I'm Lucila Carballo. I study in the
Anthropology Department of San
Francisco State University, and I am
graduating this summer. My Master's
creative project is a film called
Idalia and the Niño Santo. It's about the
life of Idalia. She's a 31-year-old
Mazatec shaman that lives in Huautla de Jiménez. It's a rural town in the
Northeastern mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, and
she heals through a combination of
different Mazatec practice, often
using an hallucinogenic called
Niño Santo, and the translation is "Holy
Child." And she's also hired by the
Mexican government to act as a liaison
between the Mazatec pregnant woman
their midwives and the scientific
doctors in the hospital. So I think Idalia
is a very interesting character because
she's navigating these different
paradigms: the animist, the scientific, the
Catholic. And, well, what I hope to show is
through this, like, intimate portrait how
the larger historical and social
tensions regarding ethnicity, Westernization
and alternative conceptions
of the self.
The film is aimed at triggering
critical discussions regarding
indigenous feminine identities
to challenge this white male anthropo-centric
conception of the self. And for
doing this I was inspired by
contemporary feminine and Chicana
critical theories, in particular the work
of Gloria Anzaldúa, who comes
from a new Mestiza taught from the
borderland. And I got this idea basically
in the content of the film and
how the film is shown. We're working with
shamans that have a lot of secrets and
things should not be spoken or told.
So it was always a negotiation in
between what is told and what is not. I
was reading a book about fabricada
that says words in witchcraft, words are
power. And when you start talking with a
shaman or a witch or a magician, everything
you say is not neutral; it comes from a
place of power. And I was asking Idalia,
"Do you think that words are power?" And
she told me, "No, not at all. Actually, the
power comes from your silence. What you
don't say is your power. What I don't
what I won't show you is my power." So I
started shooting with that disadvantage.
