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REGENERATING WILD
HUACHUMA

Protecting cultural heritage

Empowering communities

Planting San Pedro cacti

Who We Are

Huachuma Collective is a Peru-based nonprofit association which cares for the bio-cultural sustainability of the San Pedro Cactus. We are led by an alliance of Peruvian curanderos, curanderas, Indigenous leaders, and Andean community members. Together, we empower communities to plant Huachuma and explore sustainable practices for growing and working with traditional medicine in Peru. Our projects support and revitalize cultural traditions in Andean and Coastal Peruvian communities.

Wild Huachuma is in Decline

The uses and traditional knowledge of the San Pedro Cactus (Huachuma) have been declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Peru, with a 4,000-year history of continuous use of the plant. The traditional world of Huachuma is centered on the Indigenous and Mestizo communities of North Peru, but these legitimate heirs to the plant have been largely ignored. Today, few young people are learning the art of Huachuma from their elders and traditional knowledge is being forgotten.

Declining populations of wild Huachuma were first reported 50 years ago, and today the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment recognizes that all species of San Pedro are endangered. Peruvian botanists have recommended that Huachuma be placed on the international endangered species list (CITES). Illegal harvesting is the most significant cause of this decline.