INTRODUCTION
Personal and group narratives that develop and
grow within family and small group systems follow the literary
matrix of communication skills that give enormous sustain for mourning work,
thus transforming the past personal and family narratives into new ones.
Trans-cultural group stories may follow similar narrative paths for detaching
from enmeshment to past bonds and establish new ones aiming to transform guilt
and punishment in the cultural myths and recreate them. Such transformations
reside on the understanding about the loss events by opening emotional
comprehension to them. Natural group mythopoiesis that stems from the family
model of storytelling to the group therefore has an important function in
shaping the group narrative construction of bereavement.
Based on films analysis made over films chosen
for their excellence and their connection with the environment, we further
proposed that the personal and group processes that are elicited by the
narrative of bereavement and its recreation that is based on the dynamics of
understanding and sharing among the interpersonal narratives held in the person
and in the group members, run together to integrating the lessons of the
environment. As it can be assessed in any correction of behaviour, information
is not enough for inducing change if it is not accompanied by sufficient
reflection and emotional comprehension of the facts involving the subjects, environmental
change follows a same track for achieving acquisition of real practical
knowledge and the skills necessary for establishing the measures that are
essential for it and not for just a cosmetic variation. I guess this is the
case for the delay if not the inexperience to achieve it in almost every topic
risking earth’s life since it was urgently denounced to be corrected during
late XXth century: Starvation, crowding, violence, poverty, extensive disease
and death in the majority of the world populations, disappearance of native
languages and cultures, massive extinction of plant and animal species, loss of
water supplies, deterioration of the atmosphere indexes, and climate change due
to the greenhouse effect.
All 2014 films showed their protagonists in the
midst of environmental sceneries that trapped them in a most cruel unavoidable
way that was reinforced by their helpless rigid cultures awarding the surviving
heroes but condemning the most to mortal punishment as mice trapped in a cheese
box [Félix et Meira, 1994], not so hard as that one trapping thousands of
employees who run down (if they could) the staircases of the recently blown up Twin
Towers. The possible change in
behaviours under such conditions is like accepting imprisonment in boxes [Sils María,
2014], in very high pressure settings under extreme competitive work [Birdman,
2014], authoritarian rigid social and cultural patterns [Leopardi,
ilgiovanefabuloso, 1994; Félix et Meira, 1994] if not governed by
political-religious power systems [Leviathan, 1994] or ruled by both ancient andcontemporary myths adjusting to established socio-cultural needs that subdue
persons to their precise fulfillment [In the woods, 1994]. Only the poet Leopardi
contested to the social environment pressure for endorsing a common modern
social self, brandishing his personal self skills in relation to the natural
environment [Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso, 1994].
In all the 2014 studied films what seems at stake are the survival of the
personal self and the group self that struggle with the social
self which is
strongly imposed by culture; except for Leviathan and
Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso, bereavement is denied, while in the latter two
mourning work that is not shared with the group conduces to isolation and big
unavoidable suffering. It was then decided to study a 2014 film made by an
artist that centered from a personal viewpoint in the visual narrative of the
social and natural environment. This would provide us arguments to discuss the
relevance of the personal self in its involvement with social and cultural
matters that are shared by the different social and cultural selves of our
contemporary “post-modern” life.
“The
salt of the Earth” [La sal de
la tierra] was premiered in Buenos Aires on August 20th, 2015, at the 6thInternational
Festival of Environmental Cinema (20-26 August, 2015). It was recommended to me
by Josefina Ichaso (General Coordinator) when I attended the festival the
initial day [Thursday, August 20, 2015] and asked for assessment at the
Festival table (6 GREEN FILM FEST, Ecosistema, 15 edición especial, 2015).
Therefore I had seen it ten days before the blog ART & ENVIRONMENT published
in its last edition the hypotheses summarizing the analyzed 2014 films released
during 2015 together with the study of “Félix et Meira” [Sunday, August 30,
2015]; not having any clue about it and learning about both its artist and his photographic narrative method at the moment it was seen for the first time.
FILM DATA
The Salt of the Earth is a 2014 biographical-documentary film that shows
environmental catastrophe at the human and social levels, as determined by
political crime in the world global economy prioritizing business that left
aside all the pre-2000 programs for controlling hunger, poverty and disease in most of the underdeveloped
regions of the world. It was awarded with the Special Prize in the "Un Certain Regard" section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the 2014 Audience Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the 2015 Audience Award at the Tromsø International Film Festival, and won the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 40th César Awards. It is a French-Brazilian film directed by
Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (2014),Release date: 27 March 2015
[Wikipedia] .
TEXT
The film
starts with the question: A film over the
life of a photographer? Then it’s
explained the meaning of the word from Greek –Photo: light, Graphein: write,
draw–, therefore photography would mean to
write and re-write with light and shadows. The first photo is from Serra
Pelada (Brazil), which thrilled the photographer for its resemblance to the
construction of pyramids, the tower of Babel, the mines of King Salomon,
without any sign of noise of machines but only the rumor made by 50.000 persons
melting their voice with the manipulation works. As the gold diggers perch and
climb by small narrow ladders to the big ones taking them out to the surface,
nobody fears falling down and drag others with them –the photographer himself
used them several times by day together to men climbing them 50-60 times a day,
which is followed by running down the inclined plane after they have reached
the summit risking to fall if they stop–: It
was an organization of madness made by slaves of greed, by a population joining
together academics with farm workers or city workers. They all searched for an
opportunity of finding a gold reef and share the choice of a sac that could
contain the mineral or not; at that moment they put at risk their independence,
as there lays slavery: all men that touch gold don’t ever return
Wim Wenders
tells that he viewed that photo in an art gallery that made him guess it
belonged to a great photographer and adventurer; he also tells that he discovered
a portrait of a blind Tuareg Woman
that shocked him and that he had hanged over his escritoire since then. Wenders
further states that the photographer’s name is Sebastiao Salgado, somebody who
loves human beings, the persons that
are the salt of earth. Different photographers
in a same place would shot very different photos because they come from very
different places, each one with his own glance, each one in connection with his
own history.
My own way I learned it was in this place where
I had long walks with my father and where we come together for sightseeing.
Behind each of the mountains there is a history, something to see. Here I had
daydreamt a lot; I wished to go far than those mountains, I wanted to know.
A JOURNEY WITH SEBASTIAO SALGADO
They are
shown in sequence the following scenes:
1) Views
at western Papua range, Indonesia (2011), showing the camera to the people of Yali, seminude, with sticks resembling
the erect penis at the pubis, dancing in rounds;
2) A
speech from Sebastiao’s father at his farm in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil,
surrounded by tropical forest, river and a railroad that was run by trains
transporting minerals. He tells about his son’sdelight for travelling alike
that one of his own father. He tells he never knew where his son was…doing
political activity. He also tells that he studied economy;
3) The photographer
tells that the sharing with other members of the photographic team (Wim Wenders)
brings permanent camera shoots/ counter-shoot;
4)
Conjoint photography with Sebastiao’s son in a remote island at the western
Siberia sea;
5) A biographical
note about the parting of Sebastiao from his parents’ house to Vitória (Brazil),
with the aim of attending studies; his relationship with Léila whom he married
at the time he obtained a bourse for studies at the University of Sao Paulo,
sharing with her left political movements against the very hard Brazilian
military dictatorship, from whichthey finally escaped, leaving to Paris in
August 1969. Then, while he continued his studies in Economy Léila, studying
Architecture, bought a camera that was very useful for Sebastiao; afterwards
they moved to London where he started to travel to Africa for studying
development projects of the World Bank. Sebastiao took with him the camera and
shoot many photos that in time led him to start a project on photography,
leaving the career of Economy and buying a photographic equipment, with whom he
made portraits, weddings, sports and nudes; at times of a big drought in Niger
(1973) he shoot women queuing for asking food; was born first Sebastiao’s son,
Juliano (1974). Lélia introduced the work to magazines, newspapers and agencies
until they found courage to design their first photographic project: “Otras
Américas”: Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia… the Andes range. Latin America was
at the time in social unrest, emerging in parallel to the Liberation Theology.
In that time he met in Ecuador a young priest named Gabicho who carried to the peasants the word of God and organized
them into cooperatives introducing solidarity. Sebastiao enjoyed both the views
and communities.
The Saraguro Indians at southern Ecuador were
big believers as well that big alcohol consumers; more than half the community
during the weekend stayed completely drunk. Lupe was very friend of mine –at
that time I had a blonde and very long hair, also a big beard very red and blonde-.
One day we walked by the mountains, he got closer to me and said –“Look,
Sebastiao, I know well that they had sent you from heaven, cause according to
the legend of Saraguros, the gods to the very image of Christ were to return to
the Earth to look on us, to observe us and decide who would merit the heaven”.
Then, while we marched through the mountains he took advantage to tell me about
his life: he seriously believed I was there for watching on them and then tell
in the superior about their behavior. Time runs very slowly, with other way of
thinking, other speed. In Oaxaca, Mexico he got in touch with a group of
peasants called Mixtecs who lived in a feudal way, music being the most
important activity for the community, all the members of the community who knew
how to play an instrument hadn’t need to work: they worked as musicians. They
made me sleep several days in a very cold room to evaluate if I resisted, if I
wanted to truly stay. As I finally resisted they took me to a house and I got
much more close to the community. We made friends, I was in harmony with them.
Other Indian tribe are the Tarahumaras at the North of Mexico who are great
runners, they walk running, they don’t march they fly! Several times they
approached to my camera and made me feel a technician of sound: they told
things as if they were being recorded. The strength of a portrait says if we
understand a bit about the life of the person from whom is taken a photograph,
the eyes say much, the expression of the face. When you make a portrait there
is not only you who takes the photograph, the person offers the photo. For me
they were so important. The basis wasthe same: it was my continent, we werevery
close.
Otras Américas lasted eight years to Sebastiao.
Each time he returned home to see his family and edit his photographs with
Lélia, Sebastiao seemed a big adventurer to his son, a superhero more than a
photographer. “Finally I joined to my father in one of his missions: to Wrangle,
a deserted island in the Arctic Ocean”. Sebastiao waited to start working.
Sebastiao wanted to take photos to the last large gathering of walruses but a
polar bear makes all the flock to plunge into the ocean and so the team has to
wait the former animal to find a position or action that would satisfy the
esthetics frame for the photo. Both bear and photographer rested until the arctic
sunset, when they finally crawled in the stone beach up to reach the herd of
walruses, shooting photos giving sight of their diverse forms in action. When
Sebastiao is drinking iced stream water taken with his own hands, Juliano asked
him to tell about 1979, when his second son, Rodrigo, was born having Down
syndrome. The sorrows and fears of the family for it disappeared when later Rodrigo
developed his own language and the family learnt to decode his emotional
language and to communicate with no words with him. At the time the Brazilian
tyranny was over the family moved to Brazil after ten and a half years abroad. When
reunited with their very aged parents, Sebastiao also wanted to see Brazil in
depth and so then he travelled for six months through the north eastern Brazil
he didn't knew before. There he reached a group of persons going to the
funeral, and joined them.
The children that die before they are baptized,
are buried with the eyes open in the belief they had to find their way to
heaven from the intermediate “limbo” risking to undergo an eternal stroll if it
is not found. The coffins could be hired at the church, the same one used
several times. At the market they were offered for hiring together with shoes,
fruits, vegetables, ice creams, everything… This is a region of the world where
life and death are very close to each other. Also at the same time the family
group prayed, they found time to practice political work. In Brazil there is a
big movement of peasants with no lands, the most of them come from the north
eastern territories. They are people of great moral and physical strength
although they are frail due to bad nutrition; the region in fact is very arid,
making the people to part and don`t return. They give up, they abandon their
lands.
The
Salgado family farm in Minas Gerais also suffered the consequences of draught,
losing the pasture and cattle which extended to theloss in income. At that time
seeded plants didn’t grow, birds lowered. Juliano’s grandfather says he had no
idea in which way to end with abrasion. -I was happy raising my children: seven
female and a male, “Tiao”, feeding and dressing them well-. “These lands from my grandfather had
always been burnt and dry, the place had nothing to do with the paradise my
father recalled from his childhood”.
The sufferings he had seen, changed him, his role of photographer acquired a
new sense. During the 1984-1986 years he voyaged to Sahel, Ethiopia, Africa and
worked together with Doctors without Borders, making a report over hunger.
There was a camp of refugees, the biggest in
the history of humanity until that moment: I felt crazy of showing there was a
big part of humanity that lived under extreme anguish and miserable conditions,
at most due to a problem of sharing that wasn’t only a question of natural
catastrophe. This was a Coptic region, very Christian in northern Africa, of a
big humbleness, unable to get ahead of others, even to a dying child. They
preferred to wait. In such a state of skin and bones it’s impossible to endure
much. In those camps hunger finished with many lives. It’s the cause of the
body malaise, but the other diseases are the ones killing: quick dehydration by
cholera, losing up to 12 liters of liquid a day because of diarrhea and dying
in two-three days. Faces so young and so much aged by suffering. The forehead
is from a young person but the eyes are aged, empty. During the night occur
many deaths, caused by cold. Dying here is like a continuation of life. People
gets habituated to die. The husband washes her wife before burying her. Dressed
in mountain clothes, with goat furs on him. Agreeing with the Coptic beliefs,
the body has to be cleansed for the encounter with God: it has to be washed,
all washed even if water is scarce. Each person that dies is piece of the world
dying. The father prepares his son for burial to saying his last good-by to
him. Normally is the family the one who
prepares the dead. To know that the government retains the food for not letting
it arrive to the people means a brutal political dishonesty. When in 1984 the
guerrilla understood that the government plundered the region, they began to
send the people to Sudan, to the region of Tigray, but two speedy combat
helicopters Mi24 fired the people with submachine guns. Many pregnant women
walked with the hope of finding water and food at the Promised Land. I had to
stay there at least two months. When I arrived to Sudan I had a lot of work at
the arrival of such people. They brought in arms their exhausted children,
perhaps dead. After all that marching, when meeting doctors children were dead.
It was necessary to disassemble the camp of the Doctors without Borders because
the water was primordial and it was necessary to move as quickly as possible.
They piled up them in United Nations trucks for taking them to another camp
into a beauty fertile land, at the shores of the Blue Nile. We made 300-400 kilometers
in those trucks: in there two friends departed as if they were telling stories
below a tree. When getting closer to the Nile, it was possible to find water
but here the people died because there was no food. At the border of misery
they forgot or they couldn’t bring food. Although they said they have food,
when arriving there it was nothing. In 1985 I went to Mali where they have had
a large drought: the people’s skin was alike the tree bark, like trees marked
by wind and sand, by sand storms. They were only women and children; men had
marched to Libya for work or else migrated to the Ivory Coast in the search of
work, with the promise of coming back and bring food to their families. Very
few returned. Here they were all safe because Doctors without Borders made a
big job, bringing assistance to the region. Luc, a Belgian M.D. measured and
weighed the child. After 15-20 days children were healthier, unrecognizable,
although they were marked for life because of the lacks that they had suffered
during their growth.It’s worthwhile to look the posture and determination of a
lonely boy of 8-9 years old facing the desert, as dressed in the remains of a
shirt and without any trousers, accompanied by his dog while taking a small
guitar in his other hand. It’s somebody who knows where he goes, in the search
of other groups, of people of appurtenance.
Sebastiao
was fond of the people of the Sahel region. He returned there over and over
again. His photographs, the book and the exposition organized by Léila, called the
attention of the world over droughts and lives of millions of people, demanding
questions without answer over the cause of such situation. Then Sebastiao
dedicated to an issue that kept his attention for other six years, making
numerous journeys to almost thirty countries: The hand of man [Workers], the third volume of photos he
conceived together to Léila.
I wished to make a kind of homage to all the
men and women that had constructed our world: the archeology of the Industrial Age.
Sebastiao
and Leila researched and planned in detail “WORKERS”. Afterwards
Sebastiao, driven by the sympathy with the human condition, returned to travel
to the four corners of the world: he photographed steel workers at the USSR, he
lived with ship saboteurs at Bangladesh, sailed with fishermen from Galicia and
Sicily, showed the mechanic production of cars in Calcutta, he observed
agriculture in Ruanda. Each chapter of “The hand of man” plunged him into
the particular places of handwork. In 1991, at the end of the 1st Gulf War, the
Iraqi soldiers retreated and Saddam Hussein burnt thousands of oil wells that
called thousands of world firemen, making Sebastiao to felt attracted for such
explosive profession.
When I saw the first images on television I
knew I had to do that coverage. It was like working in an enormous theater.
Around 500 wells burning. A huge scene that was set in the size of the planet.
Nobody controlled us, we could go where we wished. There were fumes, thick
smoke oil. So much cumulative smoke was so thick that didn't let the sun to
pass over. There were days that it was night the 24 hours. After the fire was
turned off the land was so hot that it was needed to throw lots of water to
cool it; if not temperature was so high that made the oil to restart burning.
Yet still there was an explosion that sounded like a cannon. The noise was so
much deafening that was like working near the turbine of a plane. At the
present time I'm a bit deaf. My deafness started then. The Canadian firemen
came from Calgary in a pretty red truck, they had a rule in washing the truck
after ending the fire, every night; and in the next morning the truck returned
to be covered by oil: a hellish work! I delayed my departure at least two-three
times up to the day I had to part. It broke my heart to leave that huge
spectacle. I got around there almost to the end when we passed in front of a
big wall together with a Journalist from the New York Times. It was land of no
body, the war had destroyed everything… We broke the door, when we got in we
found a kind of paradise that had turned into a hell, a kind of garden of the
Royal family of Kuwait, keeping horses, thoroughbreds, that had become
completely fool . Such animals are the first to escape a catastrophe if they
are free to escape, that they weren’t. We found birds there because that was an
oasis, everything was well irrigated. Such birds couldn't fly because their
feathers were glued. The Kuwaitis had escaped when the catastrophe started,
leaving animals locked, together with the Bedouins to whom they not considered
human beings.
Sebastiao
turned then an artist whose photographs were published at the best magazines.
The exposition made a “tour de monde” and the book was published in many
languages. But Sebastiao and Léila didn’t stop there, they immediately began a
new phase of their photography: they observed that another major issue of our
times was the displacement of entire populations caused by wars, hunger and the
role of globalization. At the time that Europe closed it frontiers Sebastiao
tried to shed light on the lives of marginalized, accompanied by Léila who
again started to research and plan, turning into the impulse of a new chapter
which they entitled “Exodus” (1993-1999). It waked world
conscience about the life of refugees from India, Vietnam, Philippines, Latin
America, Palestine, Iraq and many other places. Sebastiao returned to the
continent that had trapped his imagination long time before: to Africa.
I was making a project on the movement of
populations when the plane of the President of Ruanda was dejected, a big
movement migrated to Tanzania (Tanzania 1994) due to the harsh repression
against the Tutsis in Ruanda. People escaped to Burundi, Congo, Uganda,
everywhere; the routes where full of people, resting aside, carrying all their
belongings in bicycles, taking with them what they could… We followed the road
in the opposite direction and arrived to the border. There was no security nor
nothing. When I arrived to Ruanda it was terrifying, the number of dead that
were found in those roads, whether killed by a grenade or killed with machete,
I understood the dimension of such genocide catastrophe… They were 150 km up to
arrive to the outskirts of Kingali and 150 km of dead. I returned because I was
making a book about the refugees, about the exodus. I got into those camps and
began to see the number of persons that abandoned Ruanda: hell installed within
paradise. It was something appalling to envisage how so a beautiful meadow was
formed into a megacity. In a few days they were almost one million persons
there. In the midst of such big anguish it impressed me a mother looking to his
child on her lap and the confidence of the child expressed to her. In
Yugoslavia, Europe (1994-1995) it was shocking to find the same violence and
brutality as that one in the far away countries: in a bus coming from Krajina,
when crossing Croatia, a person was killed through a hole in the window, killed
by Croatians that assassinated many persons abandoning such place, from where
all the Serbian population was expulsed: from one moment to the other entire
families were thrown out of their houses and had to look for somewhere to go.
They had their neighbors in front shooting against them. What dislikes the most
is to see at what extreme hate is contagious. In central Bosnia, a refugee camp
near Tuzla gathered families escaping from Zepa, where the Serbs had
assassinated thousands of youths, so we were there at the moment when those
families arrived and installed in a state of great anguish. They were only
women, aged men and children. The young men were retained or assassinated. It
is weird to see this happening in Europe, at the end of the XXth century; for
their cars it can be seen that these are people with a life level and with intellectual
standards of Europeans, a European infrastructure, and that they had lose
everything. Hundreds of km crowded of people and cars. Humans are a most feral,
terrible animal, whether in Europe or in Africa, whether in Latin America. Our
violence is extreme. Our history is a history of wars. It’s a never ending
story, a history of repression, a crazy history. The situation in Ruanda
continued evolving: the Hutu army that had the power was dejected and so
retired to Congo, to the region of Goma (Congo 1994). First were the Tutsis who
escaped from the barbarism of Hutus, then they were these who escaped from the
occupation of the Tutsi. Everyone has escaped. In several days of July 1994 the
region of Goma received more than two million persons. There installed
catastrophe: illnesses as cholera started to propagate and people began to die
like flies: there was 12.000 to 15.000 people dead per day. I shot photos of
heaps of dead. I saw approaching a father with his child in arms and throw it
there, leaving after with his pal talking as if nothing. It gave no rest to
bury the people; they brought tractors from the French army that collected
dozens that were thrown to the earth and afterwards covered with it. Everyone
would have to see these images to understand the terrible aspect of our
species. Orphan children were found in the road, children with morbid eyes
would die, surviving those other with vivid ones. When I left that I was ill,
very ill, my body was ill, not because of an infectious disease, but was my
soul that was ill. I went back to Rwanda one year after the catastrophe,
waiting for the return of Hutus who were at Congo and didn’t have where to go,
as the United Nations started to oblige them to return (Rwanda, 1995). It gave
the impression that the whole planet was covered with refugee tents. After
working there the Tutsi authorities proposed me to visit several places,
sceneries of repression. People had sheltered in a church thinking they were
able to save themselves at such place: all were assassinated. Or in a school
where it’s possible to watch the written blackboard when the death toll
happened. It was horrible. A fraction of the two million people of the
population that left Rwanda returned, but the other part feared possible
repression: a group of 250.000 left the city of Goma and entered into the
forest of Congo, they got lost, everyone knew that there were 250.000 lost
persons, without giving a clue where they were. Six months later they had begun
to appear in Kisangani, at central Congo. They had spent six months within the
forest. The UN High Commissioner took me to this place. I spent three days with
such people that continued to arrive, columns and columns of people arriving.
From the 250.000 persons that departed, they returned 40.000, 210.000 missing.
Besides, life continued: hairdressers, those collecting foreign exchange
working with a computer in the middle of nowhere, in a forest isolated of
everything (Congo 1997). A moment arrived that the Kisangani guerrilla that was
pro-Tutsi began to fire that people, to send them back so they had to walk
other six months to return to Ruanda. They started to kill some… There I found
people that couldn’t stand it anymore; they had started to rave, they had lost
their mind, they had turned mad. In reality from such expulsed people it was
not heard nothing else. I am sure they all had got assassinated. This was my
last journey, such grim adventure in Rwanda. I left there not believing in
nothing more. I didn’t believe in the salvation of the human species. We
wouldn’t survive to such a thing. We didn’t merit to live more. No one would
merit living. How many times I threw the camera to the floor for crying for
what I was watching.
Sebastiao
leaned out at the heart of darkness and questioned his work as social
photographer and witness of the human condition. What was left to do after
Rwanda? [WW]
At that time the health of my
grandfather got worst and my parents had to go back to Brazil for taking charge
of the farm. It was just barren land. They didn’t know what to do with it. The
birds, alligators and woods had disappeared. Nothing remained from the
marvelous forest that inhabited the memories of Sebastiao’s childhood [JS].
Then Léila
had a magnificent idea: Why we don't plant here the forest that it was here
before? That forest covering these hills was the Atlantic bush: the Atlantic
tropical forest. Nobody had ever attempted to replant it, moreover to the
extension of 600 ha. Her hint came probably from her desire of maintaining
alive the family spirit. During the next ten years what occurred in these lands
was a miracle that converted since that moment into the “Terra Institute” [WW].
I recall
that during the first plantation I dreamt during nights that everything died,
because the earth was horrible. It was in bad state, so degraded that I asked
to myself: Would these plants take root? The Atlantic bush has over four
hundred different species; we didn’t have such all but we finished planting a
hundred or a hundred fifty species… It’s true that in the first plantation we
lose 60%, in the second one 40%... They weren’t books teaching how to replant
the Atlantic bush! [Léila]
I’m happy to come to see all the trees
together. When one looks at this wooded area it brings an idea of the effort
that supposes to plant all these trees. When I was a child there existed a
little water fall, at all times of the year. I came together with my sisters
and we made a picnic under the water fall. There
was much jungle yet. Afterwards, when the trees were chopped, water
disappeared. Nowadays our jungle is very young and needs much water, but in
10-15 years, when everything gets stable I’m sure that that beautiful spring of
water will reappear. There are seen many small paths, hundreds of small paths
by where the cows go along crushing the earth were nothing grows again. Such
land with short grass now lays beside the other ecosystem with ten million
trees planted, completely recovered. Here it’s shown the cicada that sings
until it dies, this one will remain buried here, over the tree cortex. We look
at a tree and we only think in its verticality, on its beauty, although
everything depends on it: water, oxygen, the home of little insects: ants,
cicada. It’s nice to touch a tree that you have helped to plant, well implanted
and solid, that will live for 400-500 years.
During the
first days we said: “We’re going to plant a forest”: it didn’t grow from a
little plant but from a million. And not only here but in the surroundings, an
idea that can evolve and grow. Our method can replicate in almost everywhere.
Of course, the species are not the same but the way of acting is the same in
all the tropical forests. [Léila]
The earth
was the medicine for the hopelessness of Sebastiao. The joy of looking the
trees, the resurgent buds made Sebastiao to reborn his photographer vocation, although
Léila and he knew they could not return anymore to what they did before [WW].
We arrived to the conclusion of beginning a new
photographic project over the environment. The
first idea was to denounce the destruction of the woods or the ocean pollution,
whatsoever. But afterwards, little by little we started to think in a different
project. Let us make a homage to the planet, and surprisingly we discovered
that almost half of the planet stayed as the first day of Genesis (Genesis 2004-2013). Many friends gave us advice for not to enter
in that field as I am a human social photographer and that from then on I would
turn to be another one of the photographers of views and animals. It’s nothing
wrong with it; I will learn to photograph such things too. And so I began the first
story. I’d liked to go to Galápagos, I needed to understand what Darwin had
understood: the same species in very different ecosystems that had evolved in
very different ways. Looking in detail the foot of iguana I couldn’t avoid
thinking on the hand of a Middle Age warrior with its metallic flakes for
protection. Looking at the structure of such hand I realize iguana is also my
cousin; that we come from the same cell, that we were in front an old being, in
front of an authority, with all its shrinks, with all its wisdom. Certainly,
when Darwin came here this turtle was already an adult, perhaps she saw Darwin.
Who knows? I remember once I was very weary because I had walked over lava fields
for a long time, so I lay on the beach and I felt that something was touching
my leg: I looked and it was a sea wolf, whereas I had other one installed at
the other side. At the end they were three sea lions. They didn’t considered
man as a predator, a menace: it was my first interview to nature, the first
time I photographed other animals. Over eight years I had time to see and
understood the most important: that I am so much nature as a turtle, as a tree,
as a stone. The glance of a chimpanzee remains extraordinary, very deep; he
came next to me so I shoot a photo, he put the finger within his mouth and he
was looking to himself for first time in a mirror. I was in front of him and he
put and took away the finger, and started to understand that it was himself. He
was already recognizing his image. I felt completely identified. It was a
family like ours, with a grandfather, a father, their children. They respected
among them and you have to respect their manners. You have to seat in a
particular way, you have to respect their territory and since that moment they
receive you. I also made friend of a whale, whales in Argentina. An adult
measures 35 m. and weighs 40 tons, more or less. She was approaching, she came
to the ship. I could touch her… and it was incredible. What so sensitive skin! While I was making
caresses to her I could appreciate that her tail was trembling at 35 m. from
it. A phenomenal sensitivity! We had a little boat of no more than seven m.She
knew that if she would strike us strongly she could sink us… But she never
touched the boat, never! At times she moved away and lashed the sea with the
tail. Here I have photos from Nenets: their house, 18 members and 6.000 reindeers
that lived in constant migration; close to 8 P.M. they catch fire and they make
the only hot meal for the day. After dinner they have social circle and blow
out the fire. While the fire is on temperature is nice: 15-20
degrees, two hours later it’s minus 30 degrees. They are real Siberian cowboys;
they always keep their ties around their neck, made of reindeer skin; they wear
boots of silver fox fur. They sleep with the boots on, the boots endure
lifetime. Obi is a very special Siberian river that when you cross it over
you’re in the Arctic Polar Circle. There’s no horizon line, there’s nothing.
We’re within a white plate of the universe size.
Genesis made Sebastiao to return to travel around the
world for almost a decade. He was going to show us nature, animals, places and
people that lived like in the start of time. A much more optimistic vision of
the planet that the one he had seen injured and destroyed. Genesis was going to be his masterpiece, a letter of love addressed
to the planet.[WW]
We had representations of the Zoé in XVIth
century Jesuit writings that came from the Amazon River reporting about people
wearing some kind of tube in the inferior lip. Such Indians had never been
seen; up to the end of 1980 when we were in touch with them again, it was
thought they were a fable or an invention from Jesuits. These Indians live in
paradise: the only place I’ve seen in my life were women have 3-5 spouses as
them as well [State of Pará, Brazil, Zoé tribe, 2009]. The female has a hunter
male, a fisher male, an agriculture worker male, a male that is close to the
house and helps her to do everything; women have enormous power, they have
considerable dominion over activity of men. A matter that I have found very
interesting of these people is that they had whole consciousness of their image
so when I was going to shoot a photo the person knew that I was going to
represent its image. Initially they seemed somehow interested but later they
lose interest. It wasn’t their world. On the other side, they were very much
interested in my knife; my friend Ypó made me swore that I was going to present
him my knife, but the responsible of the FNI had made me promise that I would
not give them any object in order to protect the purity of these Indians. He
said to me: “Look, we make a deal, the day you leave you throw the knife
through the airplane window. I will follow the plane trajectory and I will find
such knife”.
A new frame
shows Sebastiao staring at the plants that had 40-50 years.
The ferns are marvelous plants that grow in the
shadow of the centre of the jungle, in the higher parts, that recalls me my
mother's hair. She was a very pretty woman. These were her plants. When she
died my father looked after them until he died. Afterwards we brought them here.
Now is raining. How pretty! This earth is very important to us. We are closing
a circle with this earth, and in such circle we spent our life: the life of my
parents and sisters passed together to a large part of my own life, and today
we adjoin again our lives to all of this: my life and Léila’s life once again.
It continues to be our history. It took part of my children story and now it’s
of my old age. And so the day that I will die we will leave here the forest
that existed before I was born, therefore a cycle will be completed. It’s my
life history.
The man that’s the author of the
photographs that tell us a thousand stories of the life of this planet shares
in the present a big projectwith us, a dream: the destruction of nature isn’t
irreversible. There is more than one thousand springs of water returning anew
to the soil of “Terra Institute”. There are 2,5 and half million trees planted.
Feral animals had also come back including jaguars. The land is no more
Salgado's possession, now it’s a national park that belongs to all. This is a
demonstration that it is possible to reinstall original forests in the abused maltreated
land elsewhere.
Summary
The
initial narrative sequences of THE SALT OF THE EARTH start describe several
scenes of a dangerous exposition of men to slavery for gold in the mines,
followed by blindness of a woman from a desert land. Then starts a series of conversations of the
photographer S. Salgado with his father “I
had long walks with my father and where we come together for sightseeing.
Behind each of the mountains there is a history, something to see. Here I had
daydreamt a lot; I wished to go far than those mountains, I wanted to know”;
conversations with nude Indonesian Indians; his own story as told by his
father; conversations amongst photographers and with his own son.
After such
an introduction Salgado starts describing his photographic and personal
plights: 1) queuing of African women asking for food; 2) community work with
Latin American Indians. Afterwards it further returns to conversations amongst
photographers and together with his son: When
Sebastiao is drinking iced stream water taken with his own hands, Juliano asks
him to tell about 1979, when his second son, Rodrigo, was born having Down
syndrome; such personal story ends by telling about his later return to his
land (Brazil) when he needed to reunite with his very aged parents and wanted
to know Brazil in depth. Then he tells Brazilian stories about children burial
rites …”This is a region of the world
where life and death are very close to each other”, northeastern
migration…“They give up, they abandon
their lands” and drought in his own father’s farm…“the place had nothing to do with the paradise my father recalled from
his childhood”.
These latter three
issues give entrance to the subsequent main narrative stories that Salgado had
described with neat image detail giving credit of his own commitment with death
perception and the mourning process: 1) HUNGER AND DEATH RYTUALS, during the
1984-1986 years he voyaged to Sahel, Ethiopia, Africa and worked together with
Doctors without Borders, making a report over hunger. Such camp of refugees was the biggest in the history of humanity until that
moment: I felt crazy of showing there was a big part of humanity that lived
under extreme anguish and miserable conditions, at most due to a problem of
sharing that wasn’t only a question of natural catastrophe. In such a state of
skin and bones it’s impossible to endure much. People get’s habituated to die.
Agreeing with the Coptic beliefs, the body has to be cleansed for the encounter
with God: it has to be washed, all washed even if water is scarce. Each person
that dies is piece of the world dying. The father prepares his son for burial
to saying his last good-by to him. 2) SEARCH FOR FOOD AND WATER People arrived
to Sudan with their exhausted children in arms, perhaps dead; as it was no
water they were moved 300-400 kilometers to the Nile, but there the people died
because there was no food. Sebastiao was fond of the people of the Sahel
region. He returned there over and over again. His photographs, the book and
the exposition organized by Léila, called the attention of the world over
droughts and lives of millions of people, demanding questions without answer
over the cause of such situation. 3) The
hand of man [Workers] and DEATH covered the hellish work due to thousands of oil wells burning and
bursting at the end of the 1st Gulf War along depictions of hell remembering Hieronymus Bosch images with horses locked and birds with glued feathers, a time when the photographer’s deafness started; 4) “Exodus”
(1993-1999) and DEATH describes a big movement that migrated to Tanzania due
to the harsh repression against the Tutsis in Ruanda…”They were 150 km up to
arrive to the outskirts of Kingali and 150 km of dead. Hell installed within
paradise. It was something appalling to envisage how so a beautiful meadow was
formed into a megacity. In a few days they were almost one million persons
there. Later were the Hutus, the ones who escaped from the occupation of the
Tutsi. Everyone has escaped. In several days of July 1994 the region of Goma
received more than two million persons. When I left that I was ill, very ill,
my body was ill, not because of an infectious disease, but was my soul that was
ill. There I found people that couldn’t stand it anymore; they had started to
rave, they had lost their mind, they had turned mad. In reality from such
expulsed people it was not heard nothing else. I am sure they all had got
assassinated. This was my last journey, such grim adventure in Rwanda. I left
there not believing in nothing more. I didn’t believe in the salvation of the
human species. We wouldn’t survive to such a thing. We didn't merit to live more. No one would merit living. How many times
I threw the camera to the floor for crying for what I was watching. 5)
MIGRATION IN EUROPE: In Yugoslavia, Europe (1994-1995) it was shocking to find
the same violence and brutality as that one in the far away countries: what
dislikes the most is to see at what extreme hate is contagious. In central
Bosnia, a refugee camp near Tuzla gathered families escaping from Zepa, where
the Serbs had assassinated thousands of youths, so we were there at the moment
when those families arrived and installed in a state of great anguish. Humans
are a most feral, terrible animal, whether in Europe or in Africa, whether in
Latin America. Our violence is extreme. Our history is a history of wars. It’s
a never ending story, a history of repression, a crazy history. 6) WITNESS OF
THE HUMAN CONDITION Sebastiao leaned out at the heart of darkness and
questioned his work as social photographer and witness of the human condition.
The earth was the medicine for the hopelessness of Sebastiao. The joy of
looking the trees, the resurgent buds made Sebastiao to reborn his passion for
photography. Although Léila and he knew they could not return anymore to
travelling, they arrived to the conclusion of beginning a new photographic
project over the environment. 7) Genesis
made Sebastiao to return to travel around the world for almost a decade. He was
going to show us nature, animals, places and people that lived like in the
start of time. A much more optimistic vision of the planet that the one he had
seen injured and destroyed. Genesis
was going to be his masterpiece, a letter of love addressed to the planet.
DISCUSSION
This film shows the discovery of a photographer of different endangering
aspects of contemporary societies and cultures that grow and develop aside the
world’s advances of science and technology remaining submitted to non human
life conditions under totalitarian rule, war and selfish practices of the
societies governed by empowered groups of nations and enterprisesoverlooking
human needs and centered in commercial, economical, technical and military
ruling. His approach is neither anthropological nor sociological, he
understands the cultural and sociological phenomena that are described by him
in his portraits in the realm of his artistic and human sensitivity, accessible
to his own personal and family life. Numerous bereavement situations due to
hunger, work enforcement, loss of home and land, disease and massive death, due
to tribal wars and escape as refugees to other lands, are described by him
connected with his own situation exposing the citizens of his country to
tyranny, migration and death,as well his own bereavement experiences needing to
leave his country, undergoing the expectancy of a Down syndrome new child,the
drought at his father’s farm and at last the recovery of its forest as fruit of
the recreational task by which he regained the original family life environment.
All his narrative is backed by his wife from whom he got the camera and
designed all the photographic projects, to which later joined his son Juliano
and the renowned film director Wim Wenders, narrators and directors of the
movie telling this story.Hence, it might be said that his egocentric self is
the main protagonist in the narrative, directly concerned with his own person
and family group as well backed by the latter and by an additional film
narrator. Description is not guided by anthropological objective observation
but is more like that one of another human being that is embarked in a same
human quest for survival. In conclusion, it might be asserted that his interpersonal reconstructive
efforts with the socio-cultural groups with whom he interacts as artist and
human being don’t submit to repeat the dominant social and cultural systems’
narratives modelling societies and cultures, but instead express his own
version of reality that describes in all possible forms the nature of
bereavementunder the most un-human circumstances. At the end of the film his
disappointment about the world situation undergoing the most unbelievable crime
against humanity, attempts to find reparation by focusing in his own natural
family environment of Brazil, repairing the barren forest by the discovery of
bringing back the forest from the older times of his childhood. Then he
launches together with his wife to a new project where he can get marveled from
the geographical sights of the world, together to catch images of plants and
wild animals in connection with him along to rediscover a lost paradise of
naked Amazonian Indians in stretch contact with the jungle and nature. Through
his whole life Sebatiao Salgado underwent disease, death and recovery with
final acceptance of the injury and possible repair. Orphan children were found in the road, children with morbid eyes would
die, surviving those other with vivid ones. When I left that I was ill, very
ill, my body was ill, not because of an infectious disease, but was my soul
that was ill // I left Rwanda not
believing in nothing more. I didn’t believe in the salvation of the human
species. We wouldn’t survive to such a thing. We didn’t merit to live more // The ferns are marvelous plants that grow in the shadow of the centre of
the jungle, in the higher parts, that recalls me my mother's hair. She was a
very pretty woman. These were her plants. When she died my father looked after
them until he died. Afterwards we brought them here. Now is raining. How pretty!
This earth is very important to us. We are closing a circle with this earth,
and in such circle we spent our life: the life of my parents and sisters passed
together to a large part of my own life, and today we adjoin again our lives to
all of this: my life and Léila’s life once again. It continues to be our
history. It took part of my children story and now it’s of my old age. And so
the day that I will die we will leave here the forest that existed before I was
born, therefore a cycle will be completed. It’s my life history.
Salgado’s photographic and oral narratives (the
latter as comments to the former in the film) account to a personal narrative that adjusts to multiple
collective self levels: to a family self (Adler, 1966; Bowen, 1997), to a cultural
self*and to a social self**, the latter two varying through diverse cultures,
regions and historic times (Taylor, 1989; Gergen, 1991); as well to the
spiritual self in touch with wholeness (Tugendhat,
1997).
In
the family level Salgado follows a route of differentiation from his parents
that moved to his nuclear family with his wife and children (Bowen, 1991). The differentiation process of the self might be defined as the ability
to separate the individual's own intellectual and emotional functioning from that one of the family. By the accounts of his life by his father, son, wife and himself it
might be asserted that both types of functioning didn’t diverge following
separated outcomes but integrated in an only trend towards artistic
accomplishment and intellectual commitment with the poor of the earth, a task
that he initiated along with his wife during his youth backing a political
position that he shared with those of his land to whom he honors, while he followed
a similar search for other lands when desert and tyranny abducted his territory
“…At the same time the family group prayed, they
found time to practice political work. In Brazil there is a big movement of
peasants with no lands, the most of them come from the north eastern
territories. They are people of great moral and physical strength although they
are frail due to bad nutrition; the region in fact is very arid, making the
people to part and don`t return. They give up, they abandon their lands”.
A further step escalates through the matters he
devoted to register as photographer of the most endangered regions of the world
where he insistently had worked through very long periods. Within a peer fashion
–man to man- contact with the fellows he portrayed, he established a esthetic
glance integrated to a social testimony of the human utmost suffering at the
same time that giving credit of each single trace of their firmness under such
extreme situations This was a Coptic region, very
Christian in northern Africa, of a big humbleness, unable to get ahead of
others, even to a dying child. They preferred to wait// It’s worthwhile to look
the posture and determination of a lonely boy of 8-9 years old facing the
desert, as dressed in the remains of a shirt and without any trousers,
accompanied by his dog while taking a small guitar in his other hand// In the
midst of such big anguish it impressed me a mother looking to his child on her
lap and the confidence of the child expressed to her.
His extreme
sensitivity for the human condition paralleled the communication aims that had
a central role in his family life, bringing together his wife and eldest son in
the quests for developing photographic narratives of the wounded social
environment and for developing innovative work with the natural environment.
Such communication aim extends to every member of the family [”When Sebastiao is drinking iced
stream water taken with his own hands, Juliano asks him to tell about 1979,
when his second son, Rodrigo, was born having Down syndrome. The sorrows and
fears of the family for it disappeared when later Rodrigo developed his own
language and the family learnt to decode his emotional language and to
communicate with no words with him”], as well it shines through his association with Wim Wenders filming
and making adjusted sound comments on the photographer’s vocation: in his drama film “Paris, Texas” (1984), Wenders carefully exposed about the conditions that
seem necessary to foster communication between distant brothers separated by
time and isolation. In the initial segment it is described the narrative space
that is required for willing to listen and expend waiting time in order to find
the relational conditions of confidence that are necessary to generate a valid
narrative that would finally result in the exposure and listening to each
other. Under this sight the photo of the blind woman over the director’s desk
would be equivalent to meeting at a “crossroads” with the photographer, the
time lag for waiting a chance of encounter that is necessary to develop deep
communication amongst two loners.
Simultaneous to the
enhancement of the communication skills it grows creative resources in the
family group that apply to the relations between members and with the social
groups, in this case with the family and land of origin, the renaissance of the degraded natural environment. Nobody had ever attempted to replant
the Atlantic tropical forest. Such hint came from Léila, the photographer’s
wife, probably from her desire of maintaining alive the family spirit. During
the next ten years what occurred in those lands was a miracle that converted
since that moment into the “Terra Institute”// There is more than one thousand
springs of water returning anew to the soil of “Terra Institute”. There are 2,5
and half million trees planted. Feral animals had also come back including
jaguars.// It’s my life and Léila’s life once again. It continues to be our history. It
took part of my children story and now it’s of my old age. And so the day that
I will die we will leave here the forest that existed before I was born,
therefore a cycle will be completed. It’s my life history.
Salgado’s life story also enmeshes with the hunger, thirst, endless
wandering in the desert and forest, despair, loss of habitat, malnutrition, terminal
illness and massacre of thousands of defenseless people. Through his camera and
comments he describes the sorrows and pains of different moments of the
mourning process …”Such grim adventure in Rwanda. I
left there not believing in nothing more. I didn’t believe in the salvation of
the human species. We wouldn’t survive to such a thing. We didn’t merit to live
more. No one would merit living. How many times I threw the camera to the floor
for crying for what I was watching.
The psychic unity depicted by Salgado agrees with the doctrine
ot the psychic unity of mankind that has found increasing empirical substantiation
as anthropological research has proceeded (…) it asserts that there are no
essential differences in the fundamental nature of the thought process among
the various living races of man. Culture and social systems have distinct
integration mechanisms, the former a kind of meaningful integration whereas the
latter a causal functional integration regulated by biodfeedback forces similar
to those regulating organisms. Both would coexist among them and with a third
element, the pattern of motivational integration with the individual which we
usually call personality structure (Geertz, 1973). In connection with this, Luhmann (1984)
distinguishes three fundamental types of self-referent systems: living systems,
personal or psychic systems and social systems, each expressing an own type of
autopoietic operation as well the way they construct their own space of
operation and organization of its complexity: vital operations in the living
systems; consciousness the mode of operation of the personal/ psychic systems;
communication the characteristic trace of the social systems. Popper and Eccles (1977) suscribe on the existance of
an individual self, each one endowed with feelings, hopes and awes, sorrows and
joys, fears and dreams, that are known by the own person.
Discussion about the
personal and social diverging conceptions of the self seems tautological when
the argument is held from a context of analysis that is primarily personal or
primarily social: hence whatsoever conclusion it will bias definitions by
describing all phenomena with the epistemology of a unique field, erasing the
other one. In respect to nowadays social outlook of the self, its criteria of
existence seems to depend on the social contextualization (Lyons, 1978) or on
socio-cultural historian viewpoints from diverse epochs -romantic, modern or
post-modern- (Gergen, 1991), amongst which the Self would migrate alike human
migrations over different regions through the ages. In the present postmodern age,
social saturation would lead to an impairment of the notion on the existence of
a true recognizable Self. Such a social groundswell would also extend on how is
understood nowadays science made of ideological and political ebb and flow
forces (Gergen, 1991). As long that the social systems acquire hierarchical
authoritarian rule over its components, increased by instrumental weapons that
range from arm force, torture and most recently communication machines that can
emit constant messages, manipulate personal and interpersonal communication and
operate over the individuals through espionage systems ad hoc, it would be
likely to suppress autonomy and self-reference from the personal systems and
therefore bias the notion of a true personal self. Rather than the psychic
unity of mankind such distorted philosophical viewpoint would endorse the
global unity of mankind, justifying the denial of facts that lead to human
abuse and planet destruction at the same time that promoting political and
commercial slogans that pretend the opposite. Under such vision centered in the
denial of death and in the twisting effects of images, icons and signs
validating transmission but not
necessarily so the contents –as an outstanding musical monument dedicated
to praise the environmental worries that might assure eternal post burial life
to a rock singer-, human and environmental care efforts are misled. Our contemporary “post-modern” cultural denial of death and bereavement grows
in parallel to the establishment of social delusions assuring everlasting
technical communication that in turn puts at stake the development of firm
personal and group selves that are necessary to defend the own human and natural
environment priorities. This article discusses the relevance
of the personal self on its involvement with social and cultural matters that
are shared by the different social and cultural selves.
The Salt of the Earth directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado tells about the personal
artistic and social commitment of photographer Sebastiao Salgado and his family that centered from a personal and family group viewpoints, in the
visual narratives of the human and natural environments subjected to
destruction as well as in giving impressive esthetic testimony about their
survival signs resisting definitive loss.
The next Blog publication will go back to
February 2015 when it was released in Buenos Aires a 2014 film about the
outstanding involvement of a renowned cinema critic in a painstaking survival
spirit praising life and cinema learning about human life, along his peers and
family relatives sharing with him his struggle for real communication at both
life and terminal disease. Although such entry will not consider environment as
a key issue, it surely ends these 2014 film series analysis made since March
2015, as the alpha and omega of relevant art communication concerning the
cultural environment. Such documentary is about Roger Ebert’s life and death and is
called Life Itself, made by his
friend Steve James.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Notes
Notes
* Amongst the cultural self lay Personal and
National identities being made of a mosaic of group and socio-cultural
identities that integrate ambiguous national and universal appurtenances (Ernest
Tugendhat as quoted by Comuzzi, 2010). This feature as well as the need to
understand diverse meaning at diverse cultures and languages might be posed
hallmarks of Canadian culture that would benefit from conversation and
reflective sharing in order to achieve comprehension for the possible
resolution of conflicting issues in the intercultural communication
interactions as well to fulfil trans-cultural objectives promoting knowledge
and comprehension of the Canadian culture in relation to other cultures.
** The notion of the social self considers a social contextual emphasis that
imposes the start of the self at a
certain moment of the socio-cultural history –Gergen, 1991-. Under this view it might be said that the social self is quite vulnerable to the influence
of commercial and political power, both enhanced by propaganda. In the
political publicity indorsing rigid social self stories there are enhanced and
permanently transmitted leader stereotypes and government prototype measures of
the “good” and the “nationalistic models” that confront the “bad” that
characterize the opposition and the subjection to other cultures. Death and
loss are repudiated as based in the denial of the truth or validity of
something that contradicts the leader omnipotence and its nationalistic
political empowerment. In the dictatorial or post-dictatorial Peronist regime
governing Argentina through different cycles since the half of last century,
Eva Perón and Cristina Fernández Kirchner embodied mythical figures of the
“good” and of the “nationalistic models” that respectively are to survive death
as a mummified corpse showed within a crystal coffin lid or as a huge very
expensive building designed for honoring the everlasting life of the dead
couple. The dead leader becomes the representative of the social self competing
with other cultural representations, i.e. the latter Argentine president moved the
statue of Cristophoro Columbus –represented on his feet in a very calm
position- that was endowed by the Italian community at times of Argentina’s
first 100 years anniversary, changing it from its original emplacement next to
the Government palace and replaced it for a Latin American native woman holding
a weapon in an offensive attitude. Cristina Kirchner had said people would have
to fear god and also a little bit to her [09/07/2012]. The empowerment of a social self
model is devised to rule nations and social groups with unlimited fearful power.
Amongst Eva Peron’s mythology flourished terror tales [“The burned child”] that
would correspond to terror and idealization defensive mechanisms recursively
feeding opposite bad and good aspects of its political figure (Langer, 1957).
The omnipotence of a Social self had been represented by religious figures in
the past as a Big Brother would be in the internet future. In part such
enhancement of the social self might relate to the loss of a vigorous
folk tradition that has weaken the moral ties between individuals (Geertz, 1973). This is narrated in Argentina through
the poem “Santos Vega” from Raphael Obligado. Popper & Eccles (1977) on their side refer to the
start of the self referring to the acquisition of language and writing at the
beginning of civilization, if not since the Neardental men (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) >100.000 BC. “Before language was written there is prove about oral repetition of
stories by singers thal paved the way for their future writing, Gilgamesh being
the epical story to be known after long existence in Sumer since 2000 BC; the
development of the storytellig habit links to the development of imagination,
fantasy and invention.// Along the discovery of language and weapons, the use
of fire, emerged the discovery of the consciousness of the self and other selves,
and the knowledge of death. Burial rituals goes back to the man of Neardenthal
making possible to assess that these men were conscient of death along the
beliefs of after death life as corpses were buried with presents, flowers and
signs of caring”.
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