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I wasn’t born here, but my body feels like it belongs to this country. When my mum was seven months pregnant with me, she left Bolivia. But these mountains, there are sounds. And the mythology of this country never left me. Every time I hear the name of this land, I want to come back. But this time, the spirit of this story was stronger.

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And my love for animals in this country merges into a single call.

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I was editing a video with this footage when I realized the country of my heart was part of the exact same problem. So I had to come back to a again to learn, to discover and fight for the spirit of our forest. The jaguars.

00:00:57:01 – 00:01:30:06
Hi, Emi, I’m Romi Castagnino, Mongabay’s associate digital editor, and it’s a pleasure to have you here with us. For the people who haven’t seen your documentary. Can you tell us a little bit of what Jaguar Spirit is about? Yeah. So generous spirit. And I’m making a journey. And as I call my film, it’s basically a personal journey. And it was inspired, by the news, that I got from editing a video in Costa Rica about, the trafficking that was happening, with jaguars in Surinam.

00:01:30:09 – 00:02:04:24
And, and then after that, one of my colleagues in the office, you said, well, this is also happening in Bolivia. And that just like spiral is full story. So I went to Bolivia together with, were letting Latimer protection and also, these local activists and Caledonians who has been working to, fight, the jaguar trade in Bolivia since 2014 to understand what was happening and why Bolivia became the epicenter of our trade in Latin America is a trade, mainly domestic or also international.

00:02:04:26 – 00:02:45:20
The Jaguars were being traded to Asia to be used in traditional medicine disguised as tigers. which is like something that it has been used for, a lot of years in traditional medicine, a bit before Covid. they have these seizures of, jaguar body parts for the international market, which actually makes, a lot of local activists think that it’s not that the trade has gone, it’s just that the traders are found other illegal ways to trade the goods, to international, countries and then the other one is just like the growing internal market.

00:02:45:22 – 00:03:08:26
And also there is a growing trend of local traditional medicine being made with wild animals and in the country being sold to cure a different, disease. I think that there are two, two things that, you know, are really concerning. one is how openly they sold all of this and that. That is even more concerning for me.

00:03:08:29 – 00:03:33:06
No one is go into these markets and say to people, you can’t sell based. We received a video from an unknown source, that was showing a prisoner in a prison, a governmental presenting Bolivia. creating this violence and had some say in that, they were basically getting the skins of jours, and they were processing all of that inside.

00:03:33:09 – 00:03:56:18
the of increased. And from that you can see how deeply rooted is the trade in the society. You know, and one thing that I loved about the film is that you showed a workshop you conducted with the community members, understand the relationship with Jaguars. One thing that that came up over and over again from the community members is how scared they are from these cats.

00:03:56:21 – 00:04:29:01
Why do you think is that so? That’s really interesting. because I think that there are two there are two things that I notice on that workshop. One, because, you know, the Jaguars being called tiger in the local communities, when kids go into their phones, go into Google and they Google Tiger, all they see this is crazy stories about, you know, how big, of of an animal they are and like, they are predators, of course.

00:04:29:01 – 00:04:56:15
And so they are, you know, they’re right being scared of the animals. But I also think that at some some of these local communities are not entirely, aware of so many of the biology of this animal. for example, if this if jaguars kill a prey, they will keep their prey for several days to feed on that same rate they want attacked people.

00:04:56:15 – 00:05:16:27
They usually try to stay away from humans because we know they know we are a bigger threat than them. So just explaining all of those things to them, I think that that created such a beautiful conversation at the end of like, whoa, we actually need to start protecting these animals. But then they don’t realize that this isn’t common to anyone else.

00:05:16:27 – 00:05:38:24
So they need to start protecting the animals. And and they also, started to have a conversation of why are we so scared, if we’d like, at the beginning of our, indigenous communities, they used to be revered as gods and how important it is to work with local communities to combat the jaguar. the illegal jaguar trade.

00:05:38:27 – 00:06:01:06
Yeah, it is very important. actually, also, one of the other reasons why I decided to start this documentary was, yes, most of the information I was finding was in English and, and in Spanish. Then I was there thinking like, how can we as an American spy for the animal that is, from our land to protect it when we don’t know what is happening?

00:06:01:14 – 00:06:23:01
So the documentaries in English and Spanish, I do want people to take away from your film. I feel that, you know, one of the main things that I want is for Latin Americans to start showing this film to others. And I think that the more we spread the word in Spanish, the more of us will be able to join forces and do something to stop the trade.

00:06:23:03 – 00:06:55:23
After I released a film I had received so many messages from, biologists, other investigators and, and even people, in different countries in Latin America, saying that this is happening in their country already. And, and I would love to think that the more of us Latin Americans know about this topic, and the more we can make our authorities aware how concerned we are about it, maybe we can start, you know, making them aware and maybe we can start working together to to stop the trade.

00:06:55:25 – 00:07:15:28
And where can people find your film? And the film is in a world like my protections. YouTube, account is completely free. Everyone can can watch it. you can also find it in protects you many mondiale or we’re letting our protection in Latin America. in Spanish. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you today.

00:07:16:02 – 00:07:32:06
Thank you so much, Romi. And thank you so much, Mongabay, for helping us to spread the word.