sack of Cádiz. For example, the Italian priest Giovanni Anello Oliva, author
of an account of the Incas, claimed that Valera did not die after the pirate
attack but that he secretly returned to Peru, where he wrote the Nueva
Corónica y Buen Gobierno, widely acknowledged to have been authored by
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. This claim is not generally accepted by
historians of Colonial Peru.Further Reading
Hyland, Sabine. The Jesuit and the Incas: The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas Valera, S.J. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2003.
———. “Valera, Blas (1544–1597).” In Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, 1530–
1900 , edited by Joanne Pillsbury, vol. 3, 694–96. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
■ADRIANA VON HAGENVILCA
Vilca is a hallucinogen whose source is a small leguminous tree, Anadenanthera
colubrina, which grows wild in warm, dry valleys below 2,100 meters (6,890
feet) from northern Peru to northwestern Argentina. Vilca is botanically related
to a quite similar species called yopo, Anandenanthera peregrina, found in the
Orinoco savannas. The leguminous pods of the vilca tree contain 5–20 round,
flat reddish-brown seeds. When pulverized, vilca has been used as a snuff,
smoked, ingested, and as an enema. The psychoactive ingredients are two
tryptamines, DMT (N, N-dimethyltryptamine) and bufotenine. Effects of these
alkaloids on the human organism were not fully studied until the 1960s. A three-
phased sequence, most clearly described when taken as a snuff, starts with an
almost immediate and sometimes violent stimulating rush, followed by a period
of hallucinations and, lastly, a phase of lucidity that initiates reflective
conversation.
Vilca was engrained in Andean culture history as a shamanic vehicle to an
altered state of consciousness. So far, however, archaeologists have retrieved
only a small portion of its long prehistory of use. Evidence of its application is
found in inhalers, pipes, clysters, and elaborately carved wooden or stone
mortars. Two millennia before the Incas, vilca was an important hallucinogen at
Chavín de Huántar. The Huari civilization, which arose around Ayacucho, and its
contemporary, the Tiahuanaco (see Chronology, Pre-Inca), incorporated vilca
into public performance and private use. The Incas used vilca less frequently