Don Carlos Chavez - “Gato”

Don Carlos Chavez (affectionately known as "Gato" by his friends, family and colleagues) grew up in Pucallpa, Peru. He began working and apprenticing with the highly respected and world-renowned Don Jose Campos when he was 18 years old, and was Don Jose's longest-term apprentice. Twenty-plus years later, Carlos is a masterful curandero who still works closely with Don Jose but now has his own master plant dieta center in the Peruvian Amazon jungle.

Among his colleagues and medicine circles around the globe, Carlos is admired for his clarity, purity of intention, focus and unwavering lifelong discipline as a curandero. His colleagues and “patients” appreciate his serious and focused manner while working in ceremony, which is balanced by his huge heart, easy smile, positivity and laugh. Don Carlos creates simple but powerfully held and protected healing spaces - he has fierce faith not only in the curative power of the master plants and Ayahuasca, but also in the inner power of his "patients" - you who come to sit with and learn from the medicines.

Don Carlos currently lives in Bello Horizonte, a small village 3 hours from Pucallpa, and is father to two sons, ages 9 and 11. He has traveled throughout South America, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Europe bringing medicine to the people! It is a complete honor and life-changing experience to sit with and learn from, and with, him.