Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Peter Snowdon. 2013. <i> The Owners of the Land. Culture and the spectre of mining in the Andes </i>
10.13125/américacrítica/3139
Recensione di Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Peter Snowdon, The Owners of the Land. Culture and the spectre of mining in the Andes. Vzw Het Vervolg/COALFACE, 2013, 37 min, DVD.
application/pdf
2532-6724
3139
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-22246
Maria Laura Spanedda
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
América Crítica
Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Peter Snowdon. 2013. <i> The Owners of the Land. Culture and the spectre of mining in the Andes </i>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap
1
Video
2018-01-27
2017-12-26
2018-01-27
2018-01-27
209-212
1
Maria Laura Spanedda
2017
10.13125/américacrítica/3139
209
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
2532-6724
2
en
212
urn:nbn:it:unica-22246
Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Peter Snowdon. 2013. <i> The Owners of the Land. Culture and the spectre of mining in the Andes </i>
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/article/download/3139/pdf
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                                             2017 AMÉRICA CRÍTICA. VOL. 1, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017




                                                                             RECENSIONE
                                          JUAN JAVIER RIVERA ANDÍA, PETER SNOWDON
     THE OWNERS OF THE LAND. CULTURE AND THE SPECTRE OF MINING IN THE ANDES
                                        Vzw Het Vervolg/ COALFACE, 2013, 37 min, DVD.




   The Owners of the Land is a documen-         assembled material recorded by the an-
tary about mining speculation in the Pe-        thropologist between 2008 and 2010, dur-
ruvian Andes. The work is the outcome           ing his fieldwork in Cañaris, in the Lam-
of a collaboration between the Peruvian         bayeque highland of northern Peru, a
anthropologist Juan Javier Rivera Andía         predominantly Quechua area. At the
and the English filmmaker Peter Snow-           time Rivera Andía’s conducted fieldwork
don: together they crafted a film from a        in the Cañaris community was pushing
section of the installation with the same       back against a mining project lead by a
name, on display for the first time in Oc-      Canadian company. As explained in the
tober 2013 at the Het Mijndepot in Wa-          booklet accompanying the DVD, he gath-
terschei, Belgium. Starting from the his-       ered a visual archive that testifies to the
tory of a mine, the authors illuminate a        changes undergone by the community
traditional fringe context and its hard         over the previous years “...not only sci-
permanence in a contemporary era,               entifically and textually, but also in aes-
where communities have to put them              thetic and sensory terms” (pag. 6).
into conflict for affirming an identity out        The first segment, “Cristóbal and the
of the juncture between ethnicization           Mine,” is an introduction to Rivera
and marginalization.                            Andía’s fieldwork, in Dual screen format
   Rivera Andía and Snowdon mainly              16:9. Following Cristóbal, líder of the

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Maria Laura Spanedda
Review - Rivera Andía, Snowdon "The Owners of the Land"
2017 ⎸América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 2, dicembre 2017: 209-212
DOI: 10.13125/américacrítica/3139
210                                                                  MARIA LAURA SPANEDDA

Cañaris community, the video chronicles        as if posing for a radiography. The physi-
the mine history using three different de-     cal relationship between them and the
vices: video, photo and fieldwork diary.       sound engineer is instructive, he decides
Some photos of the Peruvian mine La            everything, including the position of a
Oroya, one of the most polluted places in      hand or a knee. It is an artificial set, built
the world, is index of the environmental       for recording sounds normally ascribable
dangers it poses. As shots of Rivera           to playful moments. A woman, following
Andía’s ethnographic activity scroll on        her performance of (singing) a kashwa
the screen, the text superimposed nar-         (typical dance and music of different
rates, like a diary, the mine installation     parts of the Andes), apologizes for mak-
until 2013, when he finally returned to        ing a mistake, while the sound engineer
Cañaris.                                       notes that she performed shyly. Before
   “We Are Going to Record” is an              starting to play his charanga, a musician,
eleven minutes single screen 4:3 clip that     eager to introduce himself, is told that is
epitomizes some of the main issues of          not the appropriate time. We can witness
visual anthropology. In this segment           such a paradoxical process where spon-
Rivera Andía keeps quite, while experts        taneity is prescribed, reproducing a pos-
from Lima work to record traditional           ture out of its context for making it a
chants among some members of the               “product”. This time suspension is a
Cañaris and Incahuasi communities. In          good metaphor of the break required for
the DVD booklet, Snowdon, with re-             the ethnicization of some cultural ele-
gards to this footage, observes: “… I          ments, that engenders their fetishization.
suddenly felt the ethnographer’s archive          The third clip in single screen 4:3
open up to the filmmaker’s eye” (pag.          marks the passage from an artificial envi-
21). The video ends at the eleventh            ronment to a friendlier one, where it is
minute as the filmmakers prevent us            possible to appreciate the daily relation-
from seeing their subject singing and          ship between Rivera Andía and his inter-
playing, suggesting that the most inter-       locutors, via the way they grant him ex-
esting part of the performance (or the         planations and stories of their daily life.
performance itself) is the preparation for     “Of Guitars and Men” combines three
its execution. A sound engineer fumbles        main elements: music, harmony and al-
with laptops and microphones, looking          cohol. The result is frivolous but also rich
for absolute silence. Meanwhile, women         of relevant ethnographic elements. A
and men involved with the exhibition           group of men shows a traditional guitar
stand still, taking their assigned position,   produced in the Lambayeque region.



                     2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 2, dicembre 2017
REVIEW- RIVERA ANDÍA, SNOWDON "THE OWNERS OF THE LAND"                                  211

While drinking alcohol, exchanging            terview to a Canadian mining company
jokes, and playing charanga, men recount      representative, broadcasted on a national
memories of their youth, in an attempt to     Peruvian channel. The interview is a cli-
explain the close relationship between        max that builds, minute by minute, a
charanga music, its execution, and the        negative impression of indigenous
courtship of women. Between laughter          groups who opposed to the mine project,
and the questions asked by Rivera Andía       defining them as terrorists linked to the
from behind the camera, the viewer im-        most extremist political groups of the
plicitly understand how charanga can          country. While Cristóbal is speaking into
represent the china (the woman), and          the microphone about indigenous rights
how important it is to manage matching        on water and land, the journalist speaks
a woman chant in order to play a good         about indigenous opponents as a danger
kashwa. If we connect this clip to the pre-   for the progress of the country; both
vious one, it shows the difference be-        speeches are interrupted by a growing
tween studio rules for digital music          bulldozer noise, coming from the video
recording reproduction and cultural           on the left. The noise covers everything
rules lived by the community. In light of     and stops only when they close their
these revelations, could we still define      speeches. The bulldozers’ sound (the
the lady’s performance in the first video     unique common element among these
as “shy”? Is that shyness a result of her     two videos) seems a sign of a more com-
musical skills or the gaze of the expert?     plex power game in which the two narra-
    “The Blood in Their Veins” is the last    tives we are shown are the only two al-
clip in dual screen HD 16:9. It generates a   lowed in the public space, reinforcing the
total cacophony: two screens are juxta-       idea of an impossible dialogue. A game
posed, side by side, both displaying sub-     in which the Cañaris community passes
titles and playing their original audio.      between self-representation and oth-
Watching and listening to both videos at      er-representation, defines itself in a new
the same time is a strenuous challenge,       way, because of the relationship activat-
which has the merit of representing a         ed by conflict. Rivera Andía’s position, in
clash: two narratives of the same event       this sense, is not part of the conflict itself
generate contrasting imageries, simulta-      but is inside these evolving relationships.
neously superimposing in the conflict         A careful participation that depicts his
dynamic. On the left we see riots be-         research subjects from a different kind of
tween the police and some members of          gaze, sometimes so close as to almost
Cañaris community; on the right, an in-       merge with them, sometimes too far to



                     2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 2, dicembre 2017
212                                                            MARIA LAURA SPANEDDA

participate.

                                                               Maria Laura Spanedda


                                                  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona


                                                     marialauraspanedda@gmail.com




               2017 América Crítica. Vol. 1, n° 2, dicembre 2017
