Film Analysis: Even The Rain

The film Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain) captured an extensive and complex period of time for Latin America and effectively conveyed the region from colonialism to neoliberalism. Even the Rain projected themes such as indigeneity, colonialism, oppression, and neoliberalism, which was also covered in class. The film was significantly more effective at showing Latin America’s journey because of our previous readings and learnings in class. With prior context and information on how Latin America was formed and the path it took to neoliberalism, we could appreciate the film as an educational piece and not just entertainment. We also broadened our viewpoints as we got to see another perception of Latin America and its story. As the film was showing

Costa’s film really captures the subject of colonization in the scene where the man playing Columbus gives his monologue over the New World and drives home the idea of colonization and superiority because even though there are people already inhabiting the island, the Spaniards have now conquered the land and claim it as their own. This now also presents us to the idea of indigenous people and oppression. When analyzing the indigenous people of the Americas and how the Spanish treated them when they arrived, we can clearly see superiority come into play. The first form of oppression is shown when the Spaniards arrive and enslave the natives by taxing them through filling up a bell with gold. This superiority is also addressed in the Las Casas reading Sepulveda Debate. From this reading we see the two sides on the indigenous people argument and the overarching question of this time period “Do the indigenous people have souls?” Once this question is answered it determines the basis of how the indigenous people are viewed and treated. Unfortunately, there is no simple, clear cut answer. Las Casas, the

Working alongside Costa and Sebastian’s film, portraying themes of indigeneity and oppression, the Water Wars gives us a sense of what the people of Bolivia, specifically Cochabamba, had to go through to obtain rights to something as basic as water. These protests strongly correlate to sovereignty and neoliberalism. Bolivia’s people want nothing more than for the state to own the rights to natural resources. A quote from Pedagogy of the Oppressed gives us an acute vision of how the oppressed, Bolivia’s people, should and do act “The pedagogy of the oppressed, which is the pedagogy of people engaged in the fight for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as oppressed must be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.” This is a great quote that is put into action by Daniel leading the protests. Another reading that fits with the theme of oppression and indigeneity is Sinclair Thomson’s Sovereignty disavowed: the Tupac Amaru revolution in the Atlantic world. The reading and the movie draw many similarities. One of the most obvious being the insurrection against the