Under the pretext of waging a ‘war’ against ‘narco-terrorists,’ the US has targeted longline fishing vessels off the coast of the Andean country. Eight fishermen remain missing, and Washington has claimed responsibility for the deaths of 238 men in the Pacific and the Caribbean since late 2025. Another nine fishermen were seized by armed U.S. who shoved them onto a military vessel with hands cuffed, eyes covered and ears plugged. They were the lucky ones. Despite the Ecuadorian government being ideologically subservient to the present US Administration and in practice they were released after two days by Ecuadorian agents.
Hallucinogenic, psychedelic colonialism has become all too real. The process possibly began with psychedelic plants being of interest to adventurous Westerners but since then even more so for functional use to cure a range of mostly Western personalised problems, alcoholism and depression. A good part of the money pouring into neuroscientific research is going into investigations of hallucinogenic plants. Indigenous peoples in Latin America have long protested about the grab of the B. caapi vine the active leaf agent in ayahuasca used by healers with their own Leaf mixtures with it., fearing that greed for it may lead to its extinction. Now there is concern in West Africa over the grab for iboga, a slow-growing bush, a hallucinogenic used in healing and rituals whose properties are said to be a “natural” anti-depressant, Such is the concern that the government o Gabon is considering an export ban on the plant. Meanwhile the Big Pharma industry will be looking for research to lead to profits. The normal practice is to synthesise having dug out the plants[i] secrets as in the making of potentially addictive cocaine from the socially, spiritually and culturally coca plant. One of the psychedelic might be in line to cure cocaine addiction.