Hugo Blanco, Deep River

An intense epoch of internal war in Peru spanned my childhood and youth. The terrorist violence of the Maoists of the Shining Path was replicated by the brutal military repression. In their crossfire stood tens of thousands of indigenous peasants, the most forgotten and marginalized ones in the country. People that our racism had already faded out before the war.

The trauma left in the Peruvian population for two decades (1980–2000) led many to identify now the faintest socialist impulse as a veiled communist or terrorist threat. For my generation ‚revolution’ is an ambiguous word. My generation is trying to process what happened.

After my extensive research in diverse visual archives in Peru, which depict Hugo Blanco in a sensationalist way and at the same time do not record the indigenous fights as part of the official history, I understood that my documentary film should show what is happening with the memory of the Peruvian Indigenous and Peasant struggles: it is fading out.

The Agrarian Reform, the biggest social catalyst of modern Peru is, for instance, only recounted beginning with the official law created in 1969 during the military government. But Indigenous fights are still labeled as subversive acts. Indigenous peoples are, century after century, erroneously interpreted as suspects and aggressors or in a passive political role or as victims. Indigenous people are still "the other", the field of projection of the countries’ own fears. My film tries to approach the perspective of the Indigenous peasant movement.

Probably my biggest challenge was not to give up telling a counter-history - “bursting history against its grain” (W. Benjamin, 1995), - despite the expectation and the advice of telling the traditional hero-story about such a charismatic leader. My character himself still works in deconstructing the imagery of messianic guerrilla fighters and advocates for self-government by the people. He says there is no need for leaders. He seeks to put in the light the past and the present epic of Indian people, who were once overshadowed by him and by the light of the revolutionary imagery not just in Peru but also in the World. As for me, making a film rather ‚in the spirit‘ than ‘about’ Hugo Blanco, means to activate the memory of those forgotten collective indigenous fights. I think it is necessary all over the planet to re-take knowledge of those facts facing the fact that in Latin America rural social fighters and nature guardians are being murdered and are easily criminalized relating them to communist threats.

I work with subliminal sound and images subtly touching national taboos. I’m afraid that my country won’t find its path to the so-much-longed-for reconciliation and it won’t heal the deep wounds of our historical memory until we don’t dare to cross the traumatic waters and shadows seeded in our collective unconsciousness.