MIAMI, United States. – After leaving the island at the age of 18, living in India and arriving in Barcelona, Spain, Víctor Manuel Fleites became the Cuban Tarzan. Not for displaying enormous muscles and strength, but for being the founder of the “Tarzan Movement”, a curious initiative with which he teaches and accompanies people to climb trees and imitate primate movements.
In Interview with Cuban JournalFleites said that, since he left Cuba more than 10 years ago, he did not stop looking for his place until he devised and founded the Tarzan Movement. “It’s more than just climbing trees, you feel things you don’t feel on the ground,” he says.
Regarding the emergence of the Tarzan Movement, he said: “I looked at the primates, the family of the human being, evolutionarily speaking. These animals move with more agility, out of necessity. In their day to day they have a strength that compared to that of a human being of the same weight is incredible. That’s when I think that either evolution is not cheating, or we are doing something wrong in our day to day. This activity is not only good for the body, but also for the mind.”
However, it is not easy to learn to jump from one tree to another without falling or getting hurt. “Sometimes the person is paralyzed by fear; The ideal at that moment is not for him to go down or up, but for him to find in that space another relationship with that fear, with that place where he is. It has happened to some journalists when they come to interview me, they want to record it from a tree branch and they panic, “he told Cuban Journal.
Despite the risk of the activity, Fleites avoids the use of security means. “I am allergic to carrying so many things, I got rid of most of them, I carry my mobile because I work out there, I like the philosophy of not having to depend on other things.”
The Tarzan Movement operates in the park of the Citadel of Barcelona, for the fauna and vegetation of the place. “There you feel like in a garden, it is a place cared for by the City Council. There are very strong trees with branches with access to the trunk from below, like the Magnolia,” he said.
When the young Cuban arrived in Barcelona, he had “not a single euro” but he had plenty of confidence, inherited from his family on the island, according to what he says.
Now, his movement classes cost 15 euros (almost 15 dollars) and are organized via WhatsApp.
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