Loss and Life in the Andean Pluriverse: Slow Unravelings and suma qamaña in Óscar Catacora’s Wiñaypacha

Abstract

The impulse for development and modernization creates rifts between humans and nonhumans, dragging us deeper into the rhythms of capitalism and urban life. In the Peruvian Andes, this impulse has manifested in an intergenerational trend of rural out-migration that exacerbates the life-making struggles faced by those left behind. Óscar Catacora’s film, Wiñaypacha, reflects on these struggles and their impact on the lives of an elderly Aymara couple living isolated in the Peruvian highlands as they await, to no avail, the return of their son. The first section of this article examines how the aesthetics of Wiñaypacha emphasize the social–ecological unravelings that occur between the human and nonhuman beings that together construct the filmed Andean world. Catacora’s film represents migration as a gradual process of abandonment experienced by the Aymara elders that degrades their ability to sustain their lives and the lives of their animals. In the second section, I analyze the way Wiñaypacha makes visible the existence of the Andean pluriverse and worlds that have not disappeared in the wake of development. The film’s representation of time and suma qamaña (harmonious living) represents a departure from the universalizing tendencies of extractive capitalism and exemplifies the existence of alternative life-worlds.