Indigenous Activism and The Reparative Cartographies of Contemporary Latin American Documentary Cinema

• In Event: Trazos de vulnerabilidad: redes de creación y resistencia en los textos culturales del Cono Sur

Abstract

In his book After the Map (2016), William Rankin argues that mapping has shifted away from representational cartography to a presentational system that places the user at the center of the map. According to Rankin, new technologies such as the GPS expose the deceitful objectivity of traditional maps by offering a different relationship between user, landscape, and authority, unearthing the reach of state power and the instability of territorial boundaries. This paper examines how contemporary Latin American documentary cinema has contributed to this narrative by mapping an affective and decentering cartography of the region that reveals marginal and repressed identities and forms of belonging. I study the cinematic cartographies of Sebastián Lingiardi’s Sip’ohi el lugar del Manduré (2011) and Vicente Carelli’s Martirio (2016). Mapping the ancestral Wichí and Guarani Kaiowá territories in Argentina and Brazil, these documentary films attest to the long history of Indigenous resistance across the Americas.
I argue that the violent conflicts over the occupation, ownership, and demarcation of Indigenous territories and the marginal status of Indigenous citizenship in Latin America reveal nineteenth century human geography and environmental determinism as immediate antecedents of the extractive economy that characterizes the region today. This research reclaims cinema as a legitimate form of geographic knowledge. Space, anchored by the camera and centered on human experience, emerges as repository of the past and as a site to reimagine the region.

Author

• Juana I New