The strange mixture observed in contemporary uses of ayahuasca may be better understood if we perceive it as the result of the different strategies that follow by those who conduct ayahuasca ceremonies, to achieve legitimacy and legality of their practices in a global society. These strategies can range from defending strict maintenance in traditional forms considered as ‘authentic’, to strategies for reinvention, adaptation, imitation or even appropriation in other ceremonial forms. At the beginning of my speech I pointed out that the distinction between shamanic and non-shamanic uses of ayahuasca was of difficult and complex theoretical justification. How to distinguish the taita from the indigenous who claims to be a taita? How do you distinguish shaman from psychotherapist who claims to be shaman? And how do you distinguish shamans and psychotherapists who work honestly with ayahuasca, from those rogue or dishonest people who use it fraudulently and say they are, as appropriate, sometimes shamans or sometimes psychotherapists? By giving an attempted response, I understand that the fraudulent use of ayahuasca, which is also part of that wide set of contemporary uses of drink, is that ceremonial use that is based exclusively on the psychoactive properties of ayahuasca. In my view, the most remarkable thing about the phenomenon of the spread of the use of ayahuasca, which is originally a shamanic use, is that it is surrounded by animist knowledge that allows the hard heads of the Western, showing that the Western is NOT a geographical but mental category. How Western can be a European as a inhabitant of the city of Lima or Quito. And likewise, being indigenous is not so much a trait of ethnicity, as something equally mental, and that ‘gringos’ can also become shamans. It's all a matter of knowledge.