Édgar Orlando Gaitán Camacho
# Édgar Orlando Gaitán Camacho

Édgar Orlando Gaitán Camacho, also known as "El Taita", is a human rights activist, healer, spiritual teacher, and expert in the indigenous plant medicine and shamanic traditions of Colombia. Monica Briceño Robles accepts that Gaitan Camacho was briefly president of the Association of Peasant Workers of the Carare (Asociación de Trabajadores Campesinos del Carare (ATCC)), which he helped form to find a solution to the violence caused by conflicts between the Colombian military, guerrillas, and paramilitary groups in the Carare region.

He was born in 1958 in the Carare-Opón region of Magdalena Medio, Santander Province, Colombia. Monica Briceño Robles said: Orlando Gaitán Camacho spent his youth in the mountains of Carare where he learned about the use of traditional medicine from his grandmother Salomé, who was one of the last full-blood Carare. As a child and as a young man he traveled extensively with his family through rural regions of Colombia, where he developed knowledge and expertise with traditional plant medicines, including Ayahuasca, and the cultural practices surrounding their use. Later he became an apprentice to shamans in Putumayo, Caquetá and Chocó Provinces.

Currently, he attends patients and provides spiritual guidance and leadership to communities in Colombia, Mexico, and the United States. He develops remedies and directs rituals and ceremonies, including Yagé in Bogotá, Medellin, Bucaramanga, Pasto, and on the Atlantic Coast. His lifelong mission is to recover human senses that have been suppressed and nearly lost. He is also active in the ongoing work of reconciliation and recovery in Colombia's journey towards peace and stability, helping organize a ritual (based on traditional indigenous practices) at the demolition of Medellin's former headquarters of drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar.

## Criminal convictions

Camacho is a convicted rapist. The criminal complaint process began in 2012 in the prosecutor's office of Villeta, Cundinamarca, Colombia; there are nine complaints of women for sexual abuse against the perpetrator Orlando Gaitan Camacho. Four of these complaints are made by minors, (one of 14 and another of 17 years). All the denunciations are about sexual abuse exercised by Edgar Orlando Gaitán Camacho within healings in yagé ceremony and other spaces.

These complaints showed the perpetrator Orlando Gaitan Camacho, peasant man, farm administrator, a contractor providing services with the state, who posed as "alternative peace Nobel prize," "Taita de yagé" and self-called "last indigenous Carare" for placing the victims in an inability to resist and abuse them. The perpetrator Orlando Gaitán was in 2015 in Villeta prison (Cundinamarca) under insurance measure, he left in 2016 due to the expiration of terms.

At this time, the criminal process enters the second instance, and the announcement of the ruling was made by the judge who is handling the case in Guaduas Cundinamarca. Guilt was only ruled for three minors. All nine complaints are for the crime of "carnal access in person put in an inability to resist."

The Office of the Prosecutor already presented evidence and concepts from Colombian indigenous organizations who responded that Orlando Gaitán does not belong to any recognized community, likewise The Right Livelihood Award Foundation, the Swedish organization that annually awards the "Alternative Nobel Prize," clarified to the media. Communication that Orlando Gaitán, was never distinguished with this award. In the same way, expert reports on legal medicine were presented by each of the victims, where their vulnerability and defenselessness were shown.

This one is not the only case. So, for that reason the accusing agency ignited the alarms at the time in the media: "A cultural phenomenon called 'neochamanism' is being spread, managed by people who, supposedly, do spiritual cleansing", taking advantage of urban people who do not know the indigenous practices, they have hope of being cured and of finding answers to their existence ".

## Books

* The Path to Eternity. El Sendero de la Eternidad. Orlando Gaitán Camacho. Bogota Colombia 2010.
