I consider that speaking lived histories involves a great responsibility that cannot be omitted, because decontextualizing them gives the impression of wanting to profit from the raw reality that torments Mayan communities: the racism, something we don’t identify (or recognize) in the film because apparently it is only an individual history. The film avoids delving deeper into the very scenes it presents: the slave labor in coffee plantations, for instance, or the monolingual hegemonic system (of Spanish) that is imposed on the other 24 cultures that exist in the country.

The “rural” life portrayed in the film is linked to poverty and is not valorized as another way of living or of conceiving life itself. A way of living that is not based on cement or the destruction of the environment, and that thousands of Mayans defend day by day so that it is not destroyed by extractive industries such as mining, monoculture, and hydroelectricity.

Sandra Xinico Batz

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