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Documentari
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| Bridge over troubled cultures (Amazonia, Brasil). |
| 08/03/2008 13:00 | |
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italian title: Una strana condotta
The Amazonian indios are neither primitives to be civilized, nor noble savages to be idealized. They have a balanced relationship with nature and with their own community, and have elaborated religions, aesthetics and culture.
For decades this land has been invaded by gold miners, ranchers, loggers, petrochemical concerns, merchants, missionaries of a hundred sects, tourists and callous adventurers. For the indigenous peoples, these contacts, 9 times out of 10, have resulted in death and disease. At the beginning of this century, there were 2 million Amazonian indios, today there are 200,000 of them left, maybe less. Some like the Asurinì of the Xingu river, first came in contact withe the white man as late as 1971 - others, rightly suspicious, refuse any contact and defend their independence with bows and arrows. The threat that the white man represents to the indios health is so severe that Brazil has decide to close off their villages to visitors.
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| Aldo Lo Curto |
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Aldo Lo Curto
But not to people like the Italian doctor Aldo Lo Curto, who have
dedicated their entire life to the physical and cultural survival of
the tribes who inhabit the banks of the Xingù river.
"Here among the Asurinì, the health problem was pretty serious. When I
first arrived, there were very few of them. There were only sixty of
them. In the past they had reached an historical low of 50, so their
community certainly came close to extinction. Their health problem was
definitely what pushed me to come here in the first place - there were
a few cases of tuberculosis, there was a risk of an epidemic breaking
out. There was a lot of malaria, and so theirs's was more of an
emergency than in other tribes. When you arrive for the first time in
an indigenous village, it's a shock, both for them and for who has just
arrived. The first question was, 'Which forest do you come from?' I
didn't know what to answer so at first Ianswered 'Europe.' 'And what is
the name of your tribe?' And I'd say, 'Italy,' because I didn't really
know how to... how to get myself on the same wavelength as them.But the
most interesting thing was having to introduce myself as a man, and I
must say it was the hardest thing to do because for them I am an
incomplete man; I don't know how to hunt, how to fish, how to build a
house or build a canoe - so they treated me as if I was a child. My
relationship with the Asurinì grew deeper when I started to live with
them and I saw that as a community they possessed a cultural heritage
which was extremely interesting and important. One example is the
richness and diversity of their body paint art. Almost all indios use
body paint, but the Asurinì have at least 120 different designs. At the
moment there are only 80 Asurinì alive, so there just aren't enough
bodies for them to keep up the practice or to express the full range of
their designs.
There are also great difficulties in keeping up the educational
services. I thought that it would be closer to the type of
communication of the indios, which is a visual communication and an
oral one, to carry out health education using puppets as well. I
invented some stories to explain how to avoid falling ill, and at the
same time, how our body works and how we can prevent disease. When I
live with the indios, it's important for me not to forget my own roots.
I'm of Sicilian origin and in Sicily until recently, we had a whole
tradition based on puppetry. As a child, I was always fascinated by the
storytellers and their puppets. The hardest thing was to explain
medicine, which is a serious and rational science in a comic way. It
wasn't easy. There's plenty of audience participation when we do these
shows, and apart from that the most important things is that it can be
taught. In this tribe, there's already someone who's been asking me to
do these shows himself. These are the sort of things that give me the
greatest satisfaction.
When I arrived in the Amazon, I realized this was the perfect
place not only for giving, by giving a sense to the medical profession
and making myself useful, but also for receiving, because the indios
know so many medicinal plants. The Amazon is home to at least a
thousand medicianal plants. I have tried to use and and introduce our
medicine without entering into competition with the healer. I always
call the shaman to my side, and together, together we begin a sort of
healing ritual; in the sense that I deal with the physical aspect of
the illness, while next to me, he would start to chant a sort of prayer
in his own language and begin a healing ceremony, or a therapeutic one,
dancing and singing. So, it's something we do together. The shaman
places his hands on the affected part of the body and then all over the
body, and then he starts a process of forcefully sucking in and
exhaling. In this way he is spiritually trying to suck out the negative
energy from the affected, sick part of the body and blow as far away as
possible these negative forces, these evil spirits.
I describe myself as a travelling volontary doctor. Travelling
because I don't stay with just one tribe or in just one area. I keep
moving because I don't want to create any dependencies. Because the
risk involved in building a hospital is that these people may be
tempted to stop looking after themselves - they might get lazy. And
then there would be, not just a social dependence, but an economic one
as well, because a hospital would have to be maintained. Being alone,
without a structure to support me, without a foundation, without an
organization, I thought it would be best to carry out a medical program
based on the prevention of diseases."
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