HUAUTLA DE JIMENEZ, Mexico — This sweltering corner of the Sierra Mazateca Mountains has seen some unusual visitors lately, thanks to a fern-like plant with thick stems and fluffy leaves.
A British businessman showed up with a sack of pesos, asking to trade them for a sack of leaves. A Spanish importer offered a theater-style TV and satellite service in exchange for three seedlings. A couple from Mexico City spent four days asking questions, learning how to dry the plant's stems and extract its bitter juice.
All were trying to grab a piece of the small but growing market for Salvia divinorum, a legal hallucinogen that packs a more powerful psychedelic punch than peyote, psyllocybin mushrooms or any other natural hallucinogen.
"More and more people come here and ask to try it. Others ask me how they can grow it," said Alejandro Martinez, a 24-year-old student who grows more than 700 Salvia plants next to a mountain stream. "I had coffee plants, but now I'm planting Pastora. . . ."
Known to locals as "Maria Pastora," or "Mary the Shepherdess," Salvia is a member of the mint family and a distant relative of cooking sage that grows naturally only around Mazatec Indian settlements in this remote corner of Oaxaca state.
Internet sites around the world hawk the herb as "legal ecstasy," boast of its wild popularity on the streets of New York's Greenwich Village and encourage would-be buyers to experience a Salvia trip before authorities declare it illegal.
But for dozens of Mazatec healers, Salvia is a powerful and sacred plant with curative powers and frightening mind-altering effects.
"One has to be very delicate with Pastora. It is the most dangerous plant we have," said Aurelia Catarino Oseguera, a 56-year-old shaman who speaks only Mazatec. "It opens doors in your head that let you see God, and that can be frightening."
Users say Salvia can produce vivid hallucinations and out-of-body experiences, but can make them feel like inanimate objects and cause short-term memory loss.
Its unpredictable effects make even regular users nervous. One Internet chat room participant warned those trying Salvia to be ready for "the most intense experience humanly possible next to death."
"This is not a party drug. It's a drug that takes you to a very deep and introspective place, and that's not always a fun place to be," said Daniel Siebert, creator of a Malibu-based Web site devoted to selling and researching Salvia.
