A Serpente e o Arco-íris

Esta é a história de como Wade Davis – etnobotânico canadense dedicado à pesquisa de ervas e plantas medicinais – descobriu a fórmula da droga que produz a "zumbificação" e a levou aos Estados Unidos para submetê-la a testes. Mas não é apenas isso. É também a história de como Davis penetrou na mística de uma sociedade primitiva, situando a "zumbificação" em seu contexto apropriado, no âmbito da "cultura vodu", e acabou por dar-se conta de que a história do vodu haitiano é a história do Haiti, desde as remotas origens no escravismo colonial indígena e africano até os dias de hoje. O livro contém um glossário dos termos utilizados, além de uma bibliografia anotada e de um índice de nomes e assuntos. |...| "Davis, que hoje trabalha como explorador da “National Geographic”, é um dos raros acadêmicos que se dedicou a entender o que há de verdade naquilo que conhecemos como "zombies". Em quatro anos de pesquisa na década de 1980 – três dos quais vividos no Haiti, berço do mito contemporâneo dos zumbis –, Davis afirma ter encontrado “um veneno que faz alguém parecer que está morto, mesmo que esteja vivo”. A poção, produzida por feiticeiros vodus a partir da toxina de um peixe nativo misturada a ervas alucinógenas e restos humanos como ossos e pele, seria o elemento central no processo de zumbificação, prática que iria bem além da simples magia negra, defende o cientista, mas que funcionaria como punição social dentro da cultura e dos costumes da religião vodu. Suas conclusões foram registradas em dois livros “Passage of Darkness: The ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie” (1988), resultado da tese de doutorado de Davis em Harvard, e “A serpente e o arco-íris”, lançado no Brasil por Jorge Zahar Editor em 1985; "The Serpent and the Rainbow" mereceu uma adaptação cinematográfica em filme de horror pelas mãos do mestre Wes Craven -- A Maldição dos Mortos-Vivos (1988), da qual o autor não quer nem ouvir falar..'.' [Imdb Storyline] 'In 1985, after a successful research in Amazonas, Dr. Dennis Alan from Harvard is invited by the president of a Boston pharmaceutics industry, Andrew Cassedy, to travel to Haiti to investigate the case of a man named Christophe that died in 1978 and has apparently returned to life. Andrew wants samples of the voodoo drug that was used in Christophe to be tested with the intention of producing a powerful anesthetic. Dr. Alan travels to meet Dr. Marielle Duchamp that is treating Christophe and arrives in Haiti in a period of revolution. Soon Alan is threatened by the chief of the feared Tonton Macuse Dargent Peytraud, who is a torturer and powerful witch. Alan learns that death is not the end in the beginning of his journey to hell. [Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]. [About the Author] Anthropologist and botanical explorer Wade Davis received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. Davis's work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best-seller, which appeared in 10 languages and was later released by Universal Studios as a motion picture. He is author of five other books, including Shadows in the Sun (1998) and One River (1996). Born December 14, 1953, in British Columbia, Davis is a citizen of both Canada and Ireland. He has worked as a guide, park ranger and forestry engineer. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian voodoo and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians. His photographs have been published widely. Recently Davis's work has taken him to Peru, Borneo, Tibet, the high Arctic, the Orinoco Delta of Venezuela and northern Kenya. A research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he also is a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecotrust, Future Generations, and Cultural Survival-all NGOs dedicated to conservation-based development and the protection of cultural and biological diversity. Davis's television credits include Earthguide, a 13-part television series on the environment, which he hosted and co-wrote. He also wrote for the documentaries Spirit of the Mask, Cry of the Forgotten People, and Forests Forever.