Being able to decide how one wants to die is still a difficult process in Latin America, a problem that filmmaker Rodolfo Santa María Troncoso detected and wanted to capture in the documentary “The last trip” (2024), a testimony about how many times it is difficult for us to release our relatives when death is inevitable.
The documentary follows the tanatologist Federico Rebolledo, a doctor who for more than 40 years dedicated himself to accompanying his patients when they already have the expectation of reaching a dignified death, half a life of dedication that was also ended for the specialist when they detected a terminal cancer.
“We will all get death, and we will have to do with how a relative is facing it. Death is always painful,” explains Santa María about the difficulties in accompanying our loved ones in their deathbed.
Rebolledo accompanied more than 2,000 people moved by “the suffering of the patients”, a “crusade” that decided to lead the few solutions that the Government of Mexico offers the terminal patients.
“In Mexico there is little information about it and many people do not know. There is the possibility of sedation, which is legal, and that implies controlling pain. And on the other hand, there is medical help to die, which is not legal and many people need,” he explains.
The filmmaker refers to euthanasia, legalized in just two countries throughout Latin America: in Colombia since 2014 and in Ecuador for specific cases such as Paola Roldán, sick with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ELA).
Specifically in Mexico, euthanasia is typified as “pious homicide” in the Criminal Code, although there are voices such as Samara Martínez, a terminal of Lupus and renal insufficiency, which fight for the legislation of dignified death.
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The documentary that portrays a difficult process
Dr. Rebolledo was a “provocative”, “he spoke and always thought about death,” defended euthanasia and was the instrument that the filmmaker used to tell “the need” that these patients and relatives find with medical processes.
“When the opioids end, when morphine and fentanil are no longer enough, well, death is an option,” he sighs.
Although supporting the legalization of euthanasia is one of Santa María’s main objectives, for the filmmaker this prima opera is rather to teach the suffering and complexities for which relatives, but above all the sick, go to reach the decision to take their lives.
“The film rather than a call to legalize it (euthanasia), is rather that people see how difficult this process is. Even if you had the option to receive it, it is not easy to make that decision,” he develops.
Santa María also points to medical institutions that “keep many of those people alive to continue charging”, and although he understands that “anyone wants to keep their relative alive,” he asks to reflect the relatives of the patients about when it is necessary to release.
“They are people who no longer live, who are in bed, do not eat and suffer pain. They are already in a death process (…) It is an economic issue, many times relatives are not informed that the patient has no way to recover in two years and be the same again, but that he will die sooner or later,” he says.
“The last trip” premiered in the Mexican rooms of more than 20 states in the country last weekend, a reflection on death that “always arrives”, although this time in documentary format.
With EFE information
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