Los regalos sabrosos: Totemismo y semiosis animal en el documental Descenso a la prehistoria(1980), de Erwin Patzelt

Abstract

This article explores, through the filmic analysis of the documentary Abstieg in die Steinzeit: Die letzten Aucas, made by the German biologist and documentary filmmaker Erwin Patzelt (1926-2023), the tension between the Western conception of the Huaorani people of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the cosmology of this Amazonian people in relation to the animal world that surrounds them. The development of the text argues that the Huaorani cosmovision, which considers certain animals, independent of their species or origin, as sacred totems, transcends the modern Western vision that, from a development list perspective, understands the animal in an instrumental way as a mere food source. In dialogue with a series of contemporary debates on the relationship between the human and the natural environment, this article reviews the different biographical, cultural and audiovisual elements that facilitated the encounter between Erwin Patzelt and Dabo Enomenga and thus the two perspectives, the modern-developmentalist of the German biologist and the symbolic-ecocentric of the Huao people that prioritizes the healthy and sustainable relationship with the territory and the environment.