CARIBE COLOMBIANO en SOY CARIBE

En el número de enero de la revista SOY CARIBE se publica el artículo BARRANQUILLA y SANTA MARTA, en el que exploro estas dos regiones de COLOMBIA describiendo algunos de los atractivos más significativos del Caribe Colombiano. 

Podéis leer el artículo aquí.

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS en SOY CARIBE

En el número de julio se publicó en la revista SOY CARIBE el reportaje "CARTAGENA DE INDIAS" donde describo un itinerario por esta preciosa ciudad del Caribe de COLOMBIA rica en arquitectura, historia y gastronomía y con una de las murallas más extensas y mejor conservadas de toda América. 

Podéis leer el artículo entero aquí.

VALENTINA SOUSA al 3er SHERPA SONOR

Avui a les 20h al Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona s'inicia el tercer cicle de música SHERPA SONOR en el que diferents intèrprets ens donaran a conèixer músiques de diverses parts del món. 

Durant aquesta primera sessió hi haurà la presentació formal del cicle a càrrec de Josep Fornés, director del Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món i Ernesto Briceño, comissari i director del Sherpa Sonor i responsable del projecte musical barceloní Cordes del Món.
El primer concert serà a càrrec de Valentina Sousa Duo, format per l'artista panamenyo-italiana Valentina Sousa.
L'escriptor i viatger Jordi Canal-Soler en farà la presentació.

Valentina Sousa Duo

A què sona el Pacífic americà? A una estimulant barreja sonora, mestissa, polirítmica i plena de màgia.

Intèrpret: Valentina Sousa i dúo; marimba i percussió

Concert gratuït
Dia: 4 de maig de 2018
Hora: 20h
Lloc: Museu de Cultures del Món, c/Montcada, 12, Barcelona
Cal reserva prèvia al 93.256.23.00 o bé al correu electrònic: reservesmeb@bcn.cat

El mateix concert es repetirà el dia 9 de maig a la Biblioteca Sant Antoni-Joan Oliver (Comte Borrell, 44)

FIEBRE DEL CAUCHO en HISTORIA NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Este mes de septiembre publico en la revista HISTORIA National Geographic un reportaje sobre la Fiebre del Caucho que entre 1879 y 1912 convirtió a ciudades del interior del Amazonas como Iquitos y Manaus en las más ricas del mundo y condenó a la esclavitud a miles de indígenas encargados de extraer el oro blanco del tronco de los árboles del caucho.

Hombres sin escrúpulos como Julio César Arana o aventureros como Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald (inmortalizado en la película Fitzcarraldo con Klaus Kinski) convirtieron el centro de Amazonía en un lugar de espolio del caucho que se utilizaba en todo el mundo.

Tienes toda la historia disponible desde ya en tu kiosko. 

¿A qué esperas para conocer la historia de la Fiebre del Caucho? 

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, COLOMBIA, en BUEN VIAJE

Este mes de junio se publicó en la Revista BUEN VIAJE mi artículo sobre la ciudad de CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, en COLOMBIA, en la que describo algunos de los atractivos de esta ciudad declarada Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la UNESCO por su arquitectura colonial perfectamente preservada. 

CARIBE en SOY CARIBE

En el número especial de julio de la revista SOY CARIBE, titulado "Experiencias únicas en el Caribe" publico el artículo "De Viaje al Caribe", el primero de una serie de reportajes donde iré explicando mis viajes por los países del Caribe: CUBA, COSTA RICA, PANAMÁ, COLOMBIA, MÉXICO, BELICE,...

El próximo artículo será sobre BELICE.

Podéis leer el artículo en aquí: De Viaje al Caribe

The Bora of the Amazon forest

Name: Bora

Living Area: Peru, Colombia and Brazil

Population: approx. 3.000

Language: Bora (Witotan family)

Comments:   

The Bora are an indigenous tribe of the Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian Amazon, located between the Putumayo and Napo rivers. The Bora speak a Witotan language. In the last forty years, they have become a largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements.

In the animist Bora worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. Bora families practice exogamy. The Bora have an elaborate knowledge of the plant life of the surrounding rainforest. Like other indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, such as the Urarina, plants (and especially trees) hold a complex and important interest for the Bora.

Bows and arrows are the main weapons of the Bora culture used in person to person conflict. The Bora are very divided and politically unorganized.

The Bora have guarded their lands from both indigenous foes and outsider colonials. Around the time of the 20th century, the rubber boom had a devastating impact on the Boras. The tribe's ancestral lands are currently threatened by illegal logging practices. The Bora have no indigenous reserves.

Well-known by: their dances

The Bora native community consists of about 3,000 native-speakers almost all living in Peru (about 2000 individuals) and Colombia (about 1000 people), although several Bora villages exist in Brazil. Unfortunately, the Brazilian Boras no longer speak their native language having been largely assimilated into the Brazilian culture. The Bora language is closely aligned with Huitoto (Witotan).

The Bora tribe is divided into different clans, typically represented by an animal.  They paint their faces with different designs with huito (Genipa americana), depending upon their clan.  Intermarriage with the same clan is prohibited, thus preventing interbreeding and genetic aberrations within small communities.

Traditionally, the Boras dance using large (six foot) batons that they pound in unison on the ground as they dance.  The batons typically have shells attached to them that add to the musical harmony.

They also use Manguaré drums, which have different forms, depending on whether they are male or female, and are used in some Bora ceremonies.  They also manufacture traditional bark cloth, made by pounding the bark of a palm tree. The Boras peel strips of bark from the tree and pound it with a wooden hammer. After they wet and pound it until the outer bark disintegrates, only the inner bark is left. The inner bark is the natural fiber used for traditional Bora clothing. The bark clothes have a coarse, inflexible look and the texture of burlap. The bark clothing is coloured with natural dyes. Yellow colours are obtained from a ginger plant and black from pressed green fruits of the huito tree. The huito liquid is clear when first painted, but later turns black as it is oxidized by the air.

In addition to bark cloth, the Bora Indians have bags that are woven from chambira, a fiber obtained from a palm tree. The fibers used in these bags are typically dyed using native plants and the bags really are hand-made works of art.

The Bora tribe has managed to retain much of their knowledge of medicinal plants.  A good example is the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) which plays an important role in the diet and traditional medicine of the Boras.  As in the Andes Mountains, coca leaves are consumed to provide essential nutrients and is an integral part of their diet.  Similar to the Andes, the consumption of coca allows individuals to work for extended periods without exhaustion. What is different from the Andes is the manner in which the Bora Indians process the coca. They do not chew the raw leaves as they do in the mountains. Instead, they dry the leaves over a fire, place them into a sack and pound them into a very fine powder. This powdered coca typically is not taken alone and traditionally a tobacco mixture is blown into one’s nostrils before the coca powder is placed in one’s mouth.

Around 1900, the Amazon rubber boom changed the ways of the Boras forever.  This period was disastrous for the Bora communities of the Putumayo as the Peruvian rubber corporations enslaved the Boras and forced them to harvest the latex from wild stands of rubber trees. Large numbers of Boras were wiped out during this period.  Before the rubber boom, the Bora indigenous population was estimated as over 15,000 individuals. Some years later, following Peru's disastrous loss of the border war with Colombia in the 1930’s and the ceding of territory north of the Putumayo, many Boras were evacuated to their present communities near Iquitos. By the 1940’s the total population of Bora natives had dwindled to fewer than 450 people.  

© Text: Wikipedia and Dr. Dan James Pantone / Image: Anibal Solimano

The Kágaba of Colombia

Exhibition: Photography as Document: The Kágaba of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia
Dates: Fri 22 October 2010 - Sun 30 January 2011

Open daily except monday: 10 am to 6 pm

Place: Museen Dahlem, Lansstraße 8, Berlin, Germany

Admission:

Webpage:

About the exhibition:

The expulsion of the native population was one of the many consequences of the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean coast of Colombia in the 16th century. And yet it was possible for the evicted ethnic groups to reorganise in the nearby mountain massif, where they have kept up their traditions to the present day. Even the chronicles of the conquistadors and missionaries reflect the fascination exercised by the mountains and their population.

Visual documents relating to them are however rare. This makes the photos of Wouter Bokma of Amsterdam, taken in the seventies, a valuable record of a world subject to constant change. Starting with the documentation of a traditional festival in a Kágaba village, the exhibition - which emerges from a seminar of the Latin American Institute of the Free University of Berlin - goes on to pose fundamental questions about our attitude to what goes by the name of 'ethnic photography' - questions relating to the perspective of photographers, the historical implications of their research, the visualisation of power structures and symbolic representation generally.

Held as part of the Berlin contribution to the European Month of Photography.

About the museum:

Ethnological Museum

With a total of 500,000 objects from throughout the world and large numbers of sound recordings, documentary photographs and films, the Ethnological Museum ranks among the largest and best of its kind. The museum collects, preserves and researches cultural products of pre-industrial societies, primarily outside of Europe.

The museum currently embraces the following collections: Africa, American archaeology, American ethnology, Europe, the Islamic World, Eastern and Northern Asia, South and South-East Asia, the South Seas and Australia, as well as the ethnology of music. The Children's Museum is also located here.

© Text and image: Ethnological Museum of Berlin

Royal Spanish Botanic Expedition

EXHIBITIONS
Exhibition: Royal Spanish Botanic Expedition 
Dates: from 25th april 2010

Place: Museu Etnològic, Barcelona, Spain

Admission: 3,50 € (free every Sunday afternoon)

Webpage: www.museuetnologic.bcn.es

Comments:

Barcelona’s Ethnologic Museum in its line of Latin American collections, presents an exhibition dedicated to Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis.

José Celestino Mutis was an illustrated scientist and one of the firsts to study and divulge Columbian Flora. He worked as well for the Independency of the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada or Gran Colombia, which comprised nowadays Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

He was the leader of the Royal Botanic Expedition to Nueva Granada (1783-1816). Most of he’s work is stored at the Real Jardín Botánico of Madrid. During his apprenticeship in this institution as botanist, he met renowned catalan naturalists like Josep Quer, Joan Minuart and Miquel Barnades. Later, once established in America, he even maintained correspondence with Carl Linné, and Linné’s son, also a botanist, dedicated him a Columbian plant (Mutisia clematis).

More about José Celestino Mutis:

José Celestino Mutis (Cádiz, Spain, April 6, 1732—Bogotá (now in Colombia), September 11, 1808) was a Spanish botanist and mathematician.

He began his medical studies at the College of Surgery in Cádiz, where he also studied physics, chemistry and botany. He graduated in medicine from the University of Seville on May 2, 1755.

On July 5, 1757 he received his doctorate in medicine. From 1757 to 1760 he was interim professor of anatomy in Madrid. During those same years he continued to study botany at the Migas Calientes Botanical Gardens (now the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid), and also astronomy and mathematics.

After three years he decided to leave for America, as the private physician of the new viceroy of New Granada, Pedro Messía de la Cerda. He sailed on September 7, 1760, arriving at Santa Fe de Bogotá on February 24, 1761. During the long transatlantic passage he began writing his Diario de Observaciones, which he continued until 1791.

From his arrival in the Viceroyalty, Mutis concentrated on his botanical studies, beginning work on an herbal and investigating for chinchona, which was considered a panacea for the treatment of all kinds of diseases. He wrote El Arcano de la Quina.

Beginning in 1763, Mutis proposed to the king that he sponsor an expedition to study the flora and fauna of the region. He had to wait 20 years for the authorization, but in 1783 the king authorized his expedition (one of three royal botanical expeditions to the New World at about that time). In the interim, Mutis concentrated on commercial and mineralogical projects, not neglecting medicine. He also studied the social and economic conditions of the viceroyalty, and continued to expand his collection of flora and fauna. On December 19, 1772 he was ordained a priest. He was in regular correspondence with scientists in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, particularly Carl Linné.

Mutis led the Royal Botanical Expedition, established in 1783, for 25 years. It explored some 8,000 km² in a range of climates, using the Río Magdalena for access to the interior. He developed a meticulous methodology that included the harvesting of the samples in the field together with detailed descriptions, including data on the surroundings of each species and its utility. Hundreds of plants were discovered and described. More than 8,000 plates, plus maps, correspondence, notes and manuscripts were sent to Spain. His museum consisted of 24,000 dried plants, 5,000 drawings of plants by his pupils, and a collection of woods, shells, resins, minerals and skins. These treasures arrived safely at Madrid in 105 boxes, and the plants, manuscripts, and drawings were sent to the botanical gardens, where they were relegated to a tool-house.

However much of the work was wasted because the results remained unedited and unanalyzed. Also, the collation between the notes and the plates was lost during the transfer to Spain. His work on the species and varieties of chinchona had lasting influence.

He determined the longitude of Bogotá by the observation of an eclipse of a satellite of Jupiter and was a major influence on the construction of the National Astronomical Observatory.

In March 1762, at the inauguration of the chair of mathematics at the Colegio del Rosario, he expounded the principles of the Copernican system and of the experimental method of science, leading to a confrontation with the church. In 1774 he had to defend the teaching of the principles of Copernicus, as well as natural philosophy and modern, Newtonian physics and mathematics, before the Inquisition.

In 1784, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Alexander von Humboldt visited Mutis in 1801, during his expedition to America. Humboldt stayed with Mutis for two months, and greatly admired his botanical collection.

Mutis died in Bogotá on September 11, 1808 at 76 years of age, a victim of apoplexy. Because much of his botanical work was lost or unpublished, he is known to history not as a great scientist, but as a great promoter of science and knowledge.

His image was used in the old banknotes of 2000 pesetas.