS and streamed on Paramount+ starting at 5 p.m. Pacific time/8 p.m. Eastern time (0100 GMT on Monday).

Beyonce heads into the show in Los Angeles with nine nominations, including an album of the year nod for dance-heavy album “Renaissance.” She has won 28 Grammys over her career, and she could break the all-time record of 31 on Sunday.

But the top prize has escaped her. The acclaimed 2016 album “Lemonade” was defeated by Adele’s “25,” prompting the British vocalist to say on stage that Beyonce deserved the honor.

Beyonce “is about to be the most-winningest Grammy award winner. There’s almost no way she’s not going to break the record,” said Jem Aswad, deputy music editor for Variety.

“But she has never won album of the year, one of the top awards, and that’s just wrong,” he added.

Adele, who has claimed the album trophy twice, also is in the mix this year with “30.” It is possible that Adele and Beyonce voters could cancel each other out, Aswad said, opening a door for Styles to prevail with “Harry’s House.”

Beyonce’s other nominations include record and song of the year for “Break My Soul.” If she wins at least four awards, she will top the late classical conductor Georg Solti as the most-decorated artist in Grammys history.

The winners are chosen by roughly 11,000 members of the Recording Academy, which has faced complaints that it has not given Black talent proper recognition. The organization has worked to diversity its membership in recent years.

In the best new artist category, contenders include Italian rock band Maneskin, jazz artist Samara Joy, American bluegrass singer Molly Tuttle and TikTok phenom Gayle, who rose to fame with “abcdefu.”

Taylor Swift’s 10-minute version of her 2012 song “All Too Well” was nominated for best song. Swift’s latest album, “Midnights,” was released after this year’s eligibility window, which ran from October 2021 through September 2022.

Comedian Trevor Noah will host Sunday’s awards show. Scheduled performers include Styles, Lizzo, Sam Smith, Luke Combs and Bad Bunny. First lady Jill Biden is among the night’s presenters.

Like other awards shows, the Grammys have seen their television audience decline in recent years. Last year’s ceremony drew roughly 9 million viewers, the second-smallest on record.
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It is a long and sometimes dangerous journey for truckers transporting the avocados destined for guacamole on tables and tailgates in the United States during the Super Bowl.

It starts in villages like Santa Ana Zirosto, high in the misty, pine-clad mountains of the western Mexico state of Michoacan. The roads are so dangerous — beset by drug cartels, common criminals, and extortion and kidnap gangs — that state police provide escorts for the trucks brave enough to face the 60-kilometer trip to packing and shipping plants in the city of Uruapan.

Truck driver Jesús Quintero starts early in the morning, gathering crates of avocados picked the day before in orchards around Santa Ana, before he takes them to a weighing station. Then he joins up with other trucks waiting for a convoy of blue-and-white state police trucks — they recently changed their name to Civil Guard — to start out for Uruapan.

“It is more peaceful now with the patrol trucks accompanying us, because this is a very dangerous area,” Quintero said while waiting for the convoy to pull out.

With hundreds of 10-kilogram crates of the dark green fruit aboard his 10-ton truck, Quintero’s load represents a small fortune in these parts. Avocados sell for as much as $2.50 apiece in the United States, so a single crate holding 40 is worth $100, while an average truck load is worth as much as $80,000 to $100,000.

Mexico supplies about 92% of U.S. avocado imports, sending north over $3 billion worth of the fruit every year.

But it’s often not just the load that is stolen.

“They would take away our trucks and the fruit, sometimes they’d take the truck as well,” Quintero said. “They would steal two or three trucks per day in this area.”

It happened to him years ago. “We were coming down a dirt road and two young guys came out and they took our truck and tied us up.”

Such thefts “have gone down a lot” since the police escorts started, Quintero said. “They have stolen one or two, one every week, but it’s not daily like it used to be.”

State police officer Jorge González said the convoys escort about 40 trucks a day, ensuring that around 300 tons of avocados reach the packing plants each day.

“These operations have managed to cut the (robbery) rate by about 90 to 95%,” González said. “We accompany them to the packing house, so they can enter with their trucks with no problem.”

Grower José Evaristo Valencia is happy he doesn’t have to worry if his carefully tended avocados will make it to the packing house. Packers depend on arrangements they have made with local orchards to fill promised shipments, and lost avocados can mean lost customers.

“The main people affected are the producers,” Valencia said. “People were losing three or four trucks every day. There were a lot of robberies between the orchard and the packing house.”

The police escorts “have helped us a lot,” he said.

Once the avocados reach Uruapan or the neighboring city of Tancitaro — the self-proclaimed avocado capital of the world that greets visitors with a giant cement avocado — the path to the north is somewhat safer.

The shipment north of avocados for Super Bowl season has become an annual event, this year celebrated in Uruapan. It is a welcome diversion from the drumbeat of crimes in the city, which is being fought over by the Viagras and Jalisco cartels.

On Jan. 17, Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla “kicked off” the first Super Bowl avocado shipments, literally, kicking a football through tiny goalposts on an imitation football field.

Behind him, a big tractor trailer bore a huge sign reading “Let’s Go! Super Bowl 2023.”

It was an attempt by Michoacan growers to put behind them last year’s debacle, when the U.S. government suspended inspections of the fruit in February, right before the 2022 Super Bowl.

The inspections were halted for about 10 days after a U.S. inspector was threatened in Michoacan, where growers are routinely subject to extortion by drug cartels. Some Michoacan packers were reportedly buying avocados from other, non-certified states and trying to pass them off as being from Michoacan and were angry the U.S. inspector wouldn’t go along with that.

U.S. agricultural inspectors have to certify that Mexican avocados don’t carry diseases or pests that would harm U.S. orchards. The Mexican harvest is January through March, while avocado production in the U.S. runs from April to September.

Exports resumed after Mexico and the United States agreed to enact “measures that ensure the safety” of the inspectors.

“This season we are going to recover the confidence of the producers, growers and consumers. By increasing the export production, we hope to send 130,000 tons this season,” the governor said.
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The tea tasted bitter and earthy, but Lorenzo Gonzales drank it anyway. On that night in remote Utah, he was hoping for a life-changing experience, which is how he found himself inside a tent with two dozen others waiting for the psychedelic brew known as ayahuasca to kick in.

Soon, the gentle sounds of a guitar were drowned out by people vomiting — a common downside of the drug.

Gonzales started howling, sobbing, laughing and repeatedly babbling. Facilitators from Hummingbird Church placed him face down, calming him momentarily before he started laughing again and crawling.

“I seen these dark veins come up in this big red light, and then I seen this image of the devil,” Gonzales said later. He had quieted only when his wife, Flor, touched his shoulder and prayed.

His journey to this town along the Arizona-Utah border is part of a growing global trend of people turning to ayahuasca to treat an array of health problems after conventional medications and therapy failed. Their problems include eating disorders, depression, substance use disorders and PTSD.

The rising demand for ayahuasca has led to hundreds of churches like this one, which advocates say are protected from prosecution by a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In that case, a New Mexico branch of a Brazilian-based ayahuasca church won the right to use the drug as a sacrament — even though its active ingredient remains illegal under U.S. federal law. A subsequent lower court decision ruled Oregon branches of a different ayahuasca church could use it.

“In every major city in the United States, every weekend, there’s multiple ayahuasca ceremonies,” said Sean McAllister, who represents an Arizona church in a lawsuit against the federal government after its ayahuasca from Peru was seized at the port of Los Angeles.

The pro-psychedelics movement’s growth has sparked concerns of a government crackdown. In addition to ayahuasca shipments being seized, some churches stopped operating over fears of prosecution. There are also concerns these unregulated ceremonies might pose a danger for some participants and that the benefits of ayahuasca haven’t been well studied.

It was dark as the Hummingbird ceremony began on a Friday night in October, except for flickering candles and the orange glow of heaters. Psychedelic art hung from the walls; statues of the Virgin Mary and Mother Earth were positioned near a makeshift altar.

Participants sat in silence, waiting for Taita Pedro Davila, the Colombian shaman and traditional healer who oversaw the ceremony.

A mix of military veterans, corporate executives, thrill seekers, ex-members of a polygamous sect and a man who struck it rich on a game show had turned up for the $900 weekend. Many appeared apprehensive yet giddy to begin the first of three ceremonies.

The brew contains an Amazon rainforest shrub with the active ingredient N, N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, and a vine containing alkaloids that prevents the drug from breaking down in the body.

Those who drink ayahuasca report seeing shapes and colors and going on wild, sometimes terrifying journeys that can last hours. In this dreamlike state, some say they encounter dead relatives, friends and spirits.

“You were invited for a weekend of healing,” Davila told the group, before people lined up for their tea.

Locking eyes with each participant, Davila uttered a prayer over the cups before blowing on them with a whistling sound and handing them over to drink.

Gonzales and his wife, Flor, were among the ayahuasca newcomers.

They had driven from California, hoping for relief for 50-year-old Gonzales. He’d battled drug addiction for much of his life, was suffering the effects of COVID-19 and had been diagnosed with early stage dementia.

“My poor body is dying and I don’t want it to die,” said Gonzales, who rarely sleeps and is prone to fits of anger.

Maeleene Jessop was also a newcomer but grew up in Hildale, the Utah town where the ceremony was held. She is a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, a polygamist offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hildale was the group’s stronghold. The ceremony was held in a tent on the grounds of a house once owned by a former FLDS member.

Jessop, 35, left the church after its leader, Warren Jeffs, was arrested for sexually assaulting girls he considered brides. He is serving a life sentence in federal prison. Jessop has struggled to adapt to her new life, battling depression and haunted by the physical and sexual abuse she endured as a child.

The roots of ayahuasca go back hundreds of years to ceremonial use by Indigenous groups in the Amazon. In the past century, churches have emerged in several South American countries where ayahuasca is legal.

The movement found a foothold in the United States in the 1980s and interest has intensified more recently as celebrities like NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Hollywood actor Will Smit h talked about attending ceremonies.

Some spend thousands of dollars to attend five-star ayahuasca retreats in the Amazon. But in the U.S., the movement remains largely underground, promoted by social media and word of mouth, with ceremonies held in supporters’ homes, Airbnb rentals and remote areas to avoid law enforcement scrutiny.

Like many of these, Hummingbird won’t be mistaken for a traditional Western church.

It has no written text and relies primarily on Davila’s prayers, chants and songs to guide participants through the ceremony. Davila follows traditions learned from his grandfather.

Courtney Close, Hummingbird’s founder who credits ayahuasca with helping her overcome cocaine addiction and postpartum depression, believes the designation as a church helps show that participants are “doing this for religious reasons.” But when it comes to defining it as a religion, Close stressed that depends on individual participants’ experience.

“We just try to create a spiritual experience without any dogma and just let people experience God for themselves,” she said.

Back in California, Flor Gonzales is convinced ayahuasca is behind her husband’s improvement. “I just feel like we have a future,” she said.
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