Yuyos is an audio-visual ethnographic project lived together with the peasant family Franco Gauto, in Colonia Luz Bella, rural Paraguay.

Yuyos are plants. Trees, shrubs, herbs that can be medicinal. They are wild or cultivated. There are yuyos that can be toxic and other that are beneficial for health. The film documents the family’s ethnobotanical knowledge in relation to their daily life. By revealing the cultural importance attributed to medicinal plants, the protagonists enlighten their idea of agroecology as a way to face current ecological issues and crises. Colonia Luz Bella’s community is socio-environmentally at stake due to continuous deforestation to make room for industrial plantations and pastures. These not only threaten biodiversity—directly influencing the access to yuyos—, they also determine a notable cultural loss.

Born to recover and value the natural medicine’s heritage of one family dedicated to agroecology, the ethnographic film speaks for a whole community in cohabitation with deforestation. In a context of familiar sharing, eased by the social beverage of tereré, the yuyos become narrative agents of stories of commitment and eco-resistance. (Source: Giulia Lepori)