ASOFAMD Dice Nunca Más (ASOFAMD Says Never Again) is an informative and promotional documentary about the Association of Family Members of Detained, Disappeared, and Martyrs for the National Liberation of Bolivia (ASOFAMD). Since 1970, ASOFAMD has fought to combat the erasure and impunity of the era of Bolivian dictatorships. This documentary explores the history of violent imperialism and Operation Condor occupation in Bolivia, the presence of modern anti-imperialist movements in Bolivia, and ASOFAMD’s fight for truth and memory politics. It also explores how youth and artists in the city of La Paz are the new generation of fighters for justice.
Key Words: memory politics, transitional justice, truth commissions, Bolivia, Andean Studies
Interview with a member of ASOFAMD who lost her husband during the era of Bolivia’s bloody dictatorships.
Family members of the tortured, martyred and/or disappeared at a declassification ceremony in La Paz on November 21, 2016.
El Alto, Bolivia.
Member of La Plataforma de Luchadores, another La Paz-based NGO currently fighting for a Truth Commission in Bolivia.
Audience members hold up pictures of their deceased and/or disappeared loved ones at the declassification ceremony.
Ruth Alipaz, the president of ASOFAMD, at a press conference in La Paz.
This oral history project analyzes the nature of religious cults in Isla Taquile, Puno, Perú in order to investigate the relationship between Spanish colonist Catholicism and pre-colombian Andean religion. Manuel Marzal, the classic academic authority on religious syncretism in Peru, proposed that the clash of two disparate religious systems in Peru inevitably creates a syncretism, “syncretism” signifying the creation of a new and distinct system. Marzalan theory does not leave room for the survival of Andean religion: it concludes that the fall of andean religions as independent systems is inevitable. I propose that, instead of classical Marzalan syncretism in the Andes, there is a coexistence of distinct religious cults that are separate but compatible. I further propose that Marzalan theory is born from an inherently “western”, colonist, and christian perspective. In contrast, a more open perspective permits the possibility of multiple distinct cosmovisions within one individual.
Key Words: Syncretism, Andean Cosmovision, Andean Cults, Isla Taquile, Perú
LAIC Film Series is an undergraduate initiative of the Columbia University Latin American and Iberian Cultures Department.
I founded this project in January 2016, in collaboration with Casa Hispanica of Columbia University. I was the president and managed the project until May 2017, when I graduated from Columbia.
This project was created to provide community engagement with contemporary social, political, and cultural issues of Latin America. The first semester was based on Bajo de Nuestra Piel, a month-long film festival I attended while living in La Paz, Bolivia in 2015.
The project has transformed in the past 2 years. In January-May 2016, our inaugurating semester featured a film from a different Latin American country each week. In 2017 we had a Human Rights semester and an LGBTQ Cinema semester. Proposed themes for upcoming semesters are film adaptations of Latin American literature and Indigenous Cinema.