Competing Visions and Contested Spaces in La sirga and Colombia magia salvaje

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction of vision and space in two Colombian films, La sirga (), and Colombia magia salvaje (). I argue that the stark differences between the production processes and the aesthetic proposals of both films are illustrative of a broader and complex conversation about how to grapple with the country's violent past, and how to face—from an economic, social, and political standpoint—the future that the post-conflict promises. I contend that, though apparently apolitical, Colombia magia salvaje mobilizes a vision of the nation profoundly related to the structural causes of violence: an exploitative and rapacious conception of the space that presents the territory as ahistorical, ready for the civilizing and modernizing project. On the contrary, through its haptic reworking of the senses, La sirga advances an oblique and reflective mode of seeing and inhabiting the nation. Like Colombia itself, La sirga is haunted by the uncertainty and unrest that violence (re)produces, and, as I show, advances a spectral spatiality that encourages novel ways of thinking about Colombia's recent history, thus providing a viable alternative for representing complex and violent realities of the country, and aiming towards a more equitable future.