Don Vicente Mamallacta introduces himself and speaks about his extraordinary life as a shaman. It is in Kichwa and will hopefully be done with a better camera one day (batteries dead and nno electricity, so it filmed with an Olympus Mju 800 digital still camera) and with subtitles.Vicente is in his 80s and lives in a community called Santo Domingo near Archidona in the Napo region of Ecuador. He can be contacted via his son, Silverio:
Colonos - Amazonia por la vida? is a blog that two colonists, Colono and Colona, are using to communicate experiences arising from living on what is probably best described as the frontiers of capitalism, or western, (neo-)liberal colonisation of the rain forest.Colonos is the words used locally to describe the people, encouraged by the Ecuadorian governments in the past and the present, who come to seek fortune in the land opened up by the destruction of the forest and the inclusion in the capitalist economy of the people who traditionally lived in the Amazon - the so-called indigenous peoples.Although it is clear that we, as Europeans and as members of a higher education institution, are also colonos, we hope that we will be able to engage and live with the people and the environment in a slightly less destructive manner than is common for the Euro-breed.Please find out what exactly brought us here.
