Damiana Kryygi

Directed by Alejandro Fernández Mouján, Damiana Kryygi is a 2015 Argentinean documentary, shedding light on the heart-wrenching story of a young Aché girl, born in the early 20th century, caught amidst the depths of cultural ignorance and colonization.

The documentary traces the tragic journey of Damiana's body through time and space, from Paraguay to Argentina to Germany, before finally returning to her ancestral land. This narrative reveals the nefarious aspects of European scientific curiosity in colonial times that contributed towards the marginalization and exploitation of native people and cultures.

The film opens up addressing the barely known tragic event in Paraguayan history called 'Aché Genocide', which led to the extermination of a significant portion of the indigenous Aché population. Damiana Kryygi was a survivor of the horrendous massacre in 1896, during which her parents were killed, and she was captured at a tender age of three. The film elucidates this atrocity through a combination of direct interviews, archival efforts to piece together the fragments of the past, and a meticulous collection of images and records.

The destiny of Damiana took a darker course after her capture. She was missionized and later handed over to the Argentinean explorer, Guido Boggiani. Astonishingly, her body, instead of accepted as a human being, was perceived as an 'exotic' exhibition object and a valuable asset for scientific anthropological study.

Boggiani photographed Damiana extensively, preserving photographic documentation of this young Aché child. The photographs and measurements taken by Boggiani played a distinct role in the racial science of the era and were, in fact, used to underpin the supposed racial superiority of the white Europeans.

When Damiana died at the age of 14 from tuberculosis, her body was dissected, studied, and preserved by the Buenos Aires Anthropological Museum. The young Aché girl that she was, her dignity was further stripped away post-death, with her bones displayed in European museums.

However, director Mouján doesn't let Damiana's story end there. The film, covering the ground from the early 20th century to the present day, explores the unyielding efforts of restoring Damiana's dignity. Damiana Kryygi documents the relentless undertakings for recovering the remains of Damiana and two other Aché children, decades after their deaths, and their eventual reburial on Aché land. While the process was fraught with obstacles, including resistances from museums that held the remains, it was an imperative step towards reconciliation and justice.

The film serves to vindicate Damiana's dignity and enforce the fact that she was more than a 'specimen'. She was a living, breathing human, who, like others of her tribe, fell victim to the moral blindness of the progressive era. Through two significant narrative threads – one stoically chronicling Damiana's violated life and the other, the Aché community's plight for retrieving her remains for a proper burial – the film paints a somber, but necessary, the picture of historical abuses and a society transcending them.

While distressing, Damiana Kryygi is not just a lament but a celebration of the Aché's resilience in the face of devastating historical injustice. Their fight for Damiana's remains signified an assertion of their marginalised identity and a refusal to allow the past to entirely govern their future.

Alejandro Fernández Mouján brings to light undiscovered chapters of history and presents them with sensitivity, infusing the documentary with a sense of reverence for the Aché culture and people. Using this narrative as a detailed case study, Mouján effortlessly poses nuances of historical scientific racism, the quest for justice, and the need for acknowledgment of horrific historical injustices.

Damiana Kryygi is, therefore, a heart-rending exploration of a grim past and a bold indictment of ethnographic curiosities of colonial-era. Nonetheless, it is also a testament to the spiritual and political resilience shown by the Aché community in making the world acknowledge their oppressed history and ensuring that their story gets the dignity it deserves. Between the lines of this narrative, it inspires reflection on our collective humanity and history, pushing the boundaries of understanding and empathy.