A film about political life in the East

Julián Larrea is the director of ‘Tu sangre’, a documentary feature film that shows the development of an electoral process in a border canton of the Amazon, where settlers and natives participate.

The film is part of a social, cultural and educational work begun 15 years ago by the filmmaker Julián Larrea and the producer and researcher Tania Laurini, which is now exhibited on the Retina Latina audiovisual content platform.

Larrea and Laurini arrived in Santiago, cantonal capital of Tiwintza, in Morona Santiago, to work with the Shuar community, in a binational development project, in the area of ​​intercultural communication and education.

Tiwintza is a canton created in 2002, after the signing of the peace treaty between Ecuador and Peru in 1998, which closed a historic period of conflicts over the possession of this territory, originally occupied by the Shuar community.

Larrea takes advantage of the conjuncture of the sectional elections of 2004 to register with his camera the development of an electoral process, which will end up reproducing, on a small scale, the mechanisms, gaps and contradictions of a worn out political exercise that extends to a national scale. But also the clash of two cultures, with very different ideas about identity, development and politics.

The film begins with images of the residents waiting for the official results that confirm the victory of one of the two candidates who are fighting for the Mayor’s Office.

In this way, the director leaves a line of tension open, to go back in time and resume the story from the moment when the internal elections of a party end up confronting and dividing the two main candidates for mayor, one of origin Shuar and another, mestizo settler.

The conflict exceeds the political interest to put into debate the issue of identity and belonging, reflected in the figure of the two political aspirants. The Shuar delegate becomes the official candidate for mayor, while the representative of the mestizo sector feels displaced and starts his own campaign as a candidate of the rival party.

The electoral campaign takes place on canoes through large rivers and on foot through the tropical forest. Some carry their message in Spanish, others in Shuar and in their speeches all speak of races, languages, customs and territory, while offering food in exchange for votes or help from the national government they represent.

For Laurini, the documentary maintains its validity by showing the political conception and forms of organization of the ancestral peoples, as an alternative to rethink the political system towards a true democratic exercise of representation and citizen participation.

For Laurini, the documentary maintains its validity by showing the political conception and forms of organization of the ancestral peoples, as an alternative to rethink the political system towards a true democratic exercise of representation and citizen participation.

Source: https://www.elcomercio.com/tendencias/filme-vida-politica-shuar-elecciones.html