Published on 12:00 AM, September 18, 2020

Trump or Biden?

Peruvian shamans try to predict winner of US election

With incense smoke, flowers and photos of President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden, Peruvian shamans performed an ancestral ritual on Wednesday for the US elections, but there was little agreement about who would win the Nov. 3 ballot. 

Chanting and blowing a traditional Andean shell instrument, the shamans, dressed in multicolored garb, invoked the "Pachamama", or mother earth, for the US vote to take place in peace, without attacks or any witchcraft between the rivals.

Shaman teacher Ana María Simeón, during the ritual held in a low-lit room of an old building in downtown Lima, said she was in favor of Biden.

"We have seen that they are attacking him with witchcraft, with a black doll, with a voodoo doll they are shadowing to remove him," said the shaman.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday, Biden leads Trump nationally by 9 percentage points.

"Good energies to Mr Donald Trump," said the master shaman Pablo Torres, carrying the snake on one of his shoulders after squirting a strange liquid from his mouth onto the image of Trump. "Why? Because he is deserving. ... We are supporters of the gentleman. He will win; he is a winner."