When he was a child growing up in Cuba, Victor Manuel Fleites would always be found running away from his family home to the nearby forest. “Being in nature is a kind of healing,” the 33-year-old tells me. “I always felt a little bit disconnected to the mainstream. I was a rebel in that sense. I was not able to adapt to society. I was not able to work with society.” So, whenever he felt a sense of unease, he’d flee to the woods. There, he’d transform branches of enormous trees into his own personal obstacle course. The animals that called the environment home would become his friends. Essentially, he became Tarzan.
Today, Fleites believes that many humans have lost touch with the natural world. He also believes that apes embody a spiritual connection to nature that we’ve forgotten about in our culture of go-go capitalism and office cubicles – so he created a new, instructive movement that has already convinced hundreds of people to take to the jungle and, er, pretend to be apes. Known as “The Tarzan Movement”, it is a fitness regime and novel approach to life taught internationally through workshops and climbing classes, with Fleites encouraging his followers to mimic the movements of apes and monkeys.
