Chircales

This 1972 documentary by Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Lopez following the everyday struggles and lives of a brickmaker family in Colombia is a must see. It documents the exploitation of indigenous families by bourgeois landowners and elites, who remain increasingly indifferent to the plight. The family are not only forcibly alienated from their means of production and but even the meagre lives centre around the whims of the landlord. The documentary very poignantly shows how the workers themselves have internalized the miseries of such unending labour and have accepted it as a way of life. Particularly striking is how the women bear the double burden of patriarchy and capitalism, and often are the receiving end of such labour exploitation. Definitely a documentary worth seeing and learning to be aware of the historical realities of the underbelly of neo-imperialist/ capitalist development built on the back of the indigenous population in South American.