The
documentary opens with a 10-minute personal
meditation on the recent violent history of Colombia. Viewers
learn that for the last 50 years Colombia has
been the scenario of a non-declared war amongst guerrilla and
paramilitary groups. The documentary maker introduces then the
social work
of his great-uncle Jaime Santander SJ, an agrarian leader and reformer
who in
the 1960s changed the socioeconomic conditions of Manati, a small town
of the
Colombian Caribbean coast.
The documentary
goes on, then, with 12 miscellaneous portraits of
Manati:
1. Peace: Two
sociologist discuss the
current violence in Colombia,
later to introduce us to Manati, an exceptional model of peace in the
region.
They both believe that the relative prosperity of Manati is mainly due
to the
educational work of two Jesuit priests during the 1960s.
2. Health: a
10-minute Direct-Cinema
sequence of a wounded man struggling to be attended by the only nurse
available
in the local health center.
3. Union: The
sociologists point out that the strength of Manati relies on the local
Union, a
committee of about 100 peasants that has acted as the most influential
social
actor in the region.
4. Spirits: The
documentary-maker has been
warmly received by the people of Manati, who, as a matter of fact, see
his
journey as an spiritual return of their deceased leader Jaime Santander
SJ.
5. Land: Peasants
recount the history of
their successful struggle for the land
in the 1960s, in which 90,000 acres were given to the poor. They
underline
the
immense work that Jaime did as their main advocate and
protector.
6. Education: People of Manati talk about
Jaime’s last project: the creation of an unprecedented agrarian
university in
the region according to the Jewish self-sufficient project of the
kibbutz.
Mainly funded by the peasantry, the
university only lasted three yeas, before going to bankruptcy due to
the
intestine ambitions of the very few and the lay-back attitude of the
most.
7. Jaime: A brief
portrait of the life of
Jaime Santander, emphasizing his fight against the status quo.
8. Youth: The documentary-maker sees in the
widespread unemployment amongst the young, the main cause of Manati’s
latent
social problems.. Soon after the presentation of this docuemtnary in
Manati in 2005, 80% of the young migrated to Venezuela for good.
9. Asogama: A
9-minute Direct-Cinema
sequence of thebiggest cooperative of milk-producers in
the region, in
which
Carlos Acuña (a peasant leader and a friend of Jaime,) asks a
secretary to
justify the many irregularities of the Cooperative accounting books.
10. Ethics: A view on the local attitudes
about politics, sexuality, drug-traffic and the arm conflict in
Colombia.
11.
Economy: A brief glimpse of the current
economy of the region, in which a new generation of poor peasants have
replaced
the no-longer-poor peasantry of the 1960s.
12.
Manati: A short journey through the lagoon of
Manati, in which the documentary-maker reflects on the material and
spiritual
value of his great-uncle’s work.
The
documentary ends with a metaphoric
image, in which a stalk flies tirelessly over the lagoon, finally to
find a
small quite place upon the earth. |
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