“Mouth of Ash” (Boca de Ceniza) is also the name of the place where the Magdalena River flows into the Caribbean. One of the largest rivers in Colombia, the Magdalena was the base from which the Spanish Conquistadores expanded their conquest of the land. It still symbolizes death and violence, due to the thousands of bodies cast into its waters as a consequence of the drug wars in Colombia. During the last decades Colombia has suffered massive narcotic production and trafficking and a harsh and violent conflict with paramilitary guerrilla forces operating in its territory, which stop at nothing, from kidnapping and torture to slaughter and pogroms. The local residents, especially in sequestered villages, are often forced to pay the price of the bloody war with their lives, and suffer the great destruction it leaves behind. Echavarría’s seven speakers let the viewer in on the horrors they experienced, and their lamentation bespeaks all these calamities.

Juan Manuel Echavarría (1947) was born in Colombia. Lives and works in Colombia.

Courtesy of Daros-Latinamerica Collection, Zürich

Less Reading...