Between ritual, photography and self-determination
Oro verde is an art project that retraces the history of a revolution through ritual, photography and revisited objects. That of the P'urhépecha people, formerly called "tarasque", who have inhabited the central region of the state of Michoacán for more than a thousand years. In Chéran, a city of 16,000 inhabitants, a social revolt was initiated by women in 2011 that succeeded in expelling drug traffickers, political parties and local forces of order. Since then they have founded an autonomous community that puts environmental protection at the center of its political organisation.
Drug traffickers had been illegally logging forests between 2007 and 2011 in order to plant avocado trees, a fertile market in Mexico (with 1.6 million tons produced annually, it's the world's largest exporter). The revolution has allowed the community to produce 1 million tree shoots each year by developing technology to capture rainwater for reforestation.
The P'urhépecha uprising was possible in part because of the link they have maintained with the wild bees of these forests since before Columbus. During Corpus Christi, 60 days after Easter, the P'urhepecha perform a ritual known as the "Descent of the Beehive Bearers". The men of the community of marriageable age (from the age of 15) carry dozens of wild beehives on their backs that are collected prior to the event. The hives are often decorated with wild animals. The nests are hung on a wooden structure called Katarakwa: a totemic figure that carries within it the representation of the communion between man, animal and the plant world. For a whole day, the young people dance with the branches on their backs and the forest comes alive.
Oro Verde (Green Gold, expression referring to the avocados) is the attempt to restore an element of the imaginary to the revolution. It is the story of an Amerindian community's cooperation with nature by inventing a political model takes sustainable economy in respect for biodiversity and care of the forest in to account.
In a context of environmental and ecological conflicts, this project engages thought around the first Americans to take up arms to defend the forest thanks to their cosmopolitanism.
Photographies : Tito Gonzalez Garcia et Florencia Grisanti
Editeur : Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo ( Artiste chercheur ENSP)
Textes : Federico Lifschitz ( Chercheur en Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie associé au Musée du Quai Branly, Doctorant EHESS ) et Ritual Inhabitual
Avec le soutien de :
Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP)
Le Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC)
L’Institut Français de l’amérique Latine
Musée de l’Homme
Centro de estudios mexicanos y centroamericanos, Mexique (CEMCA)
Société des Amis du Musée de l’ Homme, Paris (SAMNH)
La Société des amis du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle et du Jardin des Plantes
Tamara Films