Camino Rojo from Mexico to Uruguay. Spiritual leaderships, trajectories and memory

Abstract

The article describes and analyzes the process of discovery, arrival and transformation of neoshamanic group Camino Rojo in Uruguay. Following the trajectories of the organization’s leaders, psychologist Alejandro Spangenberg and his son-in-law Alejandro Corchs, whose parents disappeared during the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985), Camino Rojo's practices, discourses and aesthetics are contextualized as part of the new forms of indigenous spirituality which have been strongly consolidated in the continent as from the 1990s. Camino Rojo is analyzed based on studies on the New Age and neoshamanism, although these limited categories are deliberately used with functional purposes in order to delimitate the case study. One of the text's main objectives is to show the specificities of the articulations that take place once Camino Rojo is unfolded in Uruguay, away from its Mexican origins. Even though the use of sacred plants such as ayahuasca, as well as other practices like sweat lodges, Vision Quest, and Sun Dance, are highly significant for Camino Rojo, the article specifically targets the articulations generated by the life trajectories of the mentioned leaders. Thus, it follows the links between Uruguay's Camino Rojo and Gestalt psychology, which adds to Corchs' strong discourse of love and forgiveness. As a result, Corchs' life trajectory, which is determined by his links to the Uruguayan dictatorship, are reconstructed, allowing him to rise as a charismatic leader with much public exposition in the media. Finally, in the last twenty years, a process of legitimation of the Camino Rojo organization is observed in Uruguay