Ukamau

http://www.ayllumedia.org/jorgesanjines.htm

The Bolivian film director Jorge Sanjinés, who is widely known in Latin America, brought his films to the University last week. He showed a different film every night for a week and a half, splitting the showings between the upper campus and the lower. His films (summerized in spanish at the link above) deal with a variety of social, political, and economic topics, and all focus on the culture of the indigenous people.
His first film, made in 1966 at age 20 is titled Ukamau, a word in Aymara meaning That´s How It Is (or Así es). It tells a story of justice and revenge for an indigenous man against a wealthy spanish man who rapes and murders his wife. The parable shows the clash between the spanish wealthy minority and the exploited indigenous people of Bolivia. Most of the films are in Quechua or Aymara, which Jason and I are both slowly learning from students who want to learn English.
The purpose of Sanjinés´ visit and free showing of his films was part of a campaign on his part to re-expose the poor indigenous to their cultural traditions, steadily being lost to neoliberalism and its imported culture and cheap goods.
Perhaps Sanjinés most famous film is Yawar Mallku (The Blood of the Condor) which won film awards in Paris and San Fransisco. The film, which exposes the practice of forced sterilization of indigenous women by the Peace Corps in Bolivia 1960s, was integral in the success of the movement to remove the Peace Corps from Bolivia following the scandal.
Most interesting to me was Sanjinés´documentary, Banderas del Amanecer. It is a documentary film of the coup and military dictatorship that rocked Bolivia in the early 1980s (SOA played a part, for those of you heading to Georgia in November. Look up Hugo Banzer and García Meza). More importantly, it documents the mass resistence movement from a united front of social movements, for which Bolivia is famous. Sanjinés captured incredible footage of Indigenous women organizing to take care of children, farms, and animals all while participating in resistence by marching and carrying stones to build roadblocks. Even more incredible is the footage of indigenous miners having their breakfast tea with one hand occupied by a piece of bread and a stick of dynamite. Next comes the shots of the miners slinging the dynamite at military groups and hundreds of poor farmers marching toward while cracking large stones together in dissent. It´s a frightening and impressive dedication to the cause of the movement, and eventually succeeded in toppling the dictatorship, though not before the deaths and torture of many, and the exile of Sanjinés and many others.
The students, as well as community members turned out in droves to watch the films, which were projected on freshly-painted walls in large open spaces where lots of chairs and benches could be positioned on the grass. Sanjinés was pleased to see the better part of the student body laugh at jokes in the film´s indigenous languages before the spanish subtitles even appeared.
Jorge, as we came to call him, stayed with us and provided the opportunity to hear his personal stories of persecution and terror (he narrowly escaped capture in Lima as a part of "Plan Condor", the roundup of dissenters and liberals in the 1970s for which Pinochet will possibly be charged for in Chile). He also conversed on current political and social issues in Bolivia (in which I believe Jorge has some power) and the US, as well as fascinating stories from the inner political and social circles of upper La Paz society.
We plan to interview Jorge for our film, and we´re keeping our fingers crossed that he can get us an interview with his friend Evo Morales, who happens to really enjoy the films.