50 years ago, the UDV was featured in major newspaper for the first time

Juliane Oliveira*

| August 29^th, 2018

Discrete, but not secretive, the União do Vegetal has been opening its doors to the press since its first years. In this context, in 1968, José Gabriel da Costa (Mestre Gabriel), the creator of the UDV, granted an interview to Antônio Alberto Prado, a reporter of the newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo (The State of S. Paulo) (São Paulo-SP), one of the major daily newspapers of Brazil at that time. From this conversation and from other information he learned, Prado wrote a full paged report titled “Na Selva, um místico vende um sonho” (“In the Jungle, a mystic sells a dream”), and this August 29^th, 2018 will mark 50 years since its publication. It was the first journalistic material with respect to the União do Vegetal and about Mestre Gabriel published by a major newspaper.

Prado was 26 years old and was visiting the then Federal Territory of Rondônia with the objective of reporting land issues relative to the initiation of the colonization project of the Amazon. At the end of the visit, in Porto Velho, he found out about the existence of Mariri and Chacrona and about a group of people that organized themselves to drink the Ayahuasca Tea (known as Hoasca or Vegetal in the União do Vegetal) prepared from these two plants.

Interested, he went all the way to the residence of Mestre Gabriel and noted, in this first and only contact with the creator of the UDV, the presence of simplicity, both in the people and what was said in that little house on Rua Abunã (Abunã Road). “He spoke things with clarity. He was a caboclo, but a caboclo that knew what he wanted. He spoke things with that perception of a simple, yet intelligent person”, recalls the journalist in an interview granted to the UDV in 2014.

See the interview below:

Read the article

Click here and read the whole article “In the Jungle, a mystic sells a dream” (“Na Selva, um místico vende um sonho”), published by the journalist Alberto Prado on August 29^th, 1968 in the newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo Newspaper.

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*Juliane Oliveira is a member of the Instructive Body of Sede Geral (Brasília-DF).

Translation Coordinator: Isabel Cavalcante, member of the Body of Counsel of Núcleo Jardim Florescendo (Gainesville, FL – USA) | Translated by: Nicholas James Swartz, member of the Cadre of Associates of Núcleo Jardim Florescendo (Gainesville, FL – USA) | Revised by: Jonathan Spoliansky, member of the Cadre of Mestres of Núcleo Jardim Florescendo (Gainesville, FL – USA)