Hello beautiful souls, my name is Manny Munoz and I am a proud Brown Chicano. I am on a cultural reclamation journey which intersects with the psychedelic community. I am incredibly passionate about destigmatizing mental health within the Chicanx/Latinx community and reconnecting our communities with psychedelics that have been used by our ancestors long before our parents immigrated to the United States. I believe that the cultural reclamation of psychedelics, with an emphasis on psilocybin mushrooms, will not only help with the destigmatization of mental health within our communities, but also honor our cultures and ancestors.

I am raising funds to travel to the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Michoacán in order to connect with and learn from curanderxs in the Pátzcuaro and San José del Pacífico regions, while also learning more about my indigenous roots. I am the first BIPOC Licensed Psilocybin Manufacturer in the state of Oregon, and one of the only despite there being a Social Equity Plan requirement for all licensees. Psychedelics have been used for centuries within BIPOC communities for sacred ceremonies and for healing. The current legal psilocybin system in Oregon has heavy financial barriers that may prevent BIPOC folks from entering the legal space. As a result, we are seeing a misrepresentation of BIPOC cultures take place, which is especially terrifying in today's world of ever increasing hateful rhetoric towards many of our communities within the United States. The same type of hate that many of us within the BIPOC community have experienced toward our cultures our whole lives. My intentions are to learn about the history of psychedelics in curanderismo directly from the indigenous people of Mexico in hopes of helping educate others about the significance of these natural medicines and to add diversity to the Oregon legal psychedelic space without appropriation.

The funds being raised will be utilized for travel, lodging, food, and helping support indigenous people within Oaxaca and Michoacan.

Here is a very rough breakdown of the estimated costs:

~ $250-400 Flight to Oaxaca, Mexico

~ $150-210 Using buses to get to different towns, and 1 Mexican Flight to Michoacan

~ $150-400 Lodging in Oaxaca 7 nights

~ $200-450 Lodging in Michoacan 7 nights

~ $300-500 Food

~ $500 Spiritual Ceremonies

At this time, these are rough estimations. The goal is to avoid "tourist" lodging/activities that benefit from appropriating, gentrifying, and colonizing indigenous cultures.

All donated funds will be used *only* for the most basic costs/necessities for this journey. I pledge to use these funds as minimally as possible to cover the basic costs of travel, lodging, and food in order to use as much of the funds as possible to help support the indigenous people of Michoacan and Oaxaca.

I have not selected specific dates yet as I do not know if this trip is financially possible for me, but would likely take place in the fall of 2025.

If my financial situation improves drastically and I no longer require the raised funds to make this trip a possibility at the time this trip takes place, then 100% of the raised funds will be used to benefit the communities I will be learning from, in whichever way feels most beneficial to the members of said communities.

While I do not consider myself to be indigenous, as I am disconnected from my indigenous heritage due to Spanish colonization and was not raised in an indigenous community, I am hoping to be able to connect with my indigenous roots and learn more about approaching indigenous psychedelic rituals without appropriating or gentrifying them. I aim to complete a psilocybin facilitator program in Oregon next year (2025). My intentions are to focus on connecting other Chicanxs and Mexican-Americans in the US with natural medicines and ceremonies within our cultures. This cultural reclamation goes hand in hand with the mental health epidemic within Latine communities. "Ponte las pilas" and "Tienes que echarle ganas" are an unacceptable dismissal of serious mental health conditions that we've all heard from our relatives.

Psychedelics are being appropriated and exploited in the name of capitalism by those not connected with the cultures, while being marketed as a cure to certain illnesses. This shifts the focus of the medicine to "fixing an individual", rather than to connect with community and connect with the mind, body, soul, and earth.

Unfortunately, we do live in a society in which we need money simply to *exist*. I have pledged to never exploit practices outside of my culture in the pursuit of wealth. I recognize what a massive privilege it is to have ownership in a business that has tons of barriers that prevent many Black and Brown people from entering this space. My financial goals in life are to make whatever the minimum amount is needed to sustain myself and my family in a modest lifestyle. Any income that surpasses this amount will be used to uplift community. After an exhausting life of poverty and always having to think about money, I am now in a place in which I do not care for money nor do I ever want to think of it again. My "entrepreneurial endeavor" (yuck) is focused on uplifting Black and Brown people, which consists of lowering the costs of my services as low as possible, or even eliminate the costs all together, to help underprivileged communities access these legal services in Oregon.