Dante Bolcato: the palo santo has given him 21 years of peace

When I was 46 years old, Dante Bolcato he was somewhat tired of his monotonous life as a psychiatric therapist in his native Bologna. He only had a dream that generated enthusiasm: create a perfect perfume that, when inhaled, causes a deep sense of tranquility. And he already had a name for that essence: it would be called Peace.

That longing remained latent in her mind and heart, but as a distant illusion that simply left her with a warm embrace of hope. What he was able to decide in a hurry was to change his profession to become an image consultant in the advertising industry. So he continued with his routine, still monotonous, until a campaign to promote an anti-cellulite cream motivated him to use tagua as an image. “On the internet I saw that the hardest tagua was in Manabí.”

To better understand this product, he traveled to Ecuador in January 2000, coinciding with the citizen protests that ended with the overthrow of then-president Jamil Mahuad, so in the midst of transportation problems, he headed to Puerto López.

And from the first sunrise began to change his perception of life. Sitting in front of the ocean, he noticed that the sea breezes kept the seagulls in flight over the ocean, which he considered not common in all coastal destinations, causing a constant renewal of the air. “I thought that living here was like being in a clinic or taking medicine … it is a sacred place.”

The second day watched the hectic movement in the seafood market. “I worked with Doctors Without Borders in Africa, so I knew extreme poverty. But here it was the opposite. There was plenty. Everyone could eat. The fish were falling out of the drawers ”. In that environment in which resources apparently satisfied everyone’s needs, without there being major socioeconomic differences among the inhabitants, it kept conflicts away. “I told myself that it should be a place where people are good. If there is food, there is no crime. Where there is balance, there is peace ”.

And to third day, Motivated to learn something about the local culture through the language, he began to write down which were the words that he heard the most among the inhabitants. These were two: “More or less” and “right now.” This showed him that in Puerto López there was no rigid perception of time, with a tolerance that was explained as a consequence of abundance. “Time and space that do not exist … It doesn’t matter what time the bus leaves, at 08:00, at 09:00, right away … I said to myself: I’m staying … People didn’t even carry a watch.”

By then he had already decided to retire immediately in Italy to move to Ecuador, but he continued to get surprises in this land that would be his next home, since on the fourth day he discovered the palo santo. “I was in Agua Blanca and a guide showed me.” She breathed it in and deduced that this was the essence she needed to make her Paz perfume.

“The palo santo is one of the plants that man learned to use before all the others. It lights up fast, it doesn’t bother your view, it puts you in a good mood and keeps you away from mosquitoes ”.

He discovered that palo santo has an active principle that is the limoneno, well known in medicine and cosmetics. “It has psychoactive power. If you breathe it, your production of endorphin (the hormone of happiness), morphine (which fights pain) and dopamine (which provides a feeling of relaxation) increases. I had found in the palo santo the most important part to reach my perfume, since I wanted to provoke those sensations in the human being ”.

He returned to Italy to resolve all his affairs and returned to Manabí in October permanently. That is how Dante began, little by little, to work on the extraction of the essence of palo santo, which currently has allowed him to develop an industry that has about 40 employees to make products such as soaps, shampoos, insect repellent, incenses, candles, which it exports to several countries. It also sells those products in his store, El Artesan, located on the boardwalk of Puerto López.

Its activity does not harm nature, since the palo santo trees that it uses have died naturally. “At 70 years of age they begin to die.” And he finds them through trained collectors in the Manabí forests, in which he maintains a permanent reforestation program in conjunction with public and private institutions. “For every tree we consume, we plant ten”, palo santo and other types, such as pepito colorado, spote, carob and pechiche.

In all this, Dante works with his wife, Rocío Loor, from Porto, with whom he has three children. Yes, he also started a family. Puerto López has given all that happiness to this man who came to Manabí to get away from his old existence, to retire, but there he really began to live. (I)