Economic Botany meets Ethnobotany: A Review of El Abrazo de la Serpiente. (Embrace of the Serpent)

Karamakate speaks these lines to a character based on none other than Richard Evans Schultes. With this encounter and their ensuing journey, we see that a devotion to plants certainly ties these botanists together but we are forced to question the nature, consequences, and rewards of that manifested devotion. For perhaps the first time, the painful history of the economic/botanical exploitation of the Amazon's natural resources is presented on film from an indigenous perspective. This unique view quietly and emphatically makes sacred the interconnected ethnobotanical matrix of the rainforest and its people. By suggesting a cultural knowledge older and more voluminous than one man can comprehend, this film asserts that we humans aren't born into this world to pillage and use, but rather grow out of it together to share in the bounty and the beauty while we are able. In stark black and white, Guerra shows that cultivation, enslavement, domestication, economic exploitation, and imperialism describe a deeply-rooted, vicious, often Western, view of natural resource and cultural thievery from the 'under-developed' masses of the Amazon. The character inspired by Richard Schultes, just like the real Schultes, is sent to the Amazon to improve Western profits for the lucrative rubber trade. Just like the real Schultes, the protagonist is enlightened by an indigenous culture to the greater connections of plants and people. There are lessons to be learned from this history. Indeed, for its historical, anthropological, and philosophical aspects it is vitally important for our members to contemplate this film.