Doctor Aldo Lo Curto, who has dedicated his life to the physical and cultural survival of the tribes who inhabit the banks of the Xingù river.
"Here among the Asurinì, the health problem was pretty serious. When I first arrived, there were very few of them. There were only sixty of them. In the past they had reached an historical low of 50, so their community certainly came close to extinction. Their health problem was definitely what pushed me to come here in the first place - there were a few cases of tuberculosis, there was a risk of an epidemic breaking out. There was a lot of malaria, and so theirs's was more of an emergency than in other tribes. When you arrive for the first time in an indigenous village, it's a shock, both for them and for who has just arrived. The first question was, 'Which forest do you come from?' I didn't know what to answer so at first Ianswered 'Europe.' 'And what is the name of your tribe?' And I'd say, 'Italy,' because I didn't really know how to... how to get myself on the same wavelength as them.But the most interesting thing was having to introduce myself as a man, and I must say it was the hardest thing to do because for them I am an incomplete man; I don't know how to hunt, how to fish, how to build a house or build a canoe - so they treated me as if I was a child. My relationship with the Asurinì grew deeper when I started to live with them and I saw that as a community they possessed a cultural heritage which was extremely interesting and important. One example is the richness and diversity of their body paint art. Almost all indios use body paint, but the Asurinì have at least 120 different designs. At the moment there are only 80 Asurinì alive, so there just aren't enough bodies for them to keep up the practice or to express the full range of their designs.
There are also great difficulties in keeping up the educational services. I thought that it would be closer to the type of communication of the indios, which is a visual communication and an oral one, to carry out health education using puppets as well. I invented some stories to explain how to avoid falling ill, and at the same time, how our body works and how we can prevent disease. When I live with the indios, it's important for me not to forget my own roots. I'm of Sicilian origin and in Sicily until recently, we had a whole tradition based on puppetry. As a child, I was always fascinated by the storytellers and their puppets. The hardest thing was to explain medicine, which is a serious and rational science in a comic way. It wasn't easy. There's plenty of audience participation when we do these shows, and apart from that the most important things is that it can be taught. In this tribe, there's already someone who's been asking me to do these shows himself. These are the sort of things that give me the greatest satisfaction.
When I arrived in the Amazon, I realized this was the perfect place not only for giving, by giving a sense to the medical profession and making myself useful, but also for receiving, because the indios know so many medicinal plants. The Amazon is home to at least a thousand medicianal plants. I have tried to use and and introduce our medicine without entering into competition with the healer. I always call the shaman to my side, and together, together we begin a sort of healing ritual; in the sense that I deal with the physical aspect of the illness, while next to me, he would start to chant a sort of prayer in his own language and begin a healing ceremony, or a therapeutic one, dancing and singing. So, it's something we do together. The shaman places his hands on the affected part of the body and then all over the body, and then he starts a process of forcefully sucking in and exhaling. In this way he is spiritually trying to suck out the negative energy from the affected, sick part of the body and blow as far away as possible these negative forces, these evil spirits.
I describe myself as a travelling volontary doctor. Travelling because I don't stay with just one tribe or in just one area. I keep moving because I don't want to create any dependencies. Because the risk involved in building a hospital is that these people may be tempted to stop looking after themselves - they might get lazy. And then there would be, not just a social dependence, but an economic one as well, because a hospital would have to be maintained. Being alone, without a structure to support me, without a foundation, without an organization, I thought it would be best to carry out a medical program based on the prevention of diseases."