Punta Chueca

Is he warm towards you?

I saw him in 2023 in the Seri community of Punta Chueca, where he had kind of- Established his, his indigenous origin story and his neo-shamanic practice.

By that stage, I'd already published a fairly critical feature story about him in The New Yorker magazine, which he hated, and he sent me a long voice note kind of saying how dishonest and, um, inadequate a journalist I was, and that he would be remembered through medical science for, like, his contribu- his contributions to history.

It was a very bombastic voice note, which I was like, "Okay, well, I'm never gonna talk to him again, but that's a really nice kind of sign-off mic drop from Octavio," because it was, like, really in character.