The following release was prepared by the Communication Network of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca and translated by the La Chiva Collective.Stolen Land will play again on Monday, May 3 at Hot Docs in Toronto.

Stolen Land: The lie that attacks our process

The Communication Network of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca wishes to publicly express its position on the documentary Stolen Land [translated into Spanish as Robatierras, or Land Thieves] by Margarita Martínez and Miguel Salazar. This film involves and puts at risk the Nasa indigenous community of Cauca [a department in southwestern Colombia] and all indigenous peoples of Colombia.

In how and what it presents, we believe this ‘documentary’ will have an enormously negative impact on the indigenous process in northern Cauca. For those unfamiliar with this process, and thus without the understanding necessary to critically assess this documentary, we fear viewers will believe this particular portrayal. We would like to emphasize the following points:

1. This documentary is, in essence, about a minority faction of the indigenous process in northern Cauca. More precisely, it is about a single person who, at the time of filming, was coordinator of the Indigenous Guard. Stolen Land collects the story of this person and presents it alongside limited commentaries of other leaders and members of the process, which are taken out of context. These ‘other versions’ are presented only to reinforce and unquestioningly legitimize the fundamental version of the protagonist.

2. For those unfamiliar with the process, this portrayal clearly transforms the delirium of one individual, who influences and mobilizes a small group, into the struggle of an entire process that, in reality, involves a diversity of peoples making up the Regional Indigenous Councils of Cauca [Spanish acronym CRIC]. To be sure, this person, like any other person, group or faction, has a right to their perspective. However, one must never make that one version the only truth by excluding all others through the use of tricks and distortions. That is not how one conveys truth.

Quite simply, this documentary does not correspond with reality. In no moment does another perspective appear with the same strength as that of this individual and the faction he represents. Worse, the fundamental arguments of this particular faction are not representative of the centuries-old struggle of indigenous peoples. While the film presents some phrases of other leaders and members of the process, the seemingly unending images and words of the protagonist and his followers render those of all others relatively insignificant. Undeniably, this is the intention of the director and protagonists of the film: to present the public with a distorted version of the indigenous process that does not correspond with reality. In this sense, it is a direct attack on the majority of members of the process in that it replaces their perspectives with that of one individual, one faction.

3. This is not a story of Stolen Land (or even worse, as the film’s horribly translated Spanish title intentionally suggests, Land Thieves). For indigenous peoples, the theme of land is the essential reason for struggle; as such, it evokes a unifying position that calls for the recuperation of land through many forms of organization. This documentary deals with the essential reason for being of indigenous peoples. To portray that badly or in a way that damages is to attack indigenous peoples at the very essence of their existence. What is the position and strategy of the indigenous process with respect to land and its recuperation? The documentary offers no response. What does appear is the notion that there are some, the film’s protagonists, who struggle to recuperate land, while others do not. This is simply untrue.

The film obscures, distorts, and falsifies, offering a single perspective that is not representative of the process. While the process has always struggled for the liberation and recuperation of land, the difference between the majority of those involved in the indigenous process and the protagonists of this film is in terms of strategy and ethic.

4. Truths determine the legitimacy of distorted visions. The documentary shows lands filled with sugarcane; it shows the position of the [Colombian] government. In the midst of this appears a faction enlightened by its enlightened leader, persistent in rising with its people against a perverse regime. The latter is clear, the former is not so clear. This is a collective struggle that uses many strategies. In honor of the truth, the ethical thing would be for this faction and their leader to present themselves accurately: a relative minority within the process.

5. The intention of the directors and protagonists is clear: to create and present a myth. This entire documentary revolves around one person. All is done by him and for him. This portrayal is not an error insofar as it is the on-screen construction of a narrative. However, what is serious is that it is done in the name of a process, the costs of which the whole process will pay. Margarita Martinez and Miguel Salazar acquired the permission of the indigenous authorities to make a documentary about the indigenous process in Cauca. In the end, they created one against it. It was a trick. The simple fact of fabricating an individual figure that shines above a collective struggle, appropriating it, is a fault against a collective and centuries-old struggle.

In sum, this documentary centres on a character whose qualities are uncritically distorted, thereby excluding and taking out of context the collective vision of the process the film appropriates for its own purpose. That appropriation involves the deployment of real elements of a collective process so as to present a false version of one character, seen as a tolerant promoter of actions rejected by the process for reasons that are selectively excluded and hidden. That appropriation means that a deeply-rooted and collective struggle is converted into a basis for legitimizing the struggle of a particular faction. This documentary is bad intentioned and destructive.

The producers misinformed indigenous authorities. They took advantage of the permission they were granted (to make a documentary about the process) by making their own documentary based on their own version. Those not already familiar with the process are not told of this and so will not know otherwise. That is why this documentary will not inform; it will only misinform.