Costa-Rica Those who talk to the stones | SLICE | Full documentary

foreign foreign [Music] tonight so that you may know and learn i will tell you stories about our people bribry i will explain how our god cebu created the world you shall learn about every rule and principle he left to our people so that we may survive in this world [Music] here i am a couple of cable lengths away from the coast of costa rica the warm and nourishing waters of the caribbean sea carry me slowly towards the discovery of a new people the breebery a community hidden somewhere among the mountains before i can reach them i must make the acquaintance of the coast's inhabitants [Music] i'm from panama but it's been 38 years since i moved to costa rica i came here to fish spiny lobsters a fisherman's life i started going out to sea when i was nine i'm 66 today and in a month i'll be 67 and i'm still going out to see [Music] okay i wanted my children to study i even advised them against going to sea at least not to work there because today if we don't study we have nothing if i'd studied i wouldn't be on the sea today because it's dangerous this one has eggs we leave it in the creel until it's laid them even though it's a good job i didn't want them to follow in my footsteps i wanted them to study so they'd become i don't know teachers or doctors something like that but well they like fishing so i had to accept it being a fisherman is a worthy and honorable work we steal from no one people think right away that being a fisherman isn't much but i don't mind because i know i'm working honorably so that's it it's a job my children enjoyed and so they're welcome all in all it's a good job since i've been living here on the coast i've never dealt with the indians when i was in panama there was some sort of of tradition with black people on one side and indians on the other we didn't really have much contact you could say well actually we did when we fished they would take the fish and give us vegetables in exchange yes i remember we used to come with a boat full of fish and leave with a boat full of vegetables that was our deal with them [Music] on that side of the border the locals are called bribries or cabecares they used to live along the coast but when the spanish came in the 16th century their whole way of living was turned upside down the natives then withdrew in land moving ever deeper into the mountains [Music] nowadays there's a mix of people living on the coasts with their origin on the islands just in front of the country such as haiti or jamaica these inhabitants of the caribbean brought with them a culture a way of life practices and techniques that were unknown to the locals [Music] well here we try to take care of the reefs because in truth everyone gains from it we also do it so that my grandchildren may grow up knowing what a reef is what a coral is what a red snapper or a spiny lobster is taking care of it is of the utmost importance while closing in on the foothills of the talamanca codiera the highest mountain range in central america i go through the inevitable intensive banana farms that standardize the landscape and pollute the environment with their chemical spreading the other major cultivation in the region is coco and there are still a couple of small traditional and family-owned farms here and there which grow the legendary pod cocoa consumption nowadays is so globalized that we forget that this plant blessed by the indigenous gods only grew in central america indeed it's from the gentle slopes of these hills offering both the perfect amount of sun and rain that the precious beans invaded the world to become chocolate before all this area was pure cocoa and then everything disappeared because of the cocoa tree disease it was because of the americans who spread chemicals to kill off the patches and thus buy the land at a cheap price to cultivate bananas that's terrible isn't it i come every two weeks and cut off the pods that are ripe we cut them open them put them in crates clean them well and then fermentation begins during the first two days we let everything rest and we don't touch the cocoa at all we control the fermentation temperature and take good care that there's no air pockets then we start mixing during four five or six days depending on the customer's taste once fermentation is complete we move on to drying we start by spreading in thick layers because it continues to ferment for a while and every hour we must mix everything [Music] if you want to obtain a good product and there's sun like today you can count 15 days drying quincy when i take some cocoa in the palm of my hand and i smell it it must not smell humid wet it must smell like a flower when it's like this it means the cocoa is perfect [Music] [Applause] [Music] she i truly think i will continue working in the cocoa business now i have a daughter and a granddaughter and i hope that when i'm gone my granddaughter will take over and continue the tradition right now i don't want to sell even if i'm offered millions i won't sell my father and my mother left all this to me i must continue the family tradition nowadays a couple of white people start working in this business sometimes indians but coco has always been black people's business you'll see almost no indians around here there are none in this region they're all over there near bribre or six ayola there are a couple of dark-skinned people around here but not many in any case no there are no indians in the area you know in order to build the road to here we had to remove some trees and when i saw this i almost started to cry when i see someone striking a tree with a machete it's like i get hit because i love these trees so much coco is fantastic [Music] in my quest to find the bribery it's become clear that i must leave the coast it's good life and mild weather to reach the mountains and their territory the path is long our history tells that in the times of darkness everything we see today on our planet was in the beginning spiritual beings sometimes they look like people but they were in truth gods spirits not human beings sometimes they look like trees or stones from these ancient times we have kept many rules many norms that allow us to live in harmony in the world with the forest with the trees and with the animals from here on no more bridges no more asphalt on the roads no more electricity as i draw closer to the natives lands nature assumes again a central role or rather its central role in exchange life's small things become more difficult and must be earned with some effort [Music] welcome everyone to your radio the voice of talamanca we now move on to today's classified ads the next one is about shirola's new farming hope yamara and her husband carlos ask all their neighbours to join them next weekend for ichichada they're organising for the construction of their new house radio waves are much better at passing the treetops and going deep to the bottom of the valleys than cell phone waves because each family has a radio receiver on during the classified ads it's easy for the most secluded farms to keep a connection with the rest of the community [Music] indeed some inhabitants are several hours of forest walk away from one another [Music] to reach the heart of bribry territory i have to travel up the river [Music] [Music] [Music] uh the journey doesn't end here and i now enter the lushness of an ancestral forest a primitive place that reached our time thanks to the miracle of adaptation an ecosystem shaped by thousands of years of evolution where fauna and flora live in symbiosis in an incredible entanglement and prey canopy giants unliken on the roots mammals reptiles and insects they all live together and fight for light and life in a global equilibrium that only a great plague would seem to be able to disturb [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and i have to say that when i came here it demanded a lot from me it was very tough we had nothing neither my wife nor i had money there was absolutely nothing and we had to build everything we worked during a whole year it was really tough we didn't have clothes to wear we had a bad diet and many things didn't go well one needs to imagine that there was no farm here at the time only jungle a person that isn't indigenous we call her bribry or indians call these people sequoias we see the world of sequoias as different from ours my wife giomara comes first in order and then me carlos why me second because my wife is bribery and i am sicowa and here in talamanca foreigners and men have neither power nor control it is them indian women that have power here not men if i notice that he is doing something inappropriate that could how can i put this alter the order of things it is my role to attract his attention and tell him that he can't do that for one reason or another the rules we indigenous people have are very clear and followed by all especially the fact that women here are tasked with passing on the culture laws are established by the indian person indians set the laws my job is to support her that's all we came here with the goal of planting basic cereals rice beans corn everything we can eat and animals too however when it comes to medical plants most of them were already in this place and we found them because we know them and can identify them we just had to clean the surroundings we don't cut them we only take care of them they were here and will remain here each family has on its land a certain number of endemic medicinal plants it means that we don't find the same plants on everyone's land since some of them only grow in a very specific ecosystem but the untrained eye will have a very hard time discovering among the bribre community there's an expert in the field the traditional doctor the one that is called hour sometimes i go to see the our doctor because i have some plants that must be blended with others so in that case yes i visit him however if it's the flu or something similar then no because i know exactly what i need to take so i only visit the hour for very specific things when i need to mix several plants i have to be careful i go to see him and he tells me how many leaves of a given plant i have to take and what to mix it with [Music] [Applause] the native woman has the privilege of being the mother of the clans she's the one giving continuity to the clan she gives it life the woman bears the name of the clan not the man for instance when a young boy is getting ready to become an our doctor the ceremony and rights of passage must be carried out in the presence of a woman of the mistress of ceremonies there must always be a woman to validate this passage it is the only way for the future hour to be able to carry out his job correctly me [Music] the hour is one of the pillars of bribry culture a noah a keeper of the history and memory of a people who until recently only lived through oral tradition the hour is a middleman between our earthly lives and the vast cosmogony of the underworld that is so dear to the bribery healer and expert in the properties of plants the local inhabitants come to visit him all the way to his usura to receive his sound advice [Music] we are in the traditional house we call gave it to us to live in the usuri is supported by eight pillars symbolizing the eight most important clans of the bribre tribe the roof is tied with lyanna's and these knots are the stars in the universe in the center there's the belly button from which men and the earth are born the belly button is symbolized by this basket that hangs in the center of the yusuri in this basket are corn cobs because it is from corn that cebu gave birth to all men without distinction between ethnicities or races the earth is alive and the liquids it contains such as water for instance are of the utmost importance for us we're not allowed to extract any liquid or any ore from its bowels because it is her body is alive it's important to understand that if we let human beings extract all oil or gold ira can quickly die it is a female figure that brings a lot of blessings oil is like her blood and we mustn't extract it because she draws strength from it she has a beating heart she contains a great energy and we can clearly feel her vibrations during earthquakes it is the expression of her wrath because of all the impacts human beings force her to bear the hour title is inherited from the mother then there's a long period of learning that started an early age within the family and then with a master but in the end the community is the one validating the status of our it is passed down from one generation to the next [Music] [Music] is to become our one must count 12 years of studies and teaching usually starts around 11 12 years old it can vary it all depends on how much knowledge the teacher who is also our of course passes personally the moment my master allowed me to sit in the hammock of the usuri left its mark on me i will never forget this sitting in the hours america is a true investiture it is a sacred place not just anyone can reach this objective it has always been my goal since i was a child i had to make it and today i feel like i'm part of something bigger my work as an hour lets me live a unique very strong and very beautiful relationship because i'm in touch with the elements with the sun water wind with the fire the stars the cosmos i'm in touch with the stones cebu gave me to heal i can communicate it's obviously difficult to explain like this but i can feel the importance of these stones the stick that i carry everywhere is a very important relic for my work it's a bit like the machete the farmer carries with him to cut bananas there's also the small bag attached to my belt it's a chakra it's the same kind of bag one brings to a field to harvest fruits i needed to carry the magic stones the native people of costa rica always seem to have had a unique relationship with the mineral world the bree breeze give it a very special attention because the stones they own were handed down to them by their god cebu to allow them to communicate with the underworld and to heal on the earth where we from the western world see only inert matter the natives instead feel a power within them and venerate them and so the smallest displacement of these huge stones leads to a perfectly codified ceremony [Music] these stones come from far away far away on mondays tuesdays wednesdays and thursdays they cut the wood on fridays they put the stone in a basket made of ropes and let the stone rest a whole day without touching it some people then come to keep an eye on it whilst you know smoking a cigar then on saturday the journey begins [Music] 30 or 40 people take turns carrying it during the whole trip so that they can rest if there's a pregnant woman both her and her husband are forbidden from going to see the stone otherwise it could break or remain stuck on the ground and even 100 people wouldn't be able to move it i also need to feed everyone participating from the oldest to the youngest and so it is in our culture [Music] sometimes in the middle of the night i've heard the noise of the stones it was in the middle of the night but there was no one around i heard grinding but there was nobody can you imagine stones starting to grind just like that in the middle of the night all of these things are signs the stones send signs moreover when there's an earthquake we use these stones we use them to calm the earth to calm its tremors [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey [Music] and some of these cultures dominate and crush ours and so if we don't get help from our government by doing things as simple as protecting our language it is truly possible that future generations will forget it [Music] my [Music] ah has forgotten a lot of things those last couple of years we almost didn't speak bribery anymore here but here we are and we have the will to keep the lifestyle of our culture we have it within reach and we don't want it to die there's one thing i believe is really important i think that because of globalization we find ourselves handicapped as of today the youngsters are ashamed of speaking bribery they're not interested in they actually feel like people from the outside like sickers and they're no longer interested in their own culture they're almost ashamed of it and so we at schools take so now we're going to study animals a bit so how do you say animals in bribry my father told me that 50 years ago or so if they had a child speaking bribery at school he was punished and forced to get down on his knees on small stones or corn seeds some of the people's parents from the community tell me that because of this their own father never taught them to speak bribry and so today they can't speak it give me the name of an animal we can find in your house and how do you say dog in bribery hmm children i'm going to tell you something the word horse cannot be written in bribry do you know why because horses were brought by the sickoas by the spanish the spanish brought them by boat originally there were no horses on our lands lost the teacher also focuses on the cultural part the handicraft the customs the traditions the history and explains our cosmogeny this is the teacher's role here i'm convinced that here in our little community of yorking we're moving in the right direction and i don't think i'm wrong we strive to keep the culture alive although we almost lost the most important part the language and by the way few people speak bribery nowadays but here we strive to keep our bribery traditions alive this year we'll start teaching handicraft and we'll teach the children about their own history too we'll ask elders from the community to come to speak so they can tell bribry's stories we will also create a botanical garden with medicinal plants this will be a pedagogical area so that they may know how to cultivate and recognize all kinds of plants this will be a place of knowledge [Music] so [Music] [Music] my education is necessary to bring a society forward but it cannot do everything an important part of the culture cannot be taught it's handed down it's inherited from the elders who carry a knowledge that isn't learned in the classrooms but that is gained on the long run during these moments we spend hearing listening watching understanding this is precisely the difference between something we learn that remains attached to the person and something passed on that goes on through it is generations that other cultures respect ours listen carefully and learn about us nowadays there are quite a number of books written by indigenous people on world view their relationship to the world to the environment and how to live in harmony with nature [Music] [Music] the world is fragile we are fragile and yet some animal or plant species manage to stand the test of time just like a miracle is it because they proved stronger than others during tough times more adaptable in evolution more discreet amongst the many it doesn't matter they're here now and we have but to understand how lucky we are in being able to enjoy watching them we must accept that their presence gives us a responsibility from now on for the world is fragile there are sacred trees there are of course many trees and they all matter but some of them are especially sacred and so cebu tells us you cannot touch those trees you cannot cut them down you will suffer from tooth decay if you do and if you use them to build your house with [Music] so the message sent over the radio seems to have worked without caring much for the rain or thick mud come morning the neighbors are gathering to give a hand to build a new house when i first came to this mountain everywhere i heard hey look there's a sickoa what's he doing here this foreigner and where is he from they were suspicious and it took me a lot of time to be accepted by the bribery because i was a sickoa and nobody knew me i've now been with them 18 years i am a sicawa but i feel fully bribry one should know that the indian rarely mixes with the foreigner with the white man it's not common for them to fall in your arms they keep to themselves but with time i earned their trust through my marriage through my job and now i must say we live the real life pure aveda a person that isn't a native that isn't indigenous must not how can i explain must not get involved in the ceremonies or even the songs we have there are spaces she cannot enter even if she wanted to she couldn't because it isn't part of our culture participated there are there are very sacred things that only bribery do that not just anyone can do and it's not because i'm bribery that i can do everything either no we have our rules some things take place in some clans while being forbidden in others so [Music] we own a bank a bank that takes the shape of trees because if you own this tree reserve you truly own a bank in your house no need to go withdraw some money with your card at the national bank or the bank of costa rica no we have this bank right within our reach in the shape of wood [Applause] all those trees around us they're like a bank for us we can turn that wood into money any time we want it generates colonies we choose a trunk we ask for a permit to cut it down we sell it and we get the money [Music] there's a great mystery with the breeze they have their very own rhythm and not just any square can settle down here [Music] then they give you a blessing that links you to them the indians have their gods their culture and lucky for me i have that culture now i practice it i've gained it you're practicing to people wishing to discover our culture i would say that they can but with respect that they understand our vulnerability and our innocence if i can put it this way that we don't do things with ill intent so let them come but not to stir up troubles but uh [Music] hostile intimidating and impenetrable this is usually what we think about complicated things when we're happy only with the surface and yet with feelings and time we go deeper and end up discovering a rich and varied world that could even make us a better person all of this is very important everything has a meaning an origin and this origin isn't human it comes from the gods who gave it to us now we must share it among ourselves and draw lessons from it the world isn't waiting and i'm eager to meet it you

Channel: SLICE

Views: 30,006

Rating: 4.8558559 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, shortdoc, shortdocs, slice, slicedocs, costa-rica, stones, people, community, nature, wild, Bribri, Bribri Indians, mineral, mineral world, sibù, underworld, heal, spiritual, spiritual beings, spirits, trees, hormony, forest, animals, natives

Id: rsq8Mm3_SIM

Length: 53min 5sec (3185 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020