The Sleeping Elephant

Director: Daniela Moreno Wray
Prooducer: Producción: Paola Granja / Pez Films

A mountain shaped like an elephant embodies the history of land struggles and unequal relations between indigenous people and white mestizos. A journey through the memory of my family and that of the country, unearthing the conflicts of a fragmented nation.

Synopsis

I grew up in sight of a mountain that, as a girl, I called the Sleeping Elephant. Now I return and ask myself: what memories are buried in this land and how do they affect me? Long ago this mountain was part of my grandmothers’ estate, they held the economic and political power in the area. My mother broke with this inheritance by joining the indigenous struggle for land.
 
Now I look for my place in this history, digging through the memories of oppression of the indigenous peoples and their resistance that finally resulted in the transformation of the country into a Plurinational and Intercultural State.
 
I exchange video correspondence with indigenous women friends, artists and activists, in search of answers to these old conflicts. As we try to heal the wounds we name the traces of a buried past. Memories and questions about how the plurinational state is expressed in our daily lives, still under the weight of an unjust and racist colonial past.