Besides narrating his encounters with present-day Indigenous practitioners of Catimbó/Jurema rituals, the author revisits the anthropological literature tracing the long history of black jurema (Mimosa tenuiflora) brews in Northeastern Brazil, of which there are written records of prohibition by the Catholic Church beginning in the seventeenth century. Considered heretical by the Inquisition, the consumption of the so-called jurema wine spread from the semi-arid biome Caatinga where the tree grows naturally to the rainforest strip along the coast (Zona da Mata), where it became the sacrament of a syncretic form of religiosity that blends Native- and Afro-Brazilian roots in successive waves of miscegenation amid the struggles of enslaved peoples against the domination by Portuguese landowners and missionaries. In order to escape persecution, a culture of secrecy developed around black jurema uses, which survives to this day in the Fulni-ô and Potiguara villages visited by the reporter.