Cohoba
Cohoba is a Taíno transliteration for a ceremony in which the ground seeds of the cojóbana tree (Anadenanthera spp.) were used as a snuff via a Y-shaped snuff tube. Use of this substance produced a visionary or entheogenic effect. The cojóbana tree is believed by some to be Anadenanthera peregrina although it may have been a generalized term for psychotropics, including the quite toxic Datura and related genera (Solanaceae). The corresponding ceremony using cohoba-laced tobacco is transliterated as cojibá. This was said to have produced the sense of a visionary journey of the kind associated with the practice of shamanism.
The practice of snuffing cohoba was popular with the Taínos with whom Christopher Columbus made contact. However, the use of Anadenanthera powder was widespread in South America, being used in ancient times by the Wari culture and Tiwanaku of Peru and Bolivia, and also by the Piaroa of Venezuela and Colombia, and the Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela. Other names for cohoba include vilca, cebíl, ñuá and yopó. In Tiwanaku culture, a snuff tray was used along with an inhalation tube.
Fernando Ortiz Fernández, the founder of Cuban Cultural Studies, offers a detailed analysis of the use of cohoba in his important anthropological work, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar.
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