From a fellow instructor of Where There Be Dragons' cultural immersion programs in Bolivia, here's a beautiful description of El Alto and Teatro Trono, as well as El Alto's history and global importance.  Fascinating.

Gods, Mountains, and a Collective of Artists
by Julianne Chandler
Instructor
May 04, 2012

La Paz with Mt. Illimani in the distance

One of COMPA's cultural centers

Lake Titicaca with the snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera Real in the distance

I am home.  Despite my love of travel, the thrill of visiting new places and rediscovering old ones (my fourth visit to Machu Picchu!), I always experience a sense of release when we cross the border back into Bolivia and I am enveloped by my adopted home.  The sacred, snow-capped peaks in Peru take my breath away, but there is something about the familiarity of Illimani, that majestic god-mountain overlooking La Paz, that brings me peace and tranquility.  It is in the bosom of this magical peak that we are sharing our final two weeks of the semester.

At 20,200 feet, Mt. Illimani is the second-highest peak in Bolivia and one of the most sacred in the Andes.  According to Andean cosmology, mountains are physical manifestations of the gods, and within them reside the forces of both good and evil.  These forces must be balanced and appeased in order to maintain equilibrium between man and nature, and for the Andean people this necessitates constant acts of reciprocity and solidarity with the natural world.  From our fairy-tale like vantage point in El Alto, Illimani’s striking presence on the horizon has been both a constant reminder of that precarious balance as well as a radiating force of humility and positivity.

We are currently collaborating with Teatro Trono, a fascinating and inspiring collective of artists and activists in the community of Ciudad Satelite in El Alto.  Perched dramatically on the edge of La Paz, the city spread out in a crater-like formation below, El Alto is both the youngest and fastest-growing city in Bolivia and perhaps the entire South American region.  Emerging in the 1970s and 80s as a result of structural changes in the economy and the sudden closing of several of Bolivia’s largest mines, El Alto is an autonomous, primarily Aymara city that began as peri-urban sprawl and ended up over-taking it’s mother city in both size and population.  With over a million people, El Alto today is bigger than La Paz and the second-largest city in Bolivia.  It has been built entirely by the people of El Alto, with limited support from the government and through the collective labor of its vibrant neighborhood associations.  Borrowing from the political formation of the mining families that originally settled in El Alto, in addition to the enduring tradition of social struggle of the Aymara people, the city is arguably the most socially-organized society in the Western Hemisphere.

Emerging from the midst of this colorful social landscape, Teatro Trono and it’s umbrella organization Colectivo COMPA is an energetic force of artistic mobilization and social action.  Started in 1989 to respond to rising rates of delinquency  and youth homelessness, COMPA seeks to engage young people in theater and the arts in order to bring about social transformation.  Over the years, they have built a series of architecturally dazzling cultural centers across El Alto where children, youth, and even parents can find a creative outlet to help understand and respond to economically challenging circumstances.  

This unique community of artists has taken us in, inviting us to participate in their work and opening up homestay opportunities with families that are associated with Trono.  Based in a sprawling, seven-story artistic center in Ciudad Satelite that was built largely by Collective members with recycled materials, Teatro Trono is a powerful hug of social and artistic activity and an inspiring place  to begin to close out our time together.  In addition to homestays, we have participated in a theater workshop with Collective members, taken a tour of their cultural centers around El Alto, and had the great pleasure of seeing one of their theater productions which the Collective will be taking to Rio de Janeiro later this summer to present at a climate change conference focused on water issues. During this time we have also met with well-known journalist and longtime Dragons friend Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, met with diplomats at the US Embassy, helped paint a mural with Trono members in El Alto, and will head into the Cordillera Real this afternoon for a bit of hiking in glaciated peaks.

From the roof of Teatro Trono in El Alto, Illimani watches over us and reminds us to be grateful for this magical experience.  In a few days time, we will head to the Valley of the Spirits, at the base of this great peak, in order to reflect on our time together and begin to bring the journey home. 

from:

http://www.wheretherebedragons.com/Gods,-Mountains,-and-a-Collective-of-Artists_Y15260A2012A05Kcategory.htm

The majestic Cordillera Real, with Lake Titicaca (which lies on the Altiplano high plateau at 4000 meters), and La Paz/El Alto.  This is one image that we're using as inspiration for the opening animation of the film... which will include the mass migrations from the mines in these mountains and the communities on the Altiplano, which created the city of El Alto. Of course, our mountains will be cholitas with huge skirts and awesome hats.

music, painting... and death

this month, Februrary, we have filmed the last 3 scenes with Teatro Trono in La Paz and El Alto.

we recorded music for the soundtrack... enjoy the uncut versions here:

Quena de Tintin - la ceremonia by Luis Vásque, alias Tintín

Djembe y bombos - sinfonicaby
Oscar Vásquez, alias Sapo
Daniela Orellana Gomez, alias Oveja,
Juan Abel Cahua
Luis Montoya Rojas, alias Marquez

I spoke in depth with artist Alejandro Salazar about the animations he will design, and in his workshop I found this painting, which fascinated and frightened me. I thought I would share it with you all.

Apparently it depicts a local monster, that comes and takes children away from their homes and turns them into wild animals.  It sure looks like death to me.  And at times I sure feel like that child, feel like I've been taken far from home, turned wild, possessed by spirits using me as a channel for their project. I trust, in the case of this film, that they are good spirits that just have some unfinished business they need my help to take care of...

spread the word... in 2012 worldwide release!!

photos

been working on the trailer for months... soon, very soon...  in the meantime, some recently unearthed photos from the shoot:

 

fusil, metralla, el pueblo no se calla

"Rifle, machine gun, the people don't run"
(literally: "Rifle, machine gun, the people won't be silenced")

For a long time I thought of this popular Latin American marching slogan as a call to arms... now I think it could just as easily be addressing the the rifle and the machine gun, exclaiming that the people will not be silenced by the thundering violence aimed at them.

The below image has long fascinated me, ever since I saw it in La Paz, on a fake DVD of "Fusil, metralla el pueblo no se calla", the best documentary on the Gas Wars I've yet seen (check it out online). The original video came out a couple of months after the Gas Wars calmed down and Goni fled.  This is surely a pirate copy.  The layout and words are themselves an excellent record of popular sentiment.  The miner with coca in his cheek raising fist at a devilishly white Goni... the gruesome b-film typography evoking the massacre... the stencil-like subtitle at the bottom "The failure of the k'aras (the aymara word for whites)"... the excerpt from a local publication describing current events during the gas wars instead of a description of the contents of the film...

Movements: spectacular and revolutionary... small and slow

As the post-production of this film enters its second year, we in the creative team grapple with patience. With funds, we would finish within a couple of months... As it is, as we inch forward steadily, we are forced to aim our art beyond the urgency of the topical, beyond the current political battles. This forced transcendence, I think, can be good for art, despite its difficulty. So many artworks leave you thinking, "dang, wish the author would've spent a little more time thinking this all the way through". I am struck by how much attention is paid to revolutionary fervor, and how little to the long, complex aftermath.

The spectacular moments of 2000 and 2003, when Bolivia was a battleground, have given way to the past 7 years of working out how to construct a new model, with all its internal contradictions and slow-burning conflicts with occasional flare-ups. The current marches around the TIPNIS road-building issue display this dynamic perfectly. Indigenous groups and other opposition to the government plan are currently marching from the indigenous lands towards the capitol, protesting a proposed road that would run through indigenous lands and natural preserves. Now, this conflict is just the spectacular moment of visible flame that has erupted after years of friction between developmentalism and “pachamamismo”/indigenismo.

Obviously revolutionary fervor is fascinating with all its supercharged emotion… however, at stake is whether or not we deepen our understanding of the issues by examining history, and a continuing post-uprising reality that belies or at least tempers the promises of revolution. The Water Wars in Cochabamba, unfortunately, far from solved Cochabamba’s water problems (see this Wikipedia article for the more info on the conflict, and the current water problems). The Arab Spring was so exciting when Egypt’s people rose up. And now? How many outside the region know what’s going on? Have the Egyptian people founded a new society? Check out this radio story on Egypt now:

As I work on this film, constantly reflecting and deepening understanding of (r)evolutionary processes with so many other creative minds, working with words, images and sounds, I am constantly impressed by how slow and small real change is... and how misleading the spectacle can be. Working to preserve creative and critical memory of social history, pushing towards a more just future, is grueling. And unpopular. But it appears to me to be the only way to truly progress. Otherwise the spectacle of revolution overwhelms, burns and tramples the true, deep movements that permit baby steps (and occasional leaps) forward on solid ground.

I think filming is revolution, and postproduction/distribution nation-(re)building. Spectacular Movements, the documentary, is a project embedded in much larger projects, from Teatro Trono's plays and performances, to the struggle to bring justice to the perpetrators of historical atrocities, to understanding the roots of revolutionary crises, to delving into the formation of a creative-critical mestizo-urban-indigenous identity. These are not fast and furious, even if they are exciting. Guided by the humble model set by these deeper, slower movements, we continue the journey.  Thanks for coming along.