Entre imágenes y reflejos… o despeñarse en la alucinación identitaria

The article explores the way in which, within the framework of the fifth centenary of the arrival of the Spaniards in America, the Ukamau Group (UG) contributed to the discussion on the prevalence of the effects of the conquest in the present through the film To Receive the Birds’ Song which, due to financing problems, could only be released in 1995. The film, with an enormous visual and musical richness, caused strong adhesions and rejections due to the kind of representation of continued colonial existing tropes in Bolivian identity. However, like much of the work of the group done after The Clandestine Nation (1989), it has scarcely been revisited by the critics and historiography of Latin American cinema. The first part of the work puts the film in context, both in terms of the history of the UG, and the socio-political situation in which its production and reception is inscribed. The second section reviews the notions of internal colonialism and lordly paradox —formulated by Pablo González Casanova and René Zavaleta Mercado respectively— in order to establish a conceptual perspective from which to approach the treatment that in the film receives the problem of colonial continuities The last part analyzes in detail the narrative and visual strategies used by the UG to unveil —up to a certain point— the colonial mark present in the identity narratives and Bolivian daily life of the mid-nineties

Art · Humanities · Afro-Latin American Studies · Indigenous Studies in Latin America · Latin American Cultural Politics