[Lasa] about the Hollywood film Arthur the King, the dog 'rescued' from Ecuador

[Karin Friederic]

Hi everyone,

Many of you probably heard at some point about the dog "Arthur" who was
taken from Ecuador to Sweden after following a team of Swedish adventure
racers about ten years ago. If not, the story recap can be found here
<https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_(perro)> and here
<https://www.wgbh.org/news/2015-03-20/an-ecuadorian-stray-dog-named-arthur-finds-his-forever-home-in-sweden>.
Now a big Hollywood film is due to be released in mid-March
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10720352/>starring Mark Wahlberg, Simu Liu
and others, (and in the end, the location in Ecuador was obscured and it
now supposedly takes place in the Republica Dominicana).

In truth, the dog belonged to a friend of mine in a rural area of the
coast, and for quite awhile, my friend suffered from accusations of animal
abuse and even had to go into hiding (in part because of really bad,
discriminatory reporting by El Comercio), so at his behest, we just let the
story play out, stopped intervening, and he was happy for his dog who made
it to Sweden. He doesn't seek any compensation or any publicity and just
wants to be left alone, but he has agreed that I write about the
counter-story in mostly academic circles, as long as it doesn't cause
trouble for him. I knew the dog well, he followed me at times (it's quite
possible I 'taught' him to follow foreigners, unfortunately). The dog,
Barbuncho, was never abused nor maliciously neglected but yes, the dog was
a *perro del campo*, and suffered from risks of life in the campo and
bosque.

Together with some undergraduate students who were really taken with this
story, I wrote about the colonial contours of these savior-stories (as
represented in the three books that the Swedish racer wrote about Arthur)
and the racist backlash on social media, mostly for teaching in
undergraduate anthropology classes.

If you are interested, please have a look at the full article :
Full article: Saving Stray Dogs: The Global Politics of Aid and Spectacle
in the Ecuadorian Jungle (tandfonline.com)
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19428200.2021.2087446> or if
that isn't accessible, the proofs are attached (the article is in English,
but I have a poorly translated version somewhere). I am also writing
another short piece about the film and trailer.

I am glad to hear your thoughts via personal emails, even as I know the
subject of animal treatment and wellbeing can be very contentious -- here,
and in Ecuador.

Gracias de antemano,
Karin




-- 
Karin Friederic, Ph.D. (she, her, hers)
Associate Professor
Dept of Anthropology <https://anthropology.wfu.edu/>, Piccolo 102
Wake Forest University <http://www.wfu.edu/>
Spring 2024 Office Hours
<https://calendly.com/prof_f/office-hour-meetings-clone?month=2024-02>


Recent Publications:
*Book, The Prism of Human Rights, Rutgers University Press
<https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-prism-of-human-rights/9781978835320>
 (2023)
<https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2159742>*Transnational Solidarity
and Quilombo Postcapitalism: Building Alternatives to Development amid
Brazilian Racial Hierarchy and Amazonian Extractivism, *Rethinking Marxism*
<https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2159742> (2023)
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