“Serán las dueñas de la tierra” (Evaluation) – Repeating Islands


Néstor David Pastor opinions Serán las dueñas de la tierra (2022)—a brand new documentary directed by Juan Manuel (JuanMa) Pagán Teitelbaum—which highlights the various difficulties going through an rising technology of younger farmers in Puerto Rico. The movie will likely be screened in choose theaters in Puerto Rico beginning on July 14. Listed below are excerpts; learn the total article at NACLA. [Many thanks to director Sonia Fritz for bringing this item to our attention.]

When you think about Puerto Rico’s fertile land and tropical local weather, it’s tempting to imagine that situations are perfect for farming—they’re not. This unlucky actuality turns into more and more obvious within the new documentary, Serán las dueñas de la tierra (English title: Stewards of the Land), which follows the struggles of three younger farmers. The movie additionally marks the debut for director Juan Manuel Pagán Teitelbaum, who produced the feature-length documentary alongside his companion, Mariolga Reyes Cruz.

Pagán’s involvement in Puerto Rico’s comparatively nascent agriculture motion dates again to his return to the island. Pagán’s involvement in Puerto Rico’s comparatively nascent agriculture motion dates again to his return to the island. After finishing graduate research at SUNY Buffalo in 2008, he spent a couple of years dwelling on a household farm in Utuado, the place he started producing quick movies on farming. Finally, the U.S. Division of Agriculture supplied funding for 10 quick movies on fundamental farming strategies. From there, WIPR, the island’s public tv station, took an interest within the mission and commissioned Pagán and his spouse to supply a collection of 20 quick instructional movies referred to as Cosecha Hoy. This was a turning level, in response to Pagán: “For those who spoke to folks working in agriculture, they might let you know there was a earlier than and after, just because [the series] gave visibility to a gaggle of younger farmers working in agriculture.”

These movies have been meant to be inspirational, he added. And to the extent that farm revenue, the quantity of cuerdas of land below cultivation, and farming jobs all elevated within the earlier decade, inspiration abounds.

His subsequent mission, nevertheless, would search to steadiness views by addressing the meals system in Puerto Rico, the place over 80 p.c of the meals is imported and a 3rd of residents undergo meals insecurity. In conveying this stark actuality, the movie deliberately adopts a direct cinema model over the course of three years “to let issues occur and movie them,” explains Pagán.

A protracted overhead shot of the verdant countryside opens the movie earlier than we’re launched to Stephanie Rodríguez, a public college instructor who offers lessons on agriculture, along with engaged on two farms in Ciales and Orocovis. The digital camera lingers on numerous scenes from Rodriguez’s strenuous each day routine as she narrates her expertise.

At one level, she mentions a chance to take over a household farm. Although it’ll grow to be extra apparent later within the movie, it is a less expensive and extra fascinating association than if she have been to hire land from Puerto Rico’s Land Authority, the bureaucratic authorities entity charged with administering nearly all of the island’s publicly owned land for agricultural use or different functions.

[. . .] Subsequent, we meet Alfredo Aponte Zayas, who’s returning to Puerto Rico along with his household after finishing his graduate research in the US. Aponte first seems in snowy North Dakota by way of cellphone footage earlier than an emotional reunion with relations on the airport in San Juan. Symbolically, it is vitally significant to see a younger Puerto Rican household return dwelling at a time when a whole lot of 1000’s have been compelled to depart, particularly with the express goal of returning to the land. Later within the movie, throughout a category, one younger girl explains that there’s a chance to construct a brand new society by way of this motion, with meals sovereignty and agroecology on the forefront. [. . .]

“What these younger farmers are going by way of is so immense…these are the younger superstars who need to construct up the nation,” says Pagán. And it’s not simply farmers, he provides, but in addition lecturers, artists, actually anybody who’s dedicated to bettering materials situations on the island. “Have a look at how we’re treating them as a society.”

[. . .] The movie is ready to convey many of those historic and political components with no surplus of context. It’s merely a lived actuality for every of the protagonists and a testomony to their determination to pursue agriculture. “You don’t have to speak about politics in a movie the place you might have folks going in opposition to the grain,” says Pagán, “as a result of virtually nobody decides to check farming to be able to be a farmer within the mountains.”

[. . .] Eschewing resilience as a trope, Serán las dueñas de la tierra approaches its material with dignified candor within the face of inconceivable circumstances. [. . .]

[Néstor David Pastor is a writer, editor, and translator born and raised in Queens, NY. He is the co-founder of huellas, a digital magazine of longform writing by emerging writers with roots in Abya Yala, and editor of Intervenxions, a digital publication of the Latinx Project at NYU that focuses on Latinx arts, culture, and politics. For more information, visit www.ndpastor.com.]

For full article, see https://nacla.org/seran-las-duenas-de-la-tierra-documentary-review



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