Synopsis
A strange character joins the author in searching for lost spirits behind the bubbles of a river. Elsewhere in Mexico, an old woman describes the strange human flowers that hang from a sacred tree. Two Mayan crocodile hunters reveal the wonderful world of gold and fantastic animals that populate a swamp lit by the flames of oil towers. A narco priest crashes his plane in strange circumstances, abandoning his lover on the runway, while government offices in Mexico City suffer a plague of ghosts. In this unveiling of a series of worlds that challenge our conception of reality, full of mystery and a life different from the one we know, the author then takes us to Peru, where a shaman inexplicably erases the author's recordings and the mountains fly down in the form of birds to predict the future... Or a dark fish that is the devil, with the force of the sea, twists palm trees on the coast that now look like snakes... What strange magic animates the everyday events of other latitudes, of other impossible people? How many other worlds exist in this one? To write these stories, the author tells us, "I purged my notebooks, revealed the photographs I only took in my mind, deciphered notes on the backs of books and napkins, transcribed recordings, rescuing whispers, testimonies, and confessions." After more than 20 years immersed in the most diverse realities of Latin America, this anthropologist and writer challenges us with stories that make us question the real meaning of what we understand as "life." Integrating techniques from ethnography, narrative, poetry, and cinema into a personal style, the author invites us to accompany him on journeys that are doubly secret: secret because they are intimate and personal, and secret because of the extraordinary realities that, until now, had remained hidden.
About the Author
Investigador titular de la Dirección de Etnología y Antropología Social del INAH y profesor del Posgrado en Estudios Mesoamericanos de la Universidad Autónoma de México. Miembro del Groupe d'études mésoaméricaines-GEMESO de L'École Pratique des Hautes Études, en París. Desde 2003 realiza trabajo de campo entre los nahuas de Texcoco, en México. Es autor de las obras La razzia cósmica: una concepción nahua sobre el clima. Deidades del agua y graniceros en la Sierra de Texcoco (CIESAS, IBERO, 2011, Premio de la Cátedra Interinstitucional Arturo Warman) y de El cuerpo, el alma, la palabra. Medicina nahua en la Sierra de Texcoco (Artes de México, 2020). También es editor científico y coordinador de Etnografía y trabajo de campo. Teorías y prácticas en la investigación antropológica (CEMCA, CNRS, Université de Paris, Ediciones del Lirio, 2021).
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