Hi Beate7, I am glad you had a chance to meet Don Humberto last month. I have been working with him in Peru personally for over 18 months and just last night returned from the Qoyllur Riti Festival where I had been camping with him and his sons Guillermo and Rolando as well as much of the Q'ero nation over the four day event (you can read more about the Qoyllur Riti Festival here http://tinyurl.com/ogwe9s5). In my opinion as an Anthropologist and one who has studied shamanism both from an academic perspective as well as an experiential one as I am fully initiated with the Q'ero, Don Humberto and all of the spiritual leaders of the Q'ero Nation including Pampamesoyaqs and Altomesoyaqs are in fact "Shaman". The term "Paqo" is simply their term for a spiritual practitioner used to describe what they do in much the same way a Rabbi, Priest Imam or Monk use a label to describe what they do, yet in a general sense they are all Religious leaders. When analyzing the Q'ero belief system, ritual and ceremony under the lens of the definition of what it is to be a shaman they qualify. It is not accurate to say that because the Q'ero do not use drums or sacred plants for visioning they are not shaman, as the term shaman is a "general" or "umbrella" term that describes the varied practices and beliefs of many types of non-religious yet spiritual healers. In this sense a Paqo is a type of shaman.