‘Argentina must put an end to its idea of ​​becoming a European country’: Lucrecia Martel on the issue of murder | Video

Men one event from Notes, new notes Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, tour guide shows children a painting on the roof of a Catholic church showing how “Indians tried to enter the city”. “See how these angels fought to prevent the Indians from entering, and they sent these stones to scare them,” said the guide.

The following photo shows local people – including a child baptized in the same church – watching a video of the trip on a mobile phone. One of them said: “By listening to him (the leader), you realize that he is sure that even God wants to wipe out good things for us.”

Landmarks is Martel’s first play and he delves into one story – the killing of a traditional leader in a land dispute in 2009 – to deal with a serious and multifaceted issue.

Martel, 59, said: “The people of Argentina do not want to know about the rights of the people of this region.

Known for fictional films such as Being there (2017) and The Headless Woman (2008), Martel has spent almost 15 years working on Landmarks, which he won a very good movie at the BFI London film festival last year. The main purpose of this film is Javier Chocobaractivist and leader of the Diaguita people from the community of Chuschagasta in the province of Tucumán, who was 68 years old when he was shot in his community on October 12, 2009.

The murderous moment was filmed by one of the accused, the mining businessman Darío Luis Amín, who claimed to be the owner of the property and arrived in the area together with two former police officers, Luis Humberto Gómez and Eduardo José del Milagro Valdivieso Sassi. The footage shows the beginning of the conflict between them and the villagers, and when Gómez shot one of them. After that, Amín stopped paying attention to the conflict, and another round of gunfire could be heard. The three accused men were armed, while none of the natives were. Chocobar died, and other villagers were shot but survived.

It was in search of Zama – a period film about 18th century Spain on the coast of Paraguay – that Martel found a video on YouTube. He began researching a long-running land dispute between the Chuschagasta community and the non-Native families who claim to own the land, and the idea for a documentary came naturally, he says. At first I wanted to help the community by building a museum, and then I started thinking about making a film.

The trial took nearly nine years to begin, and when it did, Martel and his team were there. “This was one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen,” says the filmmaker on the 14 days he attended. He said that “Indian racism” was evident during the trial, “above all due to patriarchy, parenting and the idea that the wealth of the indigenous people is something that the government should decide how to manage”.

The documents show times when not only the centuries-old presence of the Chuchagasta community was questioned, but also the presence of Argentines – which Martel says is not limited to Diaguita. The filmmaker, who was born in Salta, near Tucumán in the north, said: “At school we don’t get any information about Indians or their rights.

Martel believes that Argentina’s discrimination against Indians – who make up about 3% of the population according to the 2022 census – is tied to the way the country sees itself and creates itself: a “white” country made up of European immigrants, ignoring other races. “We always act like we’re not from Latin America… Argentina they need to put an end to the illusion that there is no European country,” he says.

Martel is white and sees no problem in making a film about cultural issues. He admits that “the first 120 years of cinema” were mainly for a few white men from “middle-class backgrounds”, and he is happy that people from “other cultures” are now making the industry “diverse and rich”, but he says that “the conversation about their culture created another problem”, especially among young people who want to make films.

“You see men afraid to make films about women, women not sure about the issues they are allowed to talk about, everyone is trying to find out what is acceptable for them to talk about. I understand this concern (about cultural norms), and we have to have it, but we can’t stop talking about our time because the critics have not lived the life we ​​have,” he says.

Now that the film’s production is winding down, Martel has given the rights to the Chuschagasta tribe, who were also the first to see the finished script. At the end of the trial, the three men were charged he was judged. They appealed and were allowed to remain free pending the appeal. In 2021, Amín died of Covid. At the end of last year, the high court also ordered the two policemen to be jailed.

Meanwhile, the Chushagasta group is still fighting for the government to recognize its land. Although the story is central to the story, Martel says Landmarks is not a film about a specific region, but about “the historical conflict and the dispossession of indigenous peoples in Argentina”.

“I made this film because I wanted to support the history of our country, and the health of the Argentine people, who have taken this problem for a very long time: because of indifference, denial and constant doubt about the existence or validity of the claims of the Indians.”