Films of protest from the Cono Sur

Two short, moving films about the piqueteros' movement in Argentina (shown by one of the filmmakers at NYU yesterday) make it possible to see and feel part of some of the terrible clashes reported by Sandra Russo in the book I mentioned last week (click on "Archive" in the left column of this page, and go to 2003 09 28): "El rostro de la dignidad" follows a group from the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD) from the once-industrial, now rust-belt suburb of Solano as they cut access roads to Buenos Aires, and lets them explain why they're doing this and what they hope to accomplish. "Crónicas de la libertad" documents the police killing of two piqueteros in the massive confrontation between the movement and the forces of repression (army, police, prefectura) on the Puente Pueyrredón (Buenos Aires) on June 26, 2002. This was the subject of one of Russo's notes that I mentioned.

Also, I highly recommend a movie we saw in Buenos Aires the week before last, "Che va cachai" -- which seems to be current youth slang in the Southern Cone for "You get it?" It's about the movement of H.I.J.O.S., the children of the disappeared in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Good, moving interviews and dramatic scenes of demos and, as a finale, an especially dramatic escrache, or public exposure of a torturer from dictatorial days, in this case a Santiago (Chile) physician who is confronted in his office.