La Sierra (review)

Understanding Colombian contemporary conflict is not easy. A half-century old civil war, whose protagonists have changed over time and whose causes are multiple (rapid industrialization and deep inequality, a state that historically has never really consolidated, a global illicit drug market that has brought in millions of dollars and arms and has caused old conflicts to grow exponentially) escapes simple explanations. Trying to grasp this reality in documentary film raises, then, the challenge of addressing this complex reality without oversimplifying or engaging in tedious or biased explanations.

In this engaging documentary, which will definitely be of interest for students and other audiences, Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez follow for a year the lives of three young protagonists of one of Colombia's multiple wars: Edison, age 22, a commander of a right-wing paramilitary group Bloque Metro; Jesús, 19, of the same paramilitary group; and Cielo, 17, the girlfriend of one of the group's jailed leaders. The film shows how they understand and live this war but also how they live, how they fall in love, and how they dream. The ideological perspective behind the fighting takes a minor role in the film. But this downplaying of ideology is one of the elements that make the film so successful, because it prevents the film from falling into the trap of trying to present clear-cut ideologically driven contenders and causes of the Colombian conflict.

Edison, Jesús and Cielo are members of a generation that has grown up in the comunas, the slums that surround Medellín (capital of Antioquia), a region that witnessed partisan violence in the 1940s and 1950s, and economic recession and unemployment since the 1970s. In these comunas, guerrillas established urban cells among the young in the 1970s; once the armed forces forced these guerrillas out, drug dealers capitalized and youth gangs proliferated. When the Medellín Cartel was dismantled in the early 1990s, guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary groups entered to dispute the terrain. More than a clear ideological mark, the succession and conflict among guerrillas, drug dealing gangs and paramilitary groups in the comunas left arms among the young as a way of life, a subculture that has left these young people little hope: "We are too deep to think about the future. For now there is no future."

The film's direct approach to the neighborhood shows us another very important aspect for understanding violence not only in Colombia but in other Latin American countries: the failure of the state. "We are in the hands of armed kids," an adult of the neighborhood claims, summarizing the situation. The existence of so many armed groups allowing young gangs to take hold of the slums in the name of the group-of-the-moment shows that the problem runs deep and is closely related to the critical problem of the state, which has not been able to perform its role as monopolizer of the means of coercion and guarantor of the rule of law. Using a cinéma vérité style, the directors bring us up and down the slums along with the protagonists as they confront their enemies, giving us a close-hand look at life for people in the un-ruled territory of the comunas.

In spite of the crude reality it depicts, the film is not fatalistic, and ends with a note of hope. It is a hope that includes, for those still alive, the hard challenge of reconstructing their lives and, for the state, the need to consolidate itself in these neighborhoods, not only with peace agreements and arms control but with tangible opportunities for those who have been left aside for generations.