Both the old and young Karamakates are portrayed by indigenous men, neither of them professional actors. The old shaman is played by Antonio Bolivar Salvador.
Tom ColeKaramakate says, "to become a warrior, every Cohiuano man must leave everything behind and go into the jungle, guided only by his dreams. In that journey, he has to discover, in solitude and silence, who he really is."
Tom ColeIn fact, Guerra based his story on the diaries of two explorers, German Theodor Koch-Grunberg and American Richard Evans Schultes. There work is some of the only documentation of cultures that have since vanished. But Guerra did not want white men to be his protagonists.
Tom ColeThe Ocaina and many of the other indigenous peoples of the Amazon were nearly wiped out during the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Outsiders came into the jungle, enslaved the tribes to harvest the rubber and killed those that resisted.
Tom Cole