El Pantanal - The Chamacoco

Since the morning the sun threatens in its ascent. We make boat tours by the surroundings avoiding the hottest hours when the best thing is a paraguayan siesta. In the way toward the Black River we visit the Chamacoco village.

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In the village we feel out of the place. The "The Man and The Nature" NGO's house is available - to those that come. And they are very few.

The chamacoco shaman, from Paraguay, sings to the stars, to the spiders and to crazy Totila, that wanders through the forests and cries. And sings that the kingfisher tells her:

Do not suffer hunger, do not suffer thirst.
Get on on my wings and we will eat river fish and drink wind.

And sings what the mist tells her:

I come to cut out the frost, so that your people do not suffer cold.

And sings what the sky horses tell her:

Saddle us up and let's go in search of the rain.

The shaman can no longer cure the bites of vipers, neither to bring the rain in times of drought, neither to fly over the earth to sing what he sees.

Stripped of their freedom and of their goods, of their symbols of identity. They are forbidden to sing and to dance and to dream of their gods; now the illusion is that some of the scarce travelers arrive and buy their necklaces and wooden figures.

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Tell me, what this woman, half blind and with her small daughter, wants?. She holds a bread bin in her hand and follows us without saying a word. I almost do not dare to look at her face…