Europe's Dream

Alexander von Humboldt and communication with alterity in Jorge Acha’s Homo-Humus and Mburucuyá, cuadros de la naturaleza

Abstract

This essay addresses the problem of communication as it is displayed by the screenplay Homo-Humus and the feature film Mburucuyá, cuadros de la naturaleza by Jorge Acha. Both works focus on part of Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland's journey through South America, specifically their stay in the Orinoco jungle and their contact with the Yaruro people. Humboldt contemplates nature ecstatically and aesthetically, but that way of relating to the environment is instrumental to the collection of specimens and the making of measurements of all kinds without understanding how this procedure affects the worldview of the indigenous people. This contradiction marks an internal division within Humboldt himself. Bonpland, for his part, departs from Alexander's attitude as he blends in with the local population, thus embodying an alternative way of knowing. The Yaruros, in turn, maintain a poetic relationship with the environment, their way of communicating, unlike Humboldt's, does not break the continuum between culture and nature. Acha proposes, as a communicative solution to the disagreement, that Europeans and indigenous people eat each other's lice, hence that they fraternize carnally and horizontally.