I met Leonardo Tello at a festival of censored films in Lima, Peru’s smog-ridden capital city. It was a laid-back event in a bohemian neighbourhood. Audience members lounged on blankets on the grass and directors sat on a broken-down sofa drinking beer. I showed a film about an Andean farming community that stands up to an American gold mine that had, unsurprisingly, been censored by Peru’s government-owned broadcaster. Another filmmaker had brought Leonardo to the festival and introduced us. Leo said his Indigenous radio station in the northern Amazon region wanted to start making films and asked if I would give them some training.
“When do we start?” I asked, giving him my contact info. He never wrote to me; perhaps he didn’t believe I would really come.
A year later, the laws of probability were broken when our paths crossed again in the same megacity of 11 million people. My husband Miki—Miguel Araoz Cartagena—and I were in Lima for a joint exhibition of his paintings with a Shipibo artist who is also from the northern Amazon. They named their show “Tinkuy, Nukoananty,” which means “the meeting between the Andes and the Jungle” in Quechua and Shipibo, the Indigenous languages of the two regions.
A friend had loaned Miki and me her apartment while she was out of town. She asked us to give a set of keys to a journalist who was coming to Lima for eye surgery. The guest was Leonardo.
He showed up bright and early—very early—one Saturday morning. I was still wiping the sleep from my eyes and yearning for coffee when he pulled a large stack of papers from his bag. They were transcripts of stories he’d been recording for more than a decade about the spirit universe beneath the Amazon’s waterways. Some of the tales were ancient history, like the creation of the rivers by a mighty god using his bow and arrow, or how the Kukama nation was born when a boa constrictor transformed into a beautiful woman and seduced a young hunter. But there were also recent accounts of the Indigenous peoples’ relationship with river spirits: fishermen cast under spells by mermaids or women carried off by white herons who change into handsome young men while they’re washing clothes on the river’s edge.
Leaning forward in his chair, Leonardo’s voice dropped as he told us about “the drowned ones.” If a person disappears into the swirling waters of the Marañón River and their body is not found, their family does not begin the rituals of mourning, he said. Soon, there may be a sign that their relative is still alive. A bereaved wife, mother, or brother will receive a message from their loved one in a dream telling them not to worry; they’re not dead—they’ve transformed into a Karuara, which means “person of the river” in the Kukama’s native language.
The Karuara, Leo explained, live in underwater villages that mirror human ones, but with an aquatic twist: River spirits lounge in hammocks made of boa constrictors; they smoke sardines and wear crayfish watches, stingray hats, and catfish shoes, while laughing spirit children ride to school on giant turtles or play football with an inflated blowfish.
Behind their playfulness, Leonardo cautioned, the Karuara are powerful spirits with healing powers and great knowledge. When a human is ill, Indigenous shamans call on the Karuara to help cure their patient. Fishermen must ask the river spirits for permission before casting their nets or risk the consequences: an empty stomach, or perhaps worse. The Karuara are metaphysical ecologists; they maintain the delicate balance of life in the Amazon’s waterways. The lives of the Kukama people and river spirits are inextricably connected; neither can live without the other. Together they protect the Amazon’s fragile ecosystem.
But now, said Leonardo, both worlds are threatened by oil spills, gold mining, planned hydroelectric dams, and other modern so-called developments. The Karuara are affected by contamination just as humans are; their habitat is also endangered, and their powers are diminishing. Leonardo reminded us that the Amazon region is the world’s largest source of biodiversity—the lungs of our planet. It holds 20 percent of our fresh water and is crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change. The destruction of the Amazon region is not just South America’s problem, he said; it’s a global catastrophe.
Leo asked us to help his radio station make a film about the river spirits and the dangers they face. He grew up listening to elders telling ancestral stories around fires at night under the stars. But the younger generation is growing up watching Disney’s Little Mermaid and other North American movies. Leonardo wants to use the new technology to make animations about the Karuara river spirits for his children.
I’ve been covering environmental issues in Peru since the late ’90s. Street protests, tear gas, police brutality, and assassinations are the norm. I’d never heard of a parallel world of river spirits. It was clear that I had fallen into the trap of defining resistance as standing in the line of fire. It is that, too, but resistance is also about cultural survival, remembering who you are, and passing that knowledge onto your children and grandchildren to preserve seeds for future generations. The Gods of Documentary had spoken through Leonardo—I was hooked.
Miki’s connection to the story was even more personal. The next day, just before his surgery, Leo asked Miki to take him to his painting exhibition.
“The last thing he saw before having his eye operated on was my paintings,” said Miki, overwhelmed by the gesture.
Leonardo was alone in Lima, so Miki took him to the hospital and waited for him during the operation. They’ve been like brothers ever since.
We were ready to begin. Our intention was to make a film that showed the spiritual and ecological importance of the Marañón, and the necessity of protecting it. Working with Leonardo and others, our hearts were in the right place. But how could we be sure that the film respected the Kukama’s ancestral stories and culture? Leonardo was our co-producer and head scriptwriter, but this was just the first step toward ensuring Indigenous participation at every level of production. Radio Ucamara, Leo’s station, runs a Kukama-language school staffed by elders who also produce radio programs in their native language. We engaged the elders as consultants to review our script and watch edited scenes and rough cuts.
The spirit world beneath the rivers is depicted in the film through 2D hand-painted animations. Miki and a team of Peruvian and Indigenous artists created more than 2,000 paintings for each of the five animated sequences. But the greatest challenge was turning oral histories into images. We began by holding art workshops with Kukama children and youth in isolated communities on the Marañón River. The children drew and painted the Karuara’s magical universe and the stories that would become animations. We turned their paintings of river creatures and fish into a giant whirlpool that opens and closes the film. (Whirlpools are the doorway to the spirit universe beneath the rivers.)
Back in the animation studio, our artists based their storyboards on the children’s paintings. Despite having Indigenous artists on our team, there were still bumps along the way, and many heated discussions with our Kukama elder consultants. In the animation about the origins of the Amazon’s rivers, for example, we had to show an image of the world before the rivers were created. Miki and I assumed the landscape would be dry and barren, but the elders said it was green and lush.
“How could that be if there wasn’t any water?” I asked.
“Stop being so literal,” said Leonardo. “The elders know. This is their story.”
He was right, of course, and we changed the storyboard. It was the first of many interventions, continuing right up to the final edit.
The art workshops with children on the river gave us an unexpected gift: our film’s protagonist. Leonardo had asked Mariluz Canaquiri, leader of a federation of Kukama women, to help us organize the events. Mariluz quickly became indispensable, coordinating all the sessions, getting permission from community leaders, and taking care of us in the forest. We were worse than toddlers, clumsy and ignorant of basic dangers, like microscopic isangos (chiggers) that set up house in dark, moist flesh and itch worse than mosquito bites. Mariluz showed us how to soothe the bites and saved us from poisonous snakes on more than one occasion. We could not have survived without her.
During heavy rains, the jungle becomes even more challenging. Houses are constructed several metres above ground on stilts in case of flooding, but their latrines are separate structures built on the ground, away from their homes. When flooding occurs, the bathrooms become submerged under water and people use plastic containers as bedpans.
For those of us spoiled by a lifetime of conventional toilets, a plastic container requires stronger leg muscles and more patience—like combining Pilates with Zen meditation. After my first week of this routine, I discovered there was one functioning bathroom in Mariluz’s village, behind the school. The water had risen to our doorway, so I would have had to paddle a canoe to get there. Mariluz told me we had to leave for a workshop in a neighbouring village and that there wasn’t time for me to make the journey to the fancy bathroom.
I begged. I pleaded. I showed her my swollen knee, which made crouching painful.
Mariluz was firm. She handed me my plastic container with a no-nonsense look, and I knew I’d lost.
As we journeyed to the workshop, seated in the bottom of a large canoe, it began to rain. Mariluz covered us both with a plastic sheet and we huddled together in the dark-blue light. “It was raining like this when I gave birth to my fourth child,” she told me. Mariluz had suffered from high blood pressure during her pregnancy, so a doctor scheduled a caesarian at the hospital in the district capital, a 10-hour boat ride away. Mariluz was determined to avoid the surgery and turned to traditional medicine to heal herself.
A few weeks before the operation, Mariluz felt that her baby was on the way, so she went to the health post. The doctor told her she was wrong; there were still two weeks to go. She made the long journey home and went into labour that same night.
The wise Kukama mother sensed that her baby was coming fast and wanted to give birth at home with the village midwife. Her husband insisted on going back to the health post, which meant at least three hours of hard rowing in a wooden canoe. As the couple were preparing to leave, a torrential rainstorm broke out. Mariluz, still in her pyjamas, put on her rubber boots, got into the canoe, and covered herself with a plastic sheet.
Halfway there, she planted her feet on the seat in front of her and held onto both sides of the boat. “I pushed,” she said, “and Juanita was born, really fast.”
Mariluz heard her baby cry, “like all babies do when they’re born,” and found a flashlight so she could look at the newborn. After a while the rain let up, and Mariluz came out from under the sheet.
“I looked at the reflection of the moon on the river and it was beautiful,” she said. Eventually they reached the health post, where both baby and mom were declared healthy.
This incredible story became a central event in the film, and I never complained about using a plastic container again. Mariluz worked on the script with us and became a co-producer as well as the film’s heroine.
The film took nine years to complete, and during this time we became involved in our co-producers’ struggles. Mariluz asked us to help her women’s federation file several lawsuits, including one demanding that the Peruvian government recognize their river as a legal person. We published a book of ancestral stories with Leonardo, illustrated by Indigenous children in Spanish and Kukama-Kukamiria, an endangered language. The book has been presented at more than 50 events across the Americas, and more than 1,400 copies have been donated to Amazon schools. Since our video training, Leonardo’s radio station has been producing short films and music videos.
Our process wasn’t perfect—filmmaking never is. But I believe we remained faithful to the ideals of the painting exhibition that initially brought us together. The Tinkuy of the show’s title means “encounters” in Quechua, but the word held deeper meaning for the ancient Inca people. Tinkuy refers to the long process of getting to know someone, of understanding them, including the good, ugly, fun, annoying, beautiful, and frustrating sides of their personality. Our film can be watched on many different levels: environmental, spiritual, political, and more. But for Miki and I, the past nine years have been about tinkuy and how our many encounters have changed and enriched our lives while we strived to make a film in true collaboration with Leonardo, Mariluz, and the Kukama community.
